Reviews for AirPort Extreme Base Station

Just upgraded from the first generation of this model design. Love the Dual-Band radios. It is a marked improvement over the older router. Everything connected to this Airport is faster while on the internet, iPad, iPhone, MacBook Pro...even gaming systems stream content faster while connected, NetFlix, YouTube, etc. Great product.

I have had my Airport Extreme for over 3 years, and it is still the most powerful router I've ever had. I have had about 5 different routers in the past 2 years, and they all broke after a few months. This one still powers about 8 devices beautifully. It is a GREAT investment! Glad i bought it!

I recently upgraded from a gen 4 to a gen 5. I've had it for about eight weeks. I made the decision to upgrade solely based on the positive reviews found here. Several claimed that their range and strength doubled. Sadly, that was not my experience. I would say it is 10% better at best and I have to reboot it periodically to keep range & signal at the optimum level. My service is through AT&T U-verse. I'm using the 2Wire router to feed my Airport Extreme. It is in the basement office. My main disappointment is when I use the WiFi to stream music via Air Play throughout the house. The music will drop out intermittently when I'm in the kitchen. This is where the main stereo is. It has a Airport Express connected to it. I've attempted to convert the Express to an extender, but it didn't work. My advice is to save your $180 and wait until a later generation really improves the signal & range.

I purchased the Airport Extreme after experiencing poor wifi coverage and once a week resets. This new router is transferring data many times faster and I have full signal strength in the entire house now. Pages are loading instantly now. Couldn't be happier, worth the money.

My building has concrete floors and plaster walls, and 150 other apts with all their junk and interference, so my wifi was ALWAYS wonky. It drove me crazy and sent me on a buying and returning spree- expensive routers, cheap routers, signal boosters, signal repeaters, antennas, antennae, etc etc. Fianlly thought to try AirPort Extreme, et voila! I now have perfect reception everywhere. I have a million devices in my place- no joke: 3 iPhones, 2 iPads, 3 computers, an apple tv, airport express, blackberry tablet thing, etc (please don't rob me). The old routers kept throwing in the towel. Now we're googling everything we can imagine, and getting flawless airplay service. Don't let me downplay the HUGE importance of this small detail I just happened to slip in at the end- its unbelievablely good now, and I was ready to cut my losses and pronounce AirPlay as for the proverbial birds.

I think it's really stupid there is no stereo jack on the Airport Extreme. The Airport Express has been able to wirelessly play music via AirTunes from the beginning, but somehow the bigger and better Extreme loses this seemingly simple (and very much appreciated!) feature.

Disappointed and feel like I could've skipped this purchase and stuck with a couple Expresses.

For the price, I expected longevity. Not so with this product. After 1.5 years (not long for an Apple product), the product simply shut down and stopped working. When taken to Genius bar, the genius simply offered to sell me a new one. High price + lack of longevity = an insulting combination. I replaced it with a Belkin that does the same thing for a fraction of the price.

After six full years of 24/7/365 service, my original Extreme gave in to its age and use. Another Extreme was a no-brainer and this one is worlds better with the 5gHz channel, a guest channel and it's about 18% faster on the same network. I have a 64GB thumb drive plugged into my Extreme which gives me personal cloud storage from anywhere. These things just work and they work well.

Best part was I had backed up my config from the previous Extreme and I just uploaded it to this one. Nothing on my network even noticed the change. Every device just connected flawlessly. No changes were needed; not even from my Express which "extends" my network. Simply amazing.

When other manufacturers are diving for the bottom with $20 garbage routers that are slow, don't work at all or just die a week out of box, the Extreme is well worth the real money these cost. It's secure, easy to configure and really fast.

Initially I was impressed with this router, easy setup compared to the Motorola and Netgear wireless routers I used in the past when I was running PC. Yesterday AM it just died, tried letting it cool down because it was a little warm, and plugged into the wall outlet rather than the power strip but it was just DEAD! Of course I didn't get the extended warranty so for $180 it was a $10/month rental, thx Apple I thought you didn't make junk?! Just bought a new Cisco Linksys EA4500 and all the way across the house I get 24Mbps download, unfortunately I never tested the AE before it DIED!

It's a wireless router, what can you say? If it works, and it's seemless giving you no problems, then to me that's 5 stars. Here's why I give it 4 stars: No Web Interface. After working for years with other brand routers, I was shocked this had no interface. Lucky I actually have a Mac with the configuration utility installed, and the helpful rep at the Apple store pointed it out to me before I left the store. Why is that a big deal? I have a mixed environment, mostly Virtual Windows PCs or Virual Linux that I tunnel in and access remotely. My Mac is just the iTunes / iPhone / iPad environment, and isn't up all the time. : No QoS? No sure, maybe this product has an internal network shaping priority packets assigner, but it's not obvious, it looks like all the traffic has the same priority. Fortunately for me, my VoIP is directly on the Cablemodem, so I can't even say if a lack of QoS has an effect. : Expensive, at $179.99, the price is about $80 more than I would expect. But for that money has a really cool feature - I have a large house, and I'm able to configure a second base station to seemlessly provide more coverage. Throughput is great since I have them connected to eachother with Gigabit cables. The "old cheap way" was to use two separate wireless SSIDs, now with this Apple Extreme, the second unit seemlessly extends coverage without looking like you have two networks. : I wish the status was a little more helpful, but then again one glowing green light or blinking amber is a lot better than an array of flashing LEDs 24/7. : Reserving IP Addresses - here's where Apple's simplicity doesn't work. I had to actually use pen & paper to write down the Mac addresses before re-typing them in to reserve. Hello, the Airport, it's 2012. D-Link allows you already know the mac addresses of devices connected to it, the interface ought to have a right click, reserve it's IP, boom it's done, but know, I had to write down the hex addresses to re-type them in.