Today, we have a review of the Tenda TEM2010F. This is a 10-port 2.5GbE switch, that we purchased for our 2.5GbE switch round-up months ago, and we were so excited. We thought this was the MaxLinear MxL86282 for 8x 2.5GbE and 2x 10GbE switch that we had been waiting for. It turns out, that this was not and we ended up not getting it into our review. (Yes, we found a switch with that MaxLinear chip, but this is not it.) That said, it is time to give this Tenda its review on STH since it has more than a little “funk” to it.
If you just want a link to where to get the switch, you can find an Amazon affiliate link here. Pricing is wild on this one. We purchased it in April 2024 after there was a discount, dropping the price from $129 to $79. The current (as of writing this) list price in September 2024, when we checked, was $99 with a $30 standard discount and another $10 off promotion. It is currently $79 minus a $20 promotion. That brings the current price to $59. That is a drop of over 50% in less than five months, which brings it more in line with what we would expect for a switch in this class.
Given the price at the time, we did not include this in our testing 21 different 2.5GbE switches video earlier this year.
Instead, we focused on switches where the SFP cages were SFP+ for 10G networking.
Tenda TEM2010F Hardware Overview
The switch itself has eight 2.5GbE ports and two SFP ports that were the ones that faked us out. We have seen models like the Gigaplus GP-S25-0802 8-port 2.5GbE and 2-port 10G switch that have two SFP+ ports if you just need more 10GbE. This is not that. Instead ports 9 and 10 are 2.5G SFP ports.
You will notice the toggle switch on the front, we will get to that in a bit.
On the side, we get vents.
On the other side, we get a vent that looks like it is for a fan, but there is not a fan installed.
At this point, the specs are a bit hard to find on this one. Here is the box bottom that says this is a 50Gbps switching capacity switch with features like 6kW lightning protection. The best is that there is a diagram on the box that has a legend that shows Power and Data connections and shows that you put the power adapter into the switch, but then there are data connections to other devices, but only five devices. It feels like what happens if you need to fill up some box space and want to have a diagram.
On the bottom, we get mounting points for wall mounting. Instead of rubber feet, we get metal feet.
Opening the switch, we can see a giant heatsink.
We tried removing this heatsink, but it was not held on by screws or clips. Instead, it was soldered onto the switch PCB. Since we still needed to run this through its normal testing routine, it seemed like the wrong option to destroy this cooling solution which was a big bummer.
Next, let us get to management, performance, and power consumption.
2.5G SFP is very odd choice. Interestingly on their official website unmanaged switch page, the name is just “8-Port 2.5G Ethernet Switch”, without mentioning of the SFP ports until you open the product page. Meanwhile they do have TEM2010X which comes with two 10G SFP ports. The chassis is slightly different so it’s not like they are reusing the shell. I wonder if TEM2010F was just a failed design of TEM2010X and they are trying to recoup some loss.
I’ve been using 2 such switches for almost a year. SFP ports work poorly with 1G modules for 2 manufacturers. Either the connected device cannot be discovered, or it detects it, but it causes the switch to block. I was forced to use a 1G switch to use all my older 100m/1G devices.
2.5G ports work well. I have 7 devices on one, on the other 8. At a large temperature range of 5 ~ 40C. The cooling is good and does not heat up much at high temperatures.
Unlike other Chinese manufacturers, Tenda certifies its production for use in the EU. They have a “CE” marking and a decent pack with a short guide.
I have not used the advanced VLAN and static aggregation features.
The quality of production is high, I am pleased with these switches.