FINALLY! CHEAP 10GbE and 2.5GbE Switches for the Homelab or Office

You're the first person I've seen put a load on the switches and show the throughput they can do.
That's what I want to see.

The NICGIGA and SODOLA are like 70$ now 5 months later. Good Deal!

These are Chineese companies. Like with most network devices from China, you can bet that they are reporting each bit to China.

"NICGIGA" nice name

Unmanaged. So close!

1 W continuous is just under 9 kW⋅h per year. Residential electrical power is 5.5× more expensive in SF than in Montreal. In Vancouver—still cheap but not like Montreal—1 W is about CDN $1/year. A consumption margin between two prospective devices of 5 W continuous for 5 years is CDN $25. Not nothing, but barely material in your price formula as a NPV.

Edit: I should mention that anyone using electrical heat can discount marginal consumption by 50% during the frigid season, as it displaces other heat sources you would have powered by electricity anyway.

Obviously, baseboard heating is more common where electricity remains relatively inexpensive to begin with. The Vancouver–Victoria–Seattle corridor has cheap electricity without the downside of a real winter—or the expense of air conditioning in the summer.

Great video. Thanks. This was helpful as I'm on the hunt for a fanless 16-port 2.5 gb switch, but coming up empty.

Very interesting! Looking at the power bricks, they look almost identical, but one model is "US" and the other "CN" (china) and they have different safety listings. Obviously, i'd want the one that has the US-based safety listings, and not the chinese one, which has different listings. Which was which?

My Nicgiga!

Great post, well done. Thank you. Helpful.

awesome, thank you... whats available for the home user in the unifi line ? 2.5GbE capable though, like 8/12/16/24 port's...

NicGigga? Gangsta!

The real test will be over time. Hopefully the Realtek chips will be reliable and function well years down the road. Sadly some of there products have not proven to be long-term reliable in the past. They were my go to vendor for 10/100 NIC cards for years, and the ones I have are still great performers. Then they introduced their 10/100/1000 NIC chipsets, they were great at first, till months down the road, they started to degrade... The first one I thought was just a fluke, but when more started to die, I gave up on them and switched fully over to INTEL based NICS for gb speeds. A couple of my gb switches also have failed over time, looking inside, they have REALTEK chips...

I have used the HORACO for one mount and it is a complete waste of time. It messed up my network, and I was walking in circles for days before I realized that the HORACO was to blame. After I removed it, everything returned to normal

What SFP module is compatible with those switches? Also is the SFP uplink only?

I wouldn't trust any of these....

The problem with all these switches is that they are cheap garbage and they fail/ overheat. Several I've owned did exactly that. Thus they are not worth the money. A quality switch will last a lot longer (up to 5 or 10 years of continuous use). These can fail in 6 months or less.

Of course these switches are very similar. They are probably assembled in the same Chinese factory . A factory that has most likely ripped off the technology from TP Link. Amazing how you gloss over the importance of regulatory approvals. Thats just another reason these switches are cheap. Let me guess there is probably no quality control stickers on or in these switches either. So , no thanks , I just dont share your excitement and I will continue to do my best to support legitimate companies that arent based in the business of ripping people off. Yes, Ill pay more but I will get better customer support, have fewer failures.

You're as bad as some of the Chinese sales pitches - if they are not regular 10gb across the standard ports and only 10gb uplink then it is NOT a 10gb switch. 10gb can be used with standard cabling at half the rated distance which is still way more than most homes need. Clickbait gets thumbs down.

There is now a managed version of the Horacho which I got for $89.88 with an instant $10 discount.

Why the switch that don't have a SFP port have higher switch capacity than switches that have a SFP port?
Example: Sodola with SFP 60Gbps switching Capacity and Sodola without SFP has 128Gbps switching capacity.

now I need a switch with an sfp28 port

Which model is the most reliable?

Can the SFP+ do 2.5G as well or only 10&1G?

Love the video and the channel. Guys audio is all over the board. Please normalize or check the audio. Not the 5th time or so for this issue.

Need something like this with a managed option with VLAN tagging...Hopefully a review on the way.

If they were managed 12-16 ports I'd be interested.

It would be nice to see 12 port and 16 port 2.5 gb managed switches. for a reasonable price.

"Horror Co." for horaco (UK speaker)

Can see this guy's life flash before his eyes every time he has to mention the NICGIGA by name.

I've been looking for a 2.5G switch - how is it the major manufacturers haven't released competitive switches and these no name brands show up?

Are these managed or un-managed?

I'd rather they offer the 10Gb RJ45 port and 4x2.5Gb port at cheaper or similar prices.

nicgiga name looks very sus

just bought a 4-port 10G switch with SFP+ ports. have it installed in my server and it's the bees knees. Just needed to add an extra case fan to keep it cool!

Have you tested, or measured, or do you know the latency of these switches? That influences real life experience more than theoretic throughput. I have two switches in my home LAN and both are non-blocking. The old HP ProCurve has a significantly lower latency (it's about 50% of the other switch) and gives me a much snappier experience. Packet size is default. The network is not noisy and resends ~never happen, so I could go longer from that perspective, but prefer default and some use cases really benefit from the default package size.

Listening to you say “nicgiga” at 1.5x speed is pretty, well, you know. 🤣

Trendnet has a $99 5 port 2.5 gig switch now

Man enunciated "nicgiga" REAL carefully 💀

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret... Those switches are all made at the same sweat shop in China

Thanks for this video, I was looking to get three 2.5 switches so that all my local network is 2.5 but the prices have been putting me off. Gonna look at these options for sure

Is it possible for cheap switches to contain malware?

I saw this review and immediately ordered me one, and delivery was super fast to Belgium( less than 3 days), I think they have a warehouse here, I got the HORACO 8 Port 2.5G Ethernet Switch $119.52 USD.. not to bad at all :) now I just need to test it :) to bad it doesn't come with an European plug.

did you try cat5e run 10G? and see the performance?

It’s about time these switches start coming down in price.

Given the state of our government here in the states, the name of the 3rd switch manufacturer sure looks like they didn't think the corporate name through as it would be deemed racist here!!!

Thank you for all the information!

I can't wait until they have this where all the ports are 10GbE I have one 8 port but it's loud so I am putting it in the loft.