Finally "Cheap" 2.5GbE Unmanaged Switches From TRENDnet 

When you can get a whole 8 port gigabit switch for less than the cost of a single 2.5g port, you know something's wrong

We need more competition or just go for 10 Gigabit and be done with it :)

Honestly, as a home user, I think 10USD per port will be my switching point. Currently, the only situation that saturates the current 1Gbps connection is bulk file transfers, which does not happen very often. I think what I care more about is consistent processing latency and stability.

would be nice if these switches had a 10gbe uplink.

"We did a rocket-lake review that nobody watched" *opens the rocket lake review and watches it, that's how I roll

$22 per port and they can't put the leds in the RJ-45 ports. The LED placement is an important issue. I totally agree with you on pricing. My guess is that we are just a year or two early for low prices. Thanks for the great videos.

I'd love if motherboards, desktops, and other devices would start standardizing on 2.5 GbE as the baseline (whereas 1 GbE is now), but still, these switches are 4-5x more expensive than 1G units. Until that changes I'd still rather stick with hybrid gear like QNAP's 10/2.5 Gbps switch, so it's more future-proof for when I have more 10G-capable devices. 2.5 Gbps is very appealing for me since I already have 8 rooms in my house wired with Cat5e, and pulling/rewiring to Cat6a or Cat7 is going to be annoying.

Agree that the per-port cost for 2.5g is quite a jump from 1g. It's high enough that I just went with 1g or forked out for 10g for the stuff that benefited from it for personal use. This would be perfect with an SPF+ port or 10g for uplink but without the £400 tag of the TEG-30102WS. Prices and product choice is slowly getting better but there's still some way to go yet.

I mean, if you absolutely need the cable lengh of RJ45, these switches maybe make sense, but the 4x speed increase of the MikroTik 10Gbit switch with SFP+ ports(at the same price but with only four 10Gbit and one 1Gbit port) seem to make much more sense, if you can satisfy the bandwidth of course

At it's current pricing, per port cost is way too expensive for regular consumers who just want to plug and play. I agree with you on the recommended pricing.

I think you're right at the $10-12/port price point.

This is great, although I wish it came with a one or two 10gbe ports.. It is still an "affordable" switch for what it offers. Its nice to see someone taking the time to review network gear -- This is exactly why I come to this channel -- Thank you, Patrick! :)

You get a like for showing the internals!

Glad they are finally here, however I feel like the benefit of going from 1gbe to 2.5g is too costly for enthusiasts in most cases. Meaning it makes more sense to go 10gig if going out and buying bespoke hardware. 2.5g needs to replace 1gbe as the default, with 10gig still the enthusiasts option I feel

Mikrotik can make a 4x10GbE switch for U$S149, an 8x10GbE for U$S269 and the one that I bought the 16 port 10GbE with redundant power supplies for U$S399. And TRENDnet expects U$S180 for an unmanaged 8x2.5Gbe switch? I know, different customer base, but my point is... how big is the margin TRENDnet gets on these things? IMHO motherboard vendors were never interested in expending a single cent more than necessary because of the low margins they manage (not long ago having an Intel 1GbE instead of a Realtek based solution was the "high end" solution on expensive motherboards), and the lack on interest on the average customer never pushed them to do anything else. There are LOTS of marketing and money invested on WiFi technology, which before WiFi6 it was really "meh" technical wise, but the average customer wanted that... no cables, big numbers. It's a pity, really, the enthusiast has no choice but used enterprise NICs and this switch will be a market flop. It targets a market that... doesn't exists. An unmanaged 4/5 2.5GbE switch should be U$S50, and should be the norm. I updated my home network to 1Gbps... maybe 15 years ago. Sorry for the rant. It's a shame we are not using 10GbE as a cheap standard and replacement for 1GbE like 1GbE was to Fast Ethernet.

Still blows my mind that 15yrs ago I bought a netgear 8 port 1Gbps unmanaged switch for $75. Really wish I knew what the hold up is getting faster networking down to affordable prices. 2006 me was convinced by at least 2015 10GbE would be in the home. I was wrong.

I think the big change is going to be when the home routers have 4x 2.5gig or 5gig ports on the back.

$100 for 8 ports would be ideal (~$13/port), but $120 is probably the most I'd go. Let's be real, these will mostly be used as edge switches, not backbone switches. Since most residential internet connections in the US won't see even gigabit speeds for a significant period of time, and a gigabit switch with 10Gig uplink can be had for the current asking price of the 8 port unit ($189), I think they make very little sense at the current price point for home users like myself. Unrelated; as much as I like to geek out about crazy high end equipment I can never own/have no use for, this kind of content (consumer/prosumer networking gear like unmanaged switches) is what I really need. Keep up the great work!

I think I would be buying some of these if they were a third of their actual price. Probably it will be 1-2 years from now, but I am quite confident that we will get there.

That qnap looks interesting. I didn't know that there were cheap-ish 2.5gig switches like this trendnet out there though so it is a cool option too.

For a home what I am looking for is 18 ports. 4 x 2.5gbe poe for wifi, 4 x 1gbe poe for cameras, 4 x 2.5gbe for desktops and nuc, 4x 1gbe for tvs and other legacy devices, and 2 x 10gbe for servers/ Nas. Maybe a 26 port that you double the nonPOE ports.

I remember when 2.88 MB floppy disks came out but then disappeared without widespread adoption because folks were not willing to pay double. I'd pay $50 for a 5-port switch, but I'd have little interest in upgrading whilst my internet connection speed is capped at 200 Mbps.

Personally, I think 2.5Gbps is a waste of everyone's time and money. Just go straight to 10Gbps. The fact that even SATA SSDs are bottlenecked by it makes it feel old on arrival.

Love the video. I really am holding out for 10Gb with support for 5/2.5Gb instead. I want to have the higher speed uplink to the rest of my network

Gees port costs are so high, The switch prices need to come down to $10 or less per port

If you look at the history of consumer and some business hardware, (here in the UK), you will see that even in the first decade of this century motherboards, until later in the decade were still at 100 mbps, though Laptops/notebooks had gone up to a Gig. That meant a lot of places still had 100 MB infrastructure with 1 Gig uplinks. It was only as more items got 1 gig that the market moved. So before the end of that decades where I worked we had gone to 1 Gig throughout with a couple of 10 Gig links, but hey were expensive. You found alternative way to increase uplinks, etc bandwidth if required. These days I only run a small home lab and that is still on 1 Gig and is OK for my current requirements though will look at going higher when the prices significantly reduce, or my needs change. The benefit of 2.5 gbps is that I can continue most likely to use my CAT5E cabling, and I have boxes of that in the shed, even maybe be able to handle 5 gig at a pinch. However what would be interesting is due to reduced costs of production as sales increase and prices come down will there then be that much difference in costs between a 2.5 and 5 gig switch on a per port basis. Incidentally all my switches are metal cased. The only item that isn't is my router that connects via copper to FTTC. Regarding the port indicating LEDs. I do agree that above the port is best. Where I worked we had racks of switches and most indicators were above the port and they were so easy to detect that they were fully operational, and at what bandwidth , than the few that were to the side of the ports.

I think $10/port gives them enough of a profit over the $3/port for current unmanaged switches and still feels like a fair price as a user. Especially since OEM's are now including 2.5Gb Ethernet as standard equipment. It's no longer a special order item like a 10/40GB device.

I stumbled over (didn't try yet but think about getting) the Zyxel XGS1010-12 which I think is another interesting unmanaged switch - same price range but it enables interconnecting 1gbit, 2,5gbit and 10gbit sfp+

For an 2.5GbE 8 port unmanaged switch around 100USD is what I would be willing to spend. Around the 200USD mark I would rather just hop on ebay or similar sites and pick up a used managed switch. But to be completely honest I wish companies would just skip 2.5GbE and go right to 5 or even 10GbE.

For me personally, I'd love to upgrade my small homelab to something faster than 1Gb, but for it to be really feasible for me, I think things would have to hit the $10-12 per port range or

The TEG-S380 seems impressive, but there's been a cheaper 5 port option for around a year now, the QNAP QSW-1105-5T, which is $110.

Would love to see 8 port 2.5Gbe switches with 2 10Gbe ports coming in under $200, that's auto-buy territory for me!

After looking for years for faster than 1GbE solutions, I finally made a jump to 10GbE over fibre. Cards are super cheap on eBay and 2 cheap Chinese SFP+ modules + fibre patch cable is cheaper than a DAC cable or a pair of -T modules.

I don’t want to spend over $100 for a 4/5 port unmanaged switch. At that size its just going to be home use plugged in and forgotten about. That comes out to 1 uplink and $25 per device added to the wired network.

Excellent points, Patrick! I just spent the last few days doing a "drop-in" replacement of a Linksys 8-port Gigabit switch with an 8-port TP-LINK 2.5GbE switch. That new 2.5G switch caused zero problems. All the problems we encountered happened with 4 x USB 3.0 to 2.5GbE ethernet adapters, and 1 x 2.5GbE PCIe x1 add-in card -- trying 5 different vendors. Because we still use Windows XP on our backup storage servers, we naturally had hoped the USB 3.0 dongles would work on those PCs. NOT!! Yes, I already hear you saying that XP is obsolete. HOWEVER, the Realtek website does list a download option for "WinXP Auto Installation Program" under the RTL8156 and RTL8156B controllers. And, despite my good faith efforts to request Tech Support (now that I am a paying customer), what few responses I did receive from the sellers were terribly inadequate. The email address for Tech Support at asustor is "over quota" and my question to them is still waiting for answers. I haven't told StarTech yet, but their dongle starts up at 100Mbps, and must be DISABLED and ENABLED in Network Connections to change the speed to 2.5Gbps. Also, that dongle required a hybrid USB cable that supplies extra power from a USB 2.0 port: the latter problem may be due to limited power available from the USB 3.0 ports at the real I/O panel of our HP Z220 tower workstation. So, a hybrid USB cable fixed that one fault. The good news is that all 5 of those adapters installed mostly OK on Windows 7 and Windows 10 PCs. And, the excellent software at drivereasy.com made it relatively simple to upgrade device drivers to the latest versions. If you're not already aware of the latter website, I have been updating drivers with their Windows program for several months now, and I have not had one single problem with any driver updates. I should add that our new TP-LINK switch is on the floor, below one workstation monitor, and we point a DC fan directly at that switch because it does get warm to the touch. Hope this helps. p.s. Yes, Patrick, your astute analysis of prices is RIGHT ON THE MONEY: prices should naturally go downwards as awareness of 2.5GbE expands worldwide.

I agree that the $100-120 range is the point at which these go from being "early-adopter" to "worth considering." It'd still be great to see them get below 3 figures, though, then things like that QNAP with the 10GbE uplink ports won't seem so attractively priced. Motherboards that include 2.5GbE still tend to be on the higher end of the scale, roughly $150 and up, so there's still some of that early adopter premium in play. It's still good to see the new NUCs adopting it. My B550 board has 1x1GbE & 1x2.5GbE, so I've been tempted to try it out. Plan A was to get an 8-port 2.5GbE switch, for future expension, and add a PCIe card to my Home Lab rig (currently just one system with a far-too-loud PSU). After spending ages looking for an attractive 2.5GbE switch, I gave up and ended up buying a Netgear GS108Ev3 for about $30 to play with the switch management features (I've only ever had unmanaged switches). Plan B is to stick with 1GbE for the rest of the network and have a direct 2.5GbE link between the home lab server and main PC. Still, finding a 2.5GbE card that's reasonably priced (and doesn't look like it'll break if you look at it funny) is proving difficult.

I really appreciate that you covered power consumption since 10gig switches are power hogs compared to 1gig.

With 1G switches at $2 - $3 per port, going to 10x the price for 2.5G is totally unreasonable. Yes, they’ll definitely sell some at those prices, but sales volumes won’t go up until they get it down to around $10 per port. I’m pretty sure for most consumers, 2.5 times the performance is just not worth much more than 2 or 3 times the price.

Another great video, thanks Patrick! I have seen DOCSIS 3.1 modems fail auto-negotiate with 2.5Gbps equipment - so if you can - doublecheck the port settings. Might need some Firmware updated. Also I'd rather buy slightly used 10Gbps quality equipment for the same $.

I just pulled the trigger on the 5 port switch for 130 bucks I feel a little bad but I really like the speed to my unraid server

For my home network I would struggle to spend much more on a 2.5gb switch than 1gb. The way I'm thinking about it is the use case for every device needing >1gb would be if I have an internet connection that can saturate it, but I don't so realistically there are only a few devices passing around large amounts of local traffic. If the amount of traffic is noticeably slow on a 1gb connection then at that point I'm just going to move those devices to 10gb.

Same thing happened when the transition on the desktop from 10/100 to 1000Base-T occurred. Will probably be another year or two and we'll see 2.5G at less than $100; nice that they're fanless. So many of the first cheap gig-E switches that would fail from overheating due to crappy or clogged fans. Back then it was a little different in that a home NAS was not anywhere near as common. The upshot of this is that these switches with no higher-speed uplink ports are really only for the smallest and most basic networks while the one's like you mention with dual sfp+ ports now have a much bigger market. A managed switch with fiber capable 10G ports for a ~$250 is a steal. Make the jump people!

Not sure if I could go fully unmanaged so bought the zyxel xgs1210 so I could get 10 g uplinks with couple of 2.5 gig ports, with vlan support for about the same price as these.

48, 24 ports switches around my place. Only use 5 port switches for a week when testing temporary equipment

I have been looking for a switch with the LEDs separate from the ports. I prefer it since then I can tape over them and don’t need to see the blinking. (For home use).

The price point of 2.3Gb Switches is part of why I didn't worry about getting 2.5Gb Ethernet on my motherboard when I built this machine a year ago. Switch prices are just too high to justify using it yet for me.

I enjoy your reviews. I am data center focused myself, and always think about speeds, buffers, etc. For hosts that network boot, 2.5 Gig is potential interest. Typically we'll have 40 hosts 1gig, with 4x10 uplinks bonded (48 hosts if we want slightly over subscribed). With 40-48 hosts at 2.5Gig, I would need 6 25 gig uplinks (SFP) or 4 40gig uplinks. (QSFP). 10Gbase-T is getting cheaper all of the time. I can see hospitals moving over to this. If all of the nodes are 2.5Gig, we'll need better path to the boot/management nodes and upgraded nodes.

Im pretty much at the same page as you are talking about, i want a 2.5gb switch, but they are far to expensive atm to make it an option, versus just sticking to a 1gbit switch, it is faster sure, but for my use, it wouldnt make a hell of difference, at least to a point where a 10x price premium is worth it. To be relevant pricewise it would have to come down to something like $60-$70 for a 5 port switch.

10 ports please: 8 x 2.5GbE (4 w/ PoE), 2 x SFP+. $200. It's OK I'll wait.

We should be pushing to 10G and not wasting time on a stop-gap 2.5g. Protocol that won't really live long enough to make it into mainstream devices. It's like a 250mbps port instead of a1G

Edit: Also, I absolutely won't be buying any of these until I can get a 5-port switch for $60 max. I think your $12/port assessment makes perfect sense. I completely agree with your thoughts on the price jump from 1Gbe to 2.5Gbe. I don't really see the justification...it doesn't seem like the parts or engineering work are dramatically different from 1Gbe. So ... it seems like the prices make no sense. It should be *way* cheaper. Like less than half lol

Heck. Mikrotik's 10G offerings (4+1, and 8+1) at $140 and $256 respectively... managed, fanless... very competitive as well, as long as you're buying DAC cables and not having to invest into SFP modules. It's good to see new 2.5G offerings, but I agree the price needs to come down further.

I think if you go over $100 it has to have compelling features such as a 10Gb uplink or be managed. An unmanaged 8 port 2.5 with a single 10 gig (sfp+) at around 150 would be right around where I would be ok with it. I would prefer it nicely in the 120-140 range. A 5 port unmanaged 2.5gb switch needs to be under $75 for general adoption or it needs to have a higher uplink to be any more expensive.

Idk why they're so pricey now, but back in November 2020, I was able to get the QNAP QSW-1105-5T 5-Port Unmanaged 2.5GbE Switch for only $109

I recently purchased a Ubiquiti Enterprise 24 PoE for my home with 12x1Gb, 12x2.5Gb, 2x10Gb SFP+ ports, at $800. I love it because it supports Comcast's 1.2Gb internet at full speed, and has PoE for security cameras and APs. Not all of the ports are 2.5Gb, but for the security cameras and non-core equipment that's not a concern. It seemed like a good compromise, especially for the PoE.

My current problem with 2.5GBE is that while it is faster than GBE, it is not super fast. It is aproximately good hard drive fast, or a bit faster. But it is way slower than even sata ssd speeds, and let's not even talk about nvme. So going 2.5GBE for me is already a compromise, i settle for lower speed that what i would want. I could be ok with that if it were cheap, but it is still quite expensive... So i feel like i am accepting "MEH" performances and still paying premium... I would feel more satisfied by paying twice as much, but for 10GB lan.

You see it the same way that I do ... 11:38 ... "That gap is too much". I agree. That's why I don't think that 2.5Gb will take off. Most people rather spend a little more and get 10Gb. At the price point of $24/port, that is just stupid and ridiculous. Way too much to make it universally acceptable in its pricing right now. Basically, 10G is gonna be accepted faster due to these high prices.

Most home users won't need 2.5gbps and the power users have already gone to 10gbps. 2.5/5gbps equipment is DOA. Most systems are coming with dual 1gbps ports and you can bond ports and be way more cost effective. You can get dual port USB3 adapters for cheap.

I'm currently looking at an upgrade project were I would like to add a 2x port 2.5Gbps Ethernet NIC to a small group of workstations and bond the channels for a maximum transfer rate of 5Gbps. If the price per port was in the 12 - 13 dollar range then the cost of two switches and the NICs would be acceptable.

I hope mikrotik brings a 4-8 port 2,5g with 1-2 sfp+ for around 150... This would be perfect

I went straight to 10G on used hardware since it was cheaper than buying new 2.5G. If it's gonna take off I feel like 2.5G needs to beet the used market

You are so much right. 1GBit has been dirt cheap for like 20 years. I remember when I got from 1MBit Ethernet to 1000MBit Ethernet in less than 15 years and after that: Nothing. Overpriced. I even used 40GBit Infiniband for a while to directly link my two most important systems and even that was a ton cheaper than 10GBit ethernet. This is utter desperation. My first computer to oversaturate a 1Gbit link was a cheapish Athlon 600Mhz with a cheap software RAID5 in 1999. My first computer to oversaturate a 10Gbit link was a lowest end Xeon with 2x2000Mhz and a single U2 drive in 2012. And now in 2021 we are still literally shitting bricks at 1Gbit.

Don't forget that DOCSIS 3.1 modems are shipping with 2.5G now.

Hello Patrick. Might you review the new for 2022 teg-s750 5 port 10Gb base-t switch? Thanks!

@mikrotik please make your version!

The market for 2.5 Gb is very limited in the consumer market. Wifi has improved significantly and for the wire folks, the logical upgrade path from 1 Gb is 10 Gb.

Honestly, at this price it’s still too much. For $140 I’d rather do the tiny mikrotik with SFP+. $23/port is about 3 times as much as what it’s worth. You mentioned that a gig port is $3 so makes sense that a 2.5G port should go around 2.5x$3=$7.5/port. Anything above $10 a port makes no sense.

I am starting to think about some devices for my new house (haven't purchased yet). My initial thought was a 2.5gbe with PoE to run wireless APs through out the house. However I am still looking in to wireless options

I like my switches with ports on the back and activity LEDs on the front.

as always, a great review. Even if the switch does not support any vlan mgt, you can ALWAYSs program your NIC in OS to support VLANs, with a VLAN ID. Just moving the management around a little :-)

Can you please review some of the TP-Link switches from their impressive lineup like the TL-ST1008F

It’s interesting but when options for 5 or 10 Gb switches are not to much more it would make the 2.5 switches irrelevant at those prices

Waiting for a 20 port with 4xSFP+10 for ~$300 to replace my trendnet 20+4SFP+ that i bought several years ago for ~$250 I too dont like the seperate pannel for LED activity/link state

To start with paying double the 1GbE equivalent is the pass fail line for most of my casual use acquaintances, but over time that has to come down. For the more advanced 2.5GbE isn't worth the hassle and they're looking to 10GbE, even if they have to go used.

and fwiw... I didnt receive a notification you have put a video out... I generally consume your videos on a routine basis...

20 years ago I wired a house for 10/100. That infrastructure still works for 1 GbE. I might be able to get 1 Gbit Internet here, but I don't feel all that constrained by the ~100 Mbit I usually get. My currently router is limited to 1 GbE. I can bond ports on the back side to get a bit more bandwidth between the house network and my home lab, but for that use 1 GbE is good enough. I will eventually need to find a way to get 2.5 GbE to the router from the WLAN, but not until I upgrade the APs. The key problem for 2.5 GbE for me is that it really only makes sense if you are regularly saturating 1 GbE, and if that case, you are probably going to want 10 GbE (or better) anyway.

Your pricing (16:50) is somewhat right. They should charge double say what 1Gb switches are, say $55 for FIVE 2.5Gb ports and then (maybe) $85 / $90 for EIGHT 2.5Gb ports. If not, I'd buy 10G switch instead. It has to be HALF what they are charging now.

For me, for my home network, I'd need two switches(Bedroom, Living Room), and if they were around $30 each I think I could pull the trigger, but I'd need 2.5g ports for 3, maybe 4 PCs, for those, maybe $10ish each(for USB/PCIe 1 port adapters)? My Router is currently only 1g, but I spent like $120 well over a year(maybe 2?) ago on a 'good' one(by home router standards) to last a while, so I'd prefer not to replace it. It has a USB3 port, not sure if it supports USB network adapters though. Not sure how I would organize things.

does anyone knows if you can run a NAS directly connected to a pc, perhaps ass a secondary way to connect ?

I agree. I wouldn't consider buying into 2.5G until I can find a 8 port below 100$. It's not like 2.5G is for enthusiast when we even have ports on NUC systems, and for mainstream adoption the 100$ barrier is kind of a big deal.

Sure, in a fantasy world they wouldn't cost anymore than 2.5x the 1Gbps, but I also realize from the manufacturers perspective there are economic and efficiency reasons that may not be entirely feasible. I also tend to go out of my way and spend a little more on 1Gbps un-managed switches to get things like a metal frame, maybe some additional mounting options, and possibly a little more reliability in the hardware given the price. Before I heard you throw out your number, I was thinking around 4x what the cheap 1Gbps switches normally cost (with a little less margin for the type of switch I usually go for), which ended up being in the same ballpark as yours.

I'd by one today if I could get an 8 port for like $70, but I also have no 2.5gbe devices right now.

I got a new motherboard with 2.5 and now have the itch to use it. There are cable modems with 2.5g now and some consumer routers with 10G wan. Too bad my wish list is nearing 900 bucks which is hard to justify for my casual use and occasional home lab fun

I'm doing switch upgrades for our whole small office network this year. The killer product for me would be a 48-port layer-2 1u multigig switch with SFP+ (at least) uplinks and no PoE for about $1000. It somehow seems ridiculous to me that I'm pretty much stuck with 1g access ports in 2021, without spending at least $4k/switch, where I can get the equivalent 1g switch for about $500. And the office isn't quite small enough to run off just one 48-port model...

I think I'd not buy a 2.5G switch. Either I can use the speed, then I'd get a 10G / 25G / 100G switch or speed isn't critical and there I'll just stick to 1G which is still plenty for Internet connectivity or accessing local services on the network from a desktop. But maybe other people actually do have use-cases for it.

Sorry, at this price point, I prefer to go 10 GB and be done with it .

$10 USD per port is the maximum price for widespread adoption. It's just low enough to be rationalised by the average consumer. For enthusiasts on a budget, this is affordable and they'll not just buy it, they'll recommend it to all their friends. For enthusiasts with more money, 10GbE makes more sense.

I would think of that high cost as a so-called "early buyers tax", since I still find 2.5GbE a novelty. But they will definitely come down in price, just when it will would be a different and relatively unanswerable question at this point. Where it makes sense now is if you have a home network storage, where the higher network connectivity bandwidth means faster data transfers. But once the Internet side of things transition to 2.5GbE like modems, optical network terminals and routers, the prices might go down further as manufacturers push out more products and more consumers gain access to higher speeds.

Maybe for 802.3bz 5 gig ports, but really the standard for Home /SMB should be ten gig to really justify the expense of upgrading the capacity of an entire network. Right now I use 1 Gig due to price and the fact that my home network uses L3 switches as I run IS-IS routing protocol and dual stack IPV4/IPV6 for all my network devices. I seriously doubt I am a typical use case though.

My price is $100 for an 8 port 2.5G switch. I have one backbone going from the basement to the study that is slightly bottlenecked at times with in-home network traffic that would benefit. But I'm cheap I'll wait on the prices to come down.

About $8 to $10 per port for 2.5 sounds good. Personally, I'm waiting for 10Gb switches to come down a little.

@servethehome - the QNAP QSW-1105-5T was selling for $100 a few months ago.

Are they different chips that can be used in unmanaged switches the way there are for wifi modules like for eg. Intel vs Realtek chips? And if there are, what's the performance and reliability differences between the different chips available, if any?

You can't assume the market's wrong here. I think the reason there aren't more cheap 2.5g switches available, is that nobody wants to go from 1 to 2.5 - it's not a big enough upgrade, even a partial upgrade. You're never gonna get mass adoption until the price of 10g hardware drops (even more).

can you please review the Zyxel Multi-Gig 12-Port? $150 for 2xsfp+ 10gb, 2x 2.5gbe , and 8x 1gbe. It seems like a great jack of all trades for the price, if using 2 of them as a backbone for a home network with nas in its own room, while most devices still have gigabit.

Even though it's unmanaged there are a lot of unmanaged switches that supports vlan. Would be good to know if by any chance, it supports for VLANs.

These prices are reasonable imo, but I cant justify yet conidering my firewall is my only 2.5Gbit device, when I have at least two devices at this speed i might start looking at one

Some review about how hot they get under full load would be interesting. Some buyers report heat problems.

Is LACP port bonding possible?

One of the major differences between the low end and the high end in terms of pricing structure is that with the high end, fiber infrastructure is abundant. Scaling vertically is as "easy" as swapping out your networking hardware. Your fiber is most likely already capable of handling the higher speeds. Additionally, at the high end we've always had more reasonable upgrade paths. You could go from 10G to 40G, and then eventually to 100G and 400G (25G/50G/200G were/are also options but they came a bit later). With the low end, it's basically a captured market. You want something better than 1GbE? Well, you're gonna need to upgrade your wiring (Cat6 has been around a long time now, but Cat5e is still ubiquitous). In most cases that's far more difficult than replacing fiber in a datacenter, and certainly adds a lot of cost to any potential 10G upgrade. Now that NBASE-T is coming to market we're no longer forced to upgrade wiring. But that doesn't change the fact that NBASE-T isn't really competing with gigabit. In fact, it's competing with 10GbE. The cost divide between gigabit and 10G is so wide, that there's plenty of room for margin in NBASE-T products. And that's reflected directly in the pricing (although low volume on new tech is surely a good portion of that pricing as well).