We'll have more performance testing in for our full-scale review of these products, but keep in mind that the limiting factor for most powerline adapters is your building's electrical wiring, not the adapter's theoretical maximum. PCWorld reviewer Becky Waring managed to get 59 mbps out of an earlier , which had an advertised maximum of 85 mbps.

By way of comparison, I only managed to obtain about 12 mbps with the AV 200 and AV+ 200 in my (fairly old) apartment building, and up to 25 mbps in my PCWorld office. This isn't to say that the new adapters are slower than the old ones; rather, it underscores the fact that powerline network speeds depend on your wiring, first and foremost.

The drop in bandwidth between the two buildings was fairly noticeable when I surfed the Web and streamed YouTube videos. In the office, there wasn't much difference between the powerline network and standard wired ethernet; but in the apartment, the powerline network felt like it had more latency than my 802.11g network did. Web pages seemed slower to start loading than usual, and YouTube videos stuttered a bit initially.

Though both speeds are sufficient for most Internet uses (albeit definitely a step down from gigabit ethernet) and though Netgear has announced (the AV 500 and the AV+ 500), they may not be any faster on houses with older wiring than the AV+ 200. If your building can accommodate a high-speed powerline network, however, the Netgear AV 200 and AV+ 200 can help you fill in dead spots without having to run new cables.