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AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Poor sales advice

Written by RA from Stowmarket

31-Mar-2008

I bought this from the Regent Street store in London last week and will be returning it this week for a refund.

I explained in great detail to the salesman that I had an existing wireless LAN ( not Mac based) with 3 PC's connected upstairs in my house. My MacBook ( which is superb ) successfully connects except when I'm downstairs when its at the edge of my NetGear based wireless network.

I read up about the Airport Express 802.11n and thought that this might be a great solution for extending the range of my network, but had concerns about compatibility.

The salesman was 100% confident that the Airport Express would do exactly what I wanted.

2.5 hours of telephone time with Apple support later (much of it hanging on whilst the support people consulted colleagues) I was told that the NetGear router was not compatible as it didn't support WDS.

My rating is really aimed at the lack of careful advice, especially when I went armed with the precise details of my network and products used, and a layman's view that the Airport Express may not be compatible. To be told very quickly that it was, and without any doubt at all has left me questioning the quality of the advice on hand.

This is a shame as It looks like a great product for those with an apple-only wireless network setup.

34 of 42 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Very Poor

Written by JB from Alcester

04-Dec-2008

Have had three of these units now (original one and two replacements). All have failed after around 12 months of use. Have now given up with the product.

28 of 41 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Product failure

Written by DK from Bristol

22-Sep-2008

I was as pleased as can be with my Airport Express until it mysteriously failed 18 months after purchase (Just out of warranty). I couldn't find my proof of purchase as I had recently moved house. At the time I found whole websites full of folk who had experienced similar problems.

24 of 36 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Airport Express dead after less than 2 years

Written by DD from FARNHAM

19-Jul-2008

Been happy with this for almost 2 years but woke up this morning to find completely dead! Reading discussion boards seems others have had this problem. No doubt Apple will stick two fingers up as officially out of warranty based on others comments. Don't want to have to buy another as it will probably suffer the same fate. Others have commented how they even bought two at the same time which both failed within a month of each other. A batch fault or generally bad product, you decide. Best of luck!

27 of 42 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Rubbish

Written by SB from GLASGOW

02-Jul-2008

Don't waste your money on this if you already have a home network. It works great if you run it as a stand alone router but when you try to connect it to your exisitng secure (WEP) network it fails. The only way I could get it to work was to switch off my WEP encryption.

25 of 38 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Bad problems with airtunes

Written by JR from LANCASTER

30-Aug-2009

The things this little box does well, it does fine. But sadly it has a real problem with airtunes, dropping out chunks of sound to make it awful and unlistenable. Apple must address this problem soon, but until they do, this is definately NOT doing what it says on the box. Check out discussions to find out if and when it gets fixed, or forget about using it for music.

17 of 23 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Good idea that just does not want to work.

Written by DM from Worcester

19-Apr-2009

I got this so I could stream music to some speakers in my flat. I have a unibody MBP and a 3rd party router.

I ran through the setup and it all seemed to be ok, but iTunes keeps giving me an "unknown error (-15000)" with no hint as to what the problem might be.

I have managed to get it to work with iTunes and then it will just stop and give me the error again. I get better uptime by using Airfoil by Rouge Ameba which indicates that it is configured correctly and does work, otherwise it would be going back to the shop.

Looking online it seems that it works great for some people and not for others. Sadly I am the latter.

18 of 25 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Most unreliable product I've owned

Written by NO from Manchester

10-Nov-2009

As others have pointed out, when it works it's a dream; especially when used with Apple Remote. The problem is that ever since I've owned it, it doesn't work properly several times a week and now is not working at all, as many others have experienced after owning it for a year or so. Either my MBP will not recognise it in a scan (despite the base station being feet away with a green light) or when Itunes does recognise it it won't play and I get that error 15006 message.

I think it's an indictment that so many of the reviews point to the same problem yet what looks like a newer version has come out and still people are reporting similar problems. A blot on an otherwise blissful Apple experience for me, in general.

16 of 23 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Airport Express failure at 18 months

Written by DN from DONCASTER

27-Dec-2008

My APX (Airport Exoress) failed this morning and I have been researching the net to discover that '000's of these units have gone down at around 18 months old. (The age mine has reached).
My Apple store (Meadowhall) seem unaware of this problem. Why?
I HAVE BEEN APPLE'S BEST SALESMAN TO MY FRIENDS UNTIL NOW!
Apple should get a grip on this issue and freeissue new items to replace all those that have failed. Meanwhile what m I am supposed to do? Push more hard earned cash to Apple for a replacement?

11 of 13 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Be wary, serious AirTunes fault.

Written by BT from Plymouth

18-Nov-2009

I adore apple products because they're easy to set up and use. This device should be no different. I have two 'Airport Express Base Stations', one in my lounge connecting to my modem using the Ethernet port, the other is upstairs connecting a games console to the network allowing it to go online, again via Ethernet port. Furthermore, laptops (apple and windows-based) and a PC connect to this network wirelessly and both 'Base Stations' are also connected to hi-fi's in each room to take advantage of AirTunes.

Once set-up, i have had no issues with the wireless networking (main) aspect of the Apple Express. However, the AirTunes is completely unusable, songs regularly stutter or drop out for 20-30 seconds at a time, making it a complete waste of time.

If you need a reliable wireless network, get this. If you want to use the AirTunes feature now, or at any point in the future, forget about it.

14 of 20 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Cannot get it to work

Written by RM from SUTTON COLDFIELD

05-Apr-2008

Flashing amber light (indicates problem), sometime seen by Airport Utility, sometimes not (even when connected by ethernet cable). Tried the many fixes recommended including unplugging, resetting. Not obvious how it interacts with an Airport Extreme. Useless and very disappointing. It's going back!

12 of 16 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

product life very limited

Written by VB from Paris

17-Oct-2009

This product died after 1 year of use.

18 of 29 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Hopeless

Written by SA from Sunbury on Thames

26-Jun-2009

I had it for two weeks. I must have spent 10 hours trying to get it set up with my MacBook. The documentation is hopeless. I tried the reset three times, loaded the software twice, and the final outcome was that the mac kept saying it was unable to see any Apple devices at all. I took it back and got my money refunded. Interesting to note that others had similar experiences and I have to add this is completely contrary to all my previous experiences with Apple products. They need to sort it out and make it user friendly and do some thing with the documentation or on screen help.

11 of 16 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

2 out of 3 dont work

Written by DW from BRIDPORT

09-Apr-2008

Great idea, but ive had 3 and only one works.

I cant recommend a product that only works after trying 3 new units.

Also, the sound quality isnt very good - even using B&W speakers and Rotel amp - there is a background hiss.

Having to travel 40 minutes in each direction to get an exchange has only compounded my frustration.

20 of 34 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Disappointing

Written by RH from Longniddry

16-May-2009

It wasn't straightforward to set up the wizards use too much network terminology in places, but you can get up and running. I had some problems with security settings. Data transfer as also quite slow, even though my computer was less than 2m away from the base station. Main problem was that the unit failed just over a year after I purchased it (nice piece of engineered obsolescence?).So looks pretty, but hasn't lasted.

11 of 17 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Could not get this to work at all, despite being a networking expert.

Written by SH from Gibraltar

12-May-2008

The constant flashing amber light. It refused to connect any of my wireless base stations. I only wanted to use it to stream audio wirelessly. If this is your goal, please take my advice and look elsewhere.

The documentation, apple website, and the numerous support sites all have incorrect information.

This is what happens:
1) you unpack it
2) you install utility (why doesnt it have a web based one like every other product?)
3) You configure it to connect to your wireless network.
4) it resets.
5) It is now a brick. The utility cant see it. If you connect it via cable, there is no life.
6) You try the documented hard reset: holding down reset button for 10 seconds. Still broken
7) You try doing a factory reset (holding down reset while plugging in power). This does nothing. The apple documentation says the green light will flash 4 times, but I have never seen a green light. This function simply doesnt work.
8) You spend about 2 hours surfing the web, finding literally thousands of people with the same problem, but NO SOLUTION.
9) before throwing it into the bin, you try holding down the reset button for 2 minutes. This kind of works, it seems anything longer than 30 seconds does a factory reset.
10) Great you think - problem solved.
11) GoTo step 3), and repeat until death.

46 of 87 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

Very disappointing.

Written by AW from London

06-Sep-2009

Can't make this product work reliably for AirTunes with latest Apple MacBook Pro, latest Mac OS (10.6 or 10.5) and Netgear RangeMax wireless router (latest firmware). Works for a while, then goes through period of frequent drop outs = unusable. Fixes involve tracking down system errors like -15006 and hours on router support sites and forums - great fun. Had more problems with this Apple product than any other Apple product in 20+ years as a Mac user.

14 of 24 people found this useful

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes

What a waste of an afternoon…

Written by LK from Birmingham

20-Apr-2008

Full marks for package and product design (hence the 1 star), but let down by the simple fact that it’s a faulty product.

The ever-flashing amber light… was my entertainment for 2 hours. Started well with installing the software, the Mac found the new Airport instantly; setting it up was easy too, until the Airport was restarted to complete the process. The amber light just kept flashing, and Mac fails to find the Airport again! Process repeated many times with no luck. (the support from the booklet and online help was frankly useless) and I had to pay £65 for this?

Lucky I had a lovely girlfriend making me tea during this testing time.

Someone at the production line obviously can’t be bothered to test each of these Airports for faults or the engineer / programmer’s got better things to do then ironing out these (well known & common) problems, just look at other reviews.

Good luck if you still want one and be prepared to make a return trip to the apple store for another pot luck ‘working’ Airport.

27 of 50 people found this useful