AirPort Express Base Station

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What is the range the Express Base?

Live in 1,000 sq. ft. home ranch. Will this suffice or is the other Airport station recommended?

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    I just picked up a new Airport Express. I've been using it for the last few days as my only wireless router. My house is a 4 level backsplit about 1400 square ft.
    The express is in the basement with my cable modem. I've had no signal strength issues at all. It seems to be covering my entire house with no issues.
    I really love this thing. I've been streaming to my apple tv with no lags or glitches, and al of my other wireless devices are working perfectly. (xbox, wii, ipod, wireless printer, etc.) So far so good!!

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  • Possibly. It depends on what your home was constructed with, and how many walls it has to pass through. Wood studded walls and standard wood floors, it shouldn't have any problems. For homes that use more exotic construction, it depends how much the transmissions have to do through. Walls, or floors of concrete can attenuate (lessen) the signal. Especially walls with lots of re-bar or large power runs. Older lath and plaster walls can attenuate signal too. Fire code drywall as well.

    You need to try to install it in some cases and see what kind of signal you get. I've been surprised where wireless has worked, and perhaps more surprised where it hasn't...

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  • I wont (and can't possibly) give a specific unit of measure, but I can attest that it has nearly double the range of the previous generation. I use an Airport Extreme (5th Gen.) in my office and use this little guy in my garage to extend the 2.4ghz band. I get coverage all around my house now (including my basement and backyard). I am extremely satisfied with the new Express.

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  • A response for urban dwellers: Very much depends on the construction material of your home, as others have said, and how close (and strong) your neighbors' WiFi signals are in terms of interference. Probably not an issue for suburbanites with recent construction, but if you have interior masonry walls (brick or concrete), you may run into trouble.

    We live in a 2BR apt in an old Art Deco building in Manhattan with a mix of masonry and plaster/lathe walls. We have a Time Capsule/Airport Extreme in our 2nd BR/home office. When I'm sitting in the living room working on my macbook pro -- a distance of only 20 feet from the Time Capsule, but on the other side of a masonry wall -- signal strength is markedly lower, often dropping to 1 bar, sometimes dropping out completely. There are times when the only way I can get a consistent WiFi signal in the apartment is to sit at my desk right next to the Time Capsule.

    As you can imagine, we also have interference issues with so many WiFi networks in all the buildings around us. When I went to the Apple Store to ask for help, the Genius Bar guy downloaded iStumbler (a WiFi channel monitor) to my desktop so we can set our network to use one of the less-used channels. It has helped somewhat, but for an urban situation, it's not a perfect fix. What we really need is a network signal booster for our living room.

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