Nonetheless, these were very fast Wi-Fi speeds, among the fastest on the market. However, when I increased the distance to 100 feet, this order was reversed, with the AirPort Extreme scoring 204Mbps, significantly slower than the Time Capsule's 219Mbps. When used with 802.11ac clients, the Extreme scored 287Mbps for short range, significantly faster than the 254Mbps of the Time Capsule. (Longer bars indicate better performance) While seemingly the same as the Time Capsule, the new AirPort Extreme didn't offer identical performance.ĬNET Labs 802.11ac performance score (in Mbps) There's not much love for Windows users here. This worked well in my trial but is only available to Macs. Both the print-serving and file-sharing features can be accessed remotely via the Internet, using Back to My Mac. Since there's only one USB port, you can use either a printer or an external hard drive but not both simultaneously. This works very well as long as the printer is supported ( most new printers are). Other than an external drive, you can plug a printer into the USB port to enable wireless printing. This also means the new router has nothing new in terms of features over the previous generation. This support of "dumb" storage space and lack of customization really hinder the potential of the AirPort Extreme and can cause frustration for those switching to it from a non-Apple router for the first time. In addition, you can't use the AirPort Extreme as a server for FTP or Web functions. Almost all existing routers with USB storage offer media streaming. This means if you put music, photos, or videos on the connected USB external drive, they won't be available to network media streamers, such as a Roku, a WD TV, or even an Apple TV. You can't back up a connected Mac to a USB external drive using Time Machine, nor can you stream digital content stored on the drive to other devices in the network. Nonetheless, support for higher tiers always means faster speeds. In real-world use, actual sustained Wi-Fi speeds fluctuate a great deal and are generally much lower than the cap speeds. Note that these are the ceiling speeds of the respective standards. Wireless-N clients can be connected at 450Mbps on either band. When used with a 802.11ac-enabled client, such as the new MacBook Air, it can accommodate up to 1.3Gbps data speed. The router supports the current top tier (three-stream) of both the new 802.11ac and 802.11n (Wireless-N) standards. This means it supports all existing Wi-Fi clients, regardless of their Wi-Fi standard, with the top possible speed. The new AirPort Extreme is a true dual-band router, offering Wi-Fi coverage on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands at the same time. That said, the new AirPort Extreme has no more features than its predecessor, and just a handful of them.Ī powerful Wi-Fi router that's weak on customization and storage support On the downside, AirPort Utility doesn't offer the same depth of customization and features.
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