Apple Airport Express MB321LL/A [NEWEST VERSION]
by Apple Computer
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List Price: Our Price: $75.00 You Save: $24.99 (25%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Apple Airport Express MB321LL/A [NEWEST VERSION]
Customer Review: Stream your music with Airtunes!
Summary: 4 Stars
I have a Apple Time Capsule as my main wireless access point. It has a lot of features and also serves as a backup drive for my household. The feature that really convinced me to also purchase this product was being able to stream music from iTunes on my computer through my entertainment system via Airtunes. I purchased a Toslink-to-Optical Cable to hook up the airport express to my receiver.
After that, setup was a breeze. I plugged it in, launched the AirPort Utility and set the Airport Express to connect to my current wireless network. I entered in my WPA password and everything worked as expected. The next time I launched iTunes, the airport express showed up as a speaker output.
As for the quality of this device- it's an Apple product, so you know it's very well designed. The unit is very small and fits nicely in a wall plug with another cord plugged above or below it. It'd be perfect to use while traveling to set up a wireless access point in a flash. It also has a USB port to allow for printer sharing, but I already have a wireless printer so I haven't had a reason to try it.
Pros:
+ Small
+ Excellent Quality
+ Easy to set up
+ iTunes audio output
+ USB printer sharing
+ 802.11n
Cons:
- Slightly more expensive than similar wireless access points
Bottom Line: For me, it was worth paying the extra money to get integration with iTunes. It's quick and transparent and I don't have to worry about it. It just works.
Customer Review: Fantastic except for dropouts
Summary: 4 Stars
This device is fantastic for listening to digital music in a different room than my computer. The only problem is periodic dropouts. Music can cut out either because of a lost Wi-Fi connection or because of a lost Airplay (a.k.a. AirTunes) connection. It seems that Airplay is the less stable of the two. Internet radio can also cut out because of lost connections that have nothing to do with this device.
When losing a Wi-Fi or Airplay connection, it is impossible to know which end of the connection is responsible. When listening to music for several hours per day, I'd say I get roughly one dropped connection per day which is quickly corrected.
If you don't need a new router or an analog connection to your receiver, you can also consider buying the new Apple TV to do the same job of streaming music from your computer to another room.
Dropouts aside, I am far happier having this device than not having it. I listen to music much more now than before I bought it.
My home setup is:
Windoze PC with iTunes -> Ethernet -> Linksys Router -> Wi-Fi -> Airport Express -> S/PDIF -> Receiver
Most people will have this simpler setup instead:
Computer with Wi-Fi adapter -> Wi-Fi -> Airport Express -> S/PDIF or analog audio cable -> Receiver
The manual did not say how to set up the Airport Express they way I needed, so I had to do a Google search.
Customer Review: Nifty Gadgets, but a few tips are helpful...
Summary: 4 Stars
I have two of these that I use for distributing ITunes music through my condo via Airtunes. They generally perform well, though the unit inside of a bathroom cabinet and 50' (plus downstairs and several walls) away from the router seems to drop its signal relatively often when streaming internet radio. The upstairs unit works well, and the sound (which I have outputted to my home stereo & theater), while not of CD quality, is very good.
Apple's newer firmware and installation / utility software (my last unit was bought in 9/08) is signifcantly smarter / easier to use than earlier versions, and was backwards compatible with my older unit (3+ yrs old).
That being said, I'm not sure I've ever been able to configure either of these Airport Express units without initially connecting it directly to the router with an ethernet cable and then following the insructions vs. trying to locate it wirelessly (the endless blinking yellow light...). Once it's configured and recognized by the network (woo hoo! green light!), it can be disconnected from the router and placed where you want. Mine have always been "seen" after being installed that way.
Apple Customer Service has generally been very helpful, though my experience with home wireless networking in general is that it's more complicated than the manufacturers typically indicate, and if we knew enough to understand a technical article (sometimes they refer you to one...), we might not have the question to begin with.
Overall, despite the weaknesses, I've found these to be clever and effective devices, and (especially now that I've done it a few tims) I'd consider adding more of them to connect printers, etc.
Customer Review: Surprisingly Excellent
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this from Best Buy (I had a gift card to use) about a month and a half ago. I was set on getting the full Airport since I have a long narrow condo and I wanted to be able to have a strong connection everywhere. Best Buy was out of the Airport, however, so I decided to give the express a try and exchange it later if I wanted to.
It took me 15 minutes to setup (I have a mac) and I can't remember having a dropped connection once. I also have a Dell PC that I use for extended periods of time for work (I work from home 2 days a week) and it also interfaces with the router flawlessly. It's been 100% reliable which is such a luxury to me as my old netgear router disconnected all the time.
Now one thing to keep in mind is in my current home there is not an overpopulation of wireless networks -- unlike at the apartment I had the netgear where there were way too many networks and the 2.4ghz frequency was probably crowded.
I notice that most of the negative reviews are when trying to use this to extend a network. I can't speak to this, but for the average user who is looking primarily for a reliable network (and the bonus streaming music feature) this router should do the trick. Like any router, I would definitely recommend purchasing it with at least a 30 day period to return as every situation is different with wireless networking and there's no getting around needing to just try some out.
My only negative comment is that I just found out it only supports 10 users at a time -- much lower than a lot of routers. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but I was intending to host a live fantasy sports draft in september with 16 friends. Hmm...
Customer Review: Extremely Difficult To Set Up for Networking with Mac and PC
Summary: 3 Stars
Let me start off by saying, that once we got all the bugs worked out, this is an awesome little piece of technology. But I must also say, that it took an entire week to get all the functions to work correctly between just two computers on our home network (my I-Mac and my wife's Vista based laptop). Apple claims this is a "plug and play" item like everything else they sell. And being a die-hard Mac supporter, I can say up to this point, that has always been true. Yet for those of us out there that are not familiar with setting up a Wi-Fi network, which Apple claims this product is for us, beware, you need to understand and know a lot about Wi-Fi, your cable internet (if that is what you have), and much more before you can get this thing to work. Even though most Mac's have the correct drivers (Airport Utility, etc.) already installed. Don't bother with them, install what comes on the disc supplied with your AE, this will save you about an hour of headaches. And for Vista users, don't bother with what is pre-installed or what is on the disc, download the latest version of Bonjour from the Apple website, this will save you days worth of troubleshooting on how to get the printer recognized by your PC. But, like I said, now that everything is running (haven't tried the Air Tunes because I don't care about that feature), it is like all Apple products, very, very, nice, compact, and smooth running. Apple needs to send out more detailed instructions with this product and provide better support, after all, we expect that type of service from them, not the "it doesn't work and takes forever to fix" type of service most of us have come to know and love from Microsoft.