“Although Wi-Fi routers are a lot friendlier to set up and maintain than they used to be, they can still be intimidating to the technologically challenged. If you fall into this category, but still want a super-fast wireless connection for video streaming, you’ll want to consider Apple’s latest AirPort Extreme router,” Dwight Silverman writes for The Houston Chronicle.
“The AirPort Extreme has a striking design. It’s a small, white, square tower with softly curved corners, standing 6.6 inches tall. There’s about a quarter-inch of space at the bottom, allowing for a fan that runs silently. The tower shape also allows for more antennas, and a better configuration of them for beam-forming, one of the benefits of 802.11ac. It’s a gorgeous look, but its shape means it’s not easy to hide away,” Silverman writes. “Setup is a snap. On a Mac or an iOS device, you’ll use Apple’s AirPort Utility software to talk through the process, setting up a network name and a password. The same network name applies to both unless you manually change one of them.”
“It’s also astonishingly easy to upgrade the firmware on the device. If new firmware is available, you’ll see a red-and-white notification badge, similar to that found on Macs or iOS devices. Click it to start the process of downloading the latest update and installing it. It takes less time to do this than on any other router I’ve tried,” Silverman writes. “This 802.11ac router is impressively fast. It moved a 221-megabyte video file from my iMac – connected to the router via Gigabit Ethernet – to an 802.11ac-enabled MacBook Air in 4.75 seconds, slightly faster than on the Linksys EA6500 router I recently reviewed. On my older, 802.11n-equipped MacBook Pro, I copied the file in 14.55 seconds – again, a smidge faster than on the Linksys router.”
Read more in the full review here.