Practical test of TP-Link TL-PA7027P AV1000 Powerline adapters

I had trouble getting reliable WiFi from my router to my main workstation. All 2.4 GHz channels are totally full in my location. The 5 Ghz connection seemed pretty okay but suffered from random dropouts lasting around 20 seconds. Most of the time I can tolerate low speed but it has to be reliable. I just can not tolerate total dropouts. I could not run new wires so I decided to try powerline adapters as a last resort.

I know that powerline networking does not have great reputation and is still somewhat "controversial", even in 2025. I still wanted to give it a try as it takes zero effort to install. I bought TP-Link TL-PA7027P AV1000 adapters (and checked if I can return them if they don't work out). The advertized speed is 1 gigabit but that is the speed of the lowest layer, not the one that is available to Ethernet.

Benchmarks are hard to come by as the performance depends on totally everything that you have in the building. My electrical installation is relatively modern. All outlets have three wires. The panel has DIN rail breakers. Three wires are very important as they effectively double the bandwidth (MIMO).

I connected one adapter to the outlet next to the router and tried different outlets with the second one.

The same breaker

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  32.6 MBytes   273 Mbits/sec    0    875 KBytes       
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec  33.9 MBytes   284 Mbits/sec    0    977 KBytes       
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec  35.9 MBytes   301 Mbits/sec    0    977 KBytes       
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec  33.9 MBytes   284 Mbits/sec    0   1024 KBytes       
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec  32.2 MBytes   271 Mbits/sec    0   1024 KBytes       
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec  35.2 MBytes   296 Mbits/sec    0   1024 KBytes       
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec  33.4 MBytes   280 Mbits/sec    0   1.11 MBytes       
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec  34.2 MBytes   287 Mbits/sec    0   1.11 MBytes       
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec  35.4 MBytes   297 Mbits/sec    0   1.11 MBytes       
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec  32.9 MBytes   276 Mbits/sec    0   1.16 MBytes       
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec   340 MBytes   285 Mbits/sec    0            sender
[  5]   0.00-10.02  sec   337 MBytes   282 Mbits/sec                 receiver

Different breakers (outlet closer to the router)

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  22.4 MBytes   187 Mbits/sec    0    837 KBytes       
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec  21.4 MBytes   179 Mbits/sec    0    976 KBytes       
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec  22.9 MBytes   192 Mbits/sec    0    976 KBytes       
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec  23.4 MBytes   196 Mbits/sec    0    976 KBytes       
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec  21.4 MBytes   179 Mbits/sec    0    976 KBytes       
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec  23.0 MBytes   193 Mbits/sec    0    976 KBytes       
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec  21.4 MBytes   179 Mbits/sec    0    976 KBytes       
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec  23.5 MBytes   197 Mbits/sec    0    976 KBytes       
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec  22.8 MBytes   191 Mbits/sec    0    976 KBytes       
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec  22.8 MBytes   191 Mbits/sec    0    976 KBytes       
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec   225 MBytes   189 Mbits/sec    0            sender
[  5]   0.00-10.02  sec   222 MBytes   186 Mbits/sec                 receiver

Different breakers (final location)

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  18.4 MBytes   154 Mbits/sec    0    798 KBytes       
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec  16.9 MBytes   142 Mbits/sec    0    798 KBytes       
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec  17.2 MBytes   145 Mbits/sec    0    798 KBytes       
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec  17.0 MBytes   143 Mbits/sec    0    843 KBytes       
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec  17.4 MBytes   146 Mbits/sec    0    843 KBytes       
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec  16.9 MBytes   142 Mbits/sec    0    843 KBytes       
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec  18.6 MBytes   156 Mbits/sec    0    843 KBytes       
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec  17.0 MBytes   143 Mbits/sec    0    882 KBytes       
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec  18.6 MBytes   156 Mbits/sec    0    882 KBytes       
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec  17.1 MBytes   144 Mbits/sec    0    882 KBytes       
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec   175 MBytes   147 Mbits/sec    0            sender
[  5]   0.00-10.03  sec   173 MBytes   144 Mbits/sec                 receiver

Conclusion

Obviously the best speed was obtained when the adapters were connected to the same circuit breaker. Practical speed is around 30% of the advertized "1 gigabit PHY rate". I was very positively surprised that the link worked through the breakers at all. In the final location where my workstation is located the 144 Mbps might not be great in 2025 but it is way more than I need for daily use. I also found out that I don't have any dropouts. I did not do any continuous monitoring but video conferencing works without any problems all day long. I might just be lucky with all the electrical appliances and the inverter driven heat pump (on a different breaker though). 😊

I got interested how modern powerline adapters actually work so I read this book: Homeplug AV and IEEE 1901: A Handbook for PLC Designers and Users. Even though it does not cover the latest version of the standard it is very interesting how every single possible modulation, channel coding, and network management trick imaginable is stacked together to deliver data over horribly noisy wires that were totally not designed for it.