apple airport express vs airport extreme

Apple airport express vs airport extreme pro#

downloading updates to vehicle in front driveway, listening to music in back yard). While indoor coverage seems sufficient, I am experiencing weak signals and dropouts in outdoor areas that previously had coverage (e.g. Wireless Coverage – Google Wifi wireless signal is weaker than my existing Airport Extreme and Airport Express. Some of our devices are actually seeing better wireless speeds on Google Wifi because of this issue. When extending our wireless network with Airport Express devices, wireless clients on the Express access points were limited to the 100mbps speed of the connection back to the Airport Extreme. Also note that Google Wifi has gigabit ports, while Airport Express only has a 10/100 ethernet port. Not an issue for our day to day use since devices still have plenty of bandwidth for streaming 4K and occasionally transferring large updates/games/media, but something to be aware of if you frequently copy large files or media wirelessly to a local network server. Wireless Speeds – Google Wifi (N300/AC1200) wireless speeds are slower than Airport Extreme (N450/AC1300) but same/better than Airport Express (N300 only). TVs, game consoles, phones, tablets, computers, sensors, etc). No issues connecting a WIDE variety of devices to the wired or wireless network (e.g. I was concerned that the satellite APs would not take advantage of existing network wiring, but the app visually confirmed satellite nodes were using wired connection to network after I plugged them into my existing wiring. Configure the satellites as wireless mesh nodes, even if you intend to hardwire them to your network! The most time consuming part was a typical sys-admin dilemma– contemplating new network names and passwords, although I could have easily used the existing network names/passwords. Initial Setup – Configuration of the primary AP and two satellite APs through the Google Wifi mobile app was extremely fast and simple. I also expect Google would be more likely to innovate/upgrade the existing product. If my primary Google Wifi device fails, I can use one of my other mesh devices as the primary device.

I preferred the Google Wifi devices because they are all identical and interchangeable and are managed from anywhere, whereas the Netgear Orbi system uses separate primary and satellite devices and can only be managed when you are at home. In the end, I was comparing the Google Wifi mesh devices and the Netgear Orbi mesh wireless system.

Apple airport express vs airport extreme pro#

The Ubiquity UniFi Pro HD devices also look fantastic from a sys-admin perspective, but seem unnecessarily complex for my basic home needs. I began looking into other wireless options when Apple officially discontinued their Airport Extreme/Express products in 04/2018.Ĭompetition – I previously considered the Meraki cloud-managed wireless devices, but decided against their annual per-device subscription costs for my home installation. device bandwidth usage) and configuration options (e.g. While I have been extremely pleased with the performance and reliability of the Apple wireless devices, I desired more monitoring (e.g. I recently upgraded my home wireless network to Google Wifi wireless mesh devices ( Amazon $259) from our aging Apple Airport Extreme router and collection of Apple Airport Express wireless extenders to support about 40 devices sharing a 200/20 mbps internet connection.