Reviews for AirPort Extreme Base Station

TLDR; works like a champ, you just can't get it to do what you want it to do.

The 5th generation of the Airport Extreme is probably one of the best if not the best wireless access points I've ever used on a semi-regular basis. Wireless clients negotiate connection establishment very quickly and maintain that connection despite long distances or interference between the access point and the client. The wireless connection outperforms any other router I've used at my home or work, it doesn't matter if you're going through walls or having to compete with a microwave; this thing blows anything Linksys has ever offered to the public as a consumer or prosumer product. Wired gigabit works as expected.

Then why the one star you ask? Well, because you simply cannot mange this piece of hardware like any decent nerd expects to manage their primary router or even just a wireless access point. The new airport utility only operates on a MAC(so yes you must have a MAC device of some kind to manage this thing) and the utility gets dumber with every generation. There are hacks to get the previous generation of the utility running on OSX 10.8 but the idea that Apple does really care about end users being able to manage the primary network safety device for most home networks irks me. Do they expect us to have a Cisco PIX or ASA between the wireless access point and our WAN connection? Was there an outcrying from an unbelievably large mass of Apple users that previous iterations of the utility were too confusing to use? And what happened to Windows support?

12 of 20 people found this useful

This is the best router in every way.
But after doing the newest firmware update my device is no longer functional. People are ranting about this on Apple forums. Apple will not fix it or acknowledge the problem. If your device is it off
warranty, you're on your own.
A lot of people are doing downgrade hack jobs taking it back to 6.1. The problem with that is after the downgrade you can never upgrade your device. Not too mention you can only do it from an iPad. Not interested in spending money on a device I'm not interested in in order too fix Apple's poor firmware update and poor customer support.

26 of 32 people found this useful

Over-priced paper weight of a router. Wanted to like it but it's slower than a no-name router I used to have that was 1/4 the price of this. On the rare occasion when it does work, it's either so slow you can't use it or it will soon drop out completely. I bought this out of misplaced faith in Apple products but I will never buy another one based on my experience with this one.

38 of 99 people found this useful

I've had my Apple Airport Extreme for over 2 1/2 years now and I have not experienced 1 dropped signal. My internet speeds are 57 mbps download and 8 mbps upload, and it never compromises my speed at any time of the day. In addition, the signal strength is crazy good. I would highly suggest this router for everyone PC or MAC user. Ignore the price and just get it, trust me it's worth every penny.

36 of 44 people found this useful

It's a decent unit, I am extremely disappointed in the range of it. My home isn't even that big and my desktop along with my modem are at one end of the house and my apple tv, iphones and laptop struggle to get a signal at the other end of the house. What's funny is that I can pick up my neighbor's antique 2Wire router FROM ACROSS THE STREET!! Yet I can't pick up a signal from my own router, with an open hallway from one end of the house to the other in a 1,500 sq ft home?!?! It's just not worth it. I feel I could have gotten one for less that $100 that would be better. Oh, and our iPhone 5's are no where near as reliable as our 4's and 4S's were. I guess the "edge" that helped Apple stand apart, died with Steve Jobs.

42 of 67 people found this useful

I chose Aiport Extreme Base stations when looking to save money and bypass a $7000 WiFi installment quote. Originally was going to have 7 access points professionally installed. I chose 3 Airport Extremes after a push from a friend. I am using them in two 10,000 square foot restored hosiery mill buildings. They work wonders!! I can get away with 2 Airport Extremes but chose the 3rd in order to maintain speed and connectivity in my office space. A great money saving solution for me. They were a breeze to set up with my MacBook Pro and all of my PC co-workers seem to have no issues either.

Do keep in mind when trying to create the same network across multiple airports, you need to name them all the same.

31 of 43 people found this useful

I originally bought a Linksys N900 for my home wifi needs. That was a total disaster. So I returned the unit and picked up the Airport Extreme from Best Buy. Set up was very easy and only took about 5 min to do. It was so easy thanks to Apple taking all of the thinking out of it. I connected a USB external hard drive to it and I am able to access the drive from both PC and Mac computers. Such a great experience, I will never buy anything that doesn't come from Apple again. Great Product overall!

11 of 14 people found this useful

I purchased an airport express at my local apple store 4 weeks ago but it was not a good fit for me. Brought the express back to Apple and store rep took it back with no questions asked, so I upgraded to AirPort Extreme on the spot and I am very satisfied, the extreme performs better than I expected.

13 of 20 people found this useful

Highly recommend this product . Have used D-Link router that just recently died. It was a real hassle to set up when I first bought it.

Decided to get the Apple Extreme and it was worth every penny.

Setting it up was sooooo easy.

11 of 18 people found this useful

We have been having "issues" with our internet for months now. We thought maybe it was just poor service until we decided to update our router and came across the AirPort Extreme. We are a household with many devices that connect to the internet (laptop, iPads, iPhones, iPods, kindles, tv, playstation, etc etc) I only wish that we had found this a long time ago! It only took about 10 minutes to set it up and have the wi-fi working. I also really like the guest network that you can set up so now when my daughters have friends over we can connect them to the guest network. Since installing this we have not been disconnected once!!! It is truly an amazing product and I would highly recommend this to anyone.

22 of 32 people found this useful