Reviews for Time Capsule - 3TB

I've owned a 500MB Time Capsule for a few years and it has performed very well. There was an early problem with the power supply but Apple replaced Time Capsule free of charge. I was not on Apple Care with it at the time, btw.

I imported a bunch of family videos and bought iTunes TV shows and realized it was time for an upgrade. I bought the 3TB Time Capsule this weekend. Setup was very familiar and easy for me. Running the first backup of 480GBs took about 6 hours over gigabit ethernet. I don't notice any excessive heat. I am also very impressed with wifi performance.

I just got this yesterday. I downloaded the latest update for the unit and i have connected it to a 4G LTE Router. Works great both on my iPad, AppleTV, iPhone and MacBook. Average speed on my WiFi-connection is 25-30 mb/s, which is the same as if i connect to the 4G-routers own WiFi. I have also connected an AirPort Express that i already had to extend the network. Only trouble i first experienced was that my MacBook jumped back on my 3G-router (MiFi) which interrupted the backup process.

Time capsule is something that I really was excited to get. I like the unit, but it is NOT without it's quirks.

#1 Placement. The unit runs very hot, since this has a card drive and router within the case the worst thing you can do for it is place it on a bookshelf with books on either side thereby restricting airflow or on the floor where all kinds of dust & dirt will get into the device. It needs to be in an open area and away from any large electrical or magnetic interference (think microwave, fan motors, older HDTV).

#2 Electrical. It's a hard drive, if you don't have it plugged into a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) you are asking for trouble with the first thunder storm where the power flashes or if your in an area where you get brown outs or spikes. My neighbor couldn't understand why his external HDD's kept failing. I walked in and asked where his UPS was... He said... UPS? He got one and hasn't mentioned any problem since. Some wireless (non mobile phone) handsets also cause interference.

#3 Other hardware communicating with it. Think of the time capsule as a wireless freeway, but if you have any slow devices (wireless b or g) they will slow everything else down with it.

4) It only has 3 Gigabit ports. True, but a gigabit switch is relatively inexpensive and easily increases the number of gigabit ports with no configuration needed. (I have a DLink 8 port switch connected to my setup)

If you have taken these quirks into consideration when setting up the unit you will get excellent results. I get 14 to 20 MBPS down and 11 to 15 up.

Working with other devices:

Setting up a printer was practically mindless with my iMac. I plugged in my HP 2200 USB printer and powered it on. Went to my iMac and went to add a printer and it found it immediately and applied the drivers.

Apple TV and my iMac. Apple TV immediately saw my iMac iTunes library so I could start watching my movies on my HDTV.

Time Machine. Works quite well on my TC, the one challenge is if the backup gets interrupted for any reason you may need to reboot the TC to get the files to allow access again.

iPhone is able to see my iTunes library and sync's automatically to my iMac through the TC.

Back to my mac. Remote access works seamlessly through the TC so I can access my files on my iMac via my Macbook.

Around mid January, I did have some issues with TC, but it was because my ISP was changing over to IPV6 and didn't communicate the changes (they assumed everyone would use their poor excuse for a router) so after about :30 with their tech support they told me what the change was and I adjusted accordingly.

Overall I have been quite happy...