devolo reliability?

I decided recently to try out networking over the house wiring and
bought a box of 3 devolo av200 plus passthrough devices.

Two worked (well) - but one had a high-pitched whine (not that /I/ could
hear it!) and after a day started running incredibly hot with a very low
bitrate. (The ethernet socket was untouchable)

They all went back, and the vendor sent another box of 3 units. Two
worked - the third simply refused to connect to the others on the mains
network despite me running through the trivial "configuration" procedure
several times.

The vendor tells me he's never seen a fault in these units before.
Devolo tell me to "configure" the device. Which I'd already tried;
several times.

Anyone care to comment please on their own experiences? Am I just
amazingly unlucky?

 

Devolo is an established brand and the 200MHz products have been around
long enough to get the bugs out. It sounds as if you have been unlucky.
I bought three TP-Link 500MHz devices and they worked straight out of
the box. A friend also has three units working without problems.

 

I wonder if they're counterfeit. It wouldn't be the first time a
distributor has got hold of discounted stock through unofficial
channels ...

 

I did ask that specifically of Devolo. I'd already sent the units back
to the vendor by then, but devolo reckoned the serial numbers were good.
Not that that's conclusive.

I did feel the hot one was a real fire risk - I'm assuming the PSU was
duff because of the noise. If genuine, I'm surprised there's no
overcurrent safety cutout. (I didn't think to check the current drawn
till too late)

 

To complete the saga - the set of three units was replaced by the vendor
(they refused to swap just the faulty one). Blow me down, but one of the
replacements didn't work: it flatly refused to lock into the mains
signal from either of the other two. On that basis, 1 in 3 of these
units is duff.

So they went back for refund. At which point I had to get very
heavy-handed to get a return postage refund (I'm still contemplating
contacting Coventry trading standards about it; I'm waiting to see if
the money has actually landed in my account.)

Leaves me stuck - I won't buy more trouble of the same make, but would
dearly like to get rid of the wire snaking round the living room. I'm
not keen on wireless, it seems to have weird problems from time to time.

 

Eclipse Computers?

 

No. Unless perhaps they have multiple trading names.

I'll leave a factual review in the appropriate place when I've seen the
money.