Airport Extreme (5th Gen) and Time Capsule (4th Gen) Review - Faster WiFi
by Brian Klug on August 5, 2011 10:22 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Airport Extreme
- Time Capsule
- WiFi
Apple sent us both a Time Capsule and Airport Extreme which I used for testing, but I also purchased a copy of each to tear down and get to the bottom of the changes internally. Before doing that, however, I hit up the FCC to see what I could glean from comparing the test reports between generations. Apparently I wasn’t alone in doing so, as other people likewise picked up on this avenue for finding out what’s different.
Inside the test reports for both are some nice tables that outline maximum output power for the wireless stack inside the devices. I’ve copied and formatted the data for both the Time Capsule and Airport Extreme.
| Airport Extreme—Power Output Comparison | |||||||
| WLAN Mode | Gen.4 (BCGA1354) | Gen.5 (BCGA1408) | |||||
| 2.4GHz—802.11b | 286.42 mW | 257.04 mW | |||||
| 2.4GHz—802.11g | 143.22 mW | 307.61 mW | |||||
| 2.4GHz—802.11n (20 MHz) | 130.92 mW | 257.63 mW | |||||
| 5GHz—802.11a | 202.77 mW | 326.59 mW | |||||
| 5GHz—802.11n (20 MHz) | 164.82 mW | 337.29 mW | |||||
| 5GHz—802.11n (40 MHz) | 139.32 mW | 392.64 mW | |||||
| Time Capsule—Power Output Comparison | |||||||
| WLAN Mode | Gen.3 (BCGA1355) | Gen.4 (BCGA1409) | |||||
| 2.4GHz—802.11b | 237.14 mW | 257.04 mW | |||||
| 2.4GHz—802.11g | 143.22 mW | 307.61 mW | |||||
| 2.4GHz—802.11n (20 MHz) | 130.92 mW | 257.63 mW | |||||
| 5GHz—802.11a | 202.77 mW | 326.59 mW | |||||
| 5GHz—802.11n (20 MHz) | 164.82 mW | 337.29 mW | |||||
| 5GHz—802.11n (40 MHz) | 139.32 mW | 392.64 mW | |||||
It’s curious that for the 802.11b category power actually went down on the Airport Extreme, but hopefully nobody will find themselves using 802.11b in the first place. Interestingly enough, the results are almost the same on the Time Capsule, except 802.11b power has gone up accordingly. There are different output powers for each wireless mode, including 20 MHz and 40 MHz channels, but on average power between Airport Extreme generations has increased 135 mW, and 143 mW between Time Capsule generations.
Of course the next logical question is whether antenna gain has changed between the two—after all, having a more powerful output power only goes so far. It turns out that both Airport Extreme generations share the exact same antenna configuration and gain, and likewise with the Time Capsule. Note that two antennas are actually shared among the 2.4GHz and 5GHz RF chains—AP2 and AP3 to be exact.
| Airport Extreme—Antenna Gain | |||||||||
| Antenna | Gen.4 (BCGA1354) | Gen.5 (BCGA1408) | |||||||
| 2.4GHz (dBi) | 5GHz (dBi) | 2.4GHz (dBi) | 5GHz (dBi) | ||||||
| AP1 | - | 1.74 | - | 1.74 | |||||
| AP2 | 1.41 | 2.97 | 1.41 | 2.97 | |||||
| AP3 | 2.33 | 2.67 | 2.33 | 2.67 | |||||
| AP4 | 1.83 | - | 1.83 | - | |||||
| Time Capsule—Antenna Gain | |||||||||
| Antenna | Gen.3 (BCGA1355) | Gen.4 (BCGA1409) | |||||||
| 2.4GHz (dBi) | 5GHz (dBi) | 2.4GHz (dBi) | 5GHz (dBi) | ||||||
| AP1 | - | 4.38 | - | 4.38 | |||||
| AP2 | 0.1 | 0.81 | 0.1 | 0.81 | |||||
| AP3 | 0.27 | 3.09 | 0.27 | 3.09 | |||||
| AP4 | 4.32 | - | 4.32 | - | |||||
I hadn’t looked up the Time Capsule antenna gains until now (having not owned one) but it’s surprising how little gain there is on 2.4GHz with antenna 2. I’m a bit surprised that Apple hasn’t moved over to using the antennas from the Airport Extreme in the Time Capsule. The Airport Extreme has a much more even gain configuration between the three antennas, however as we’ll show later performance is relatively comparable between the two products.
Without even breaking the devices open, we now know that the Airport Extreme and Time Capsule both have substantially increased transmit power, and likely share the same radio given the identical transmit power characteristics.
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bigrobsf - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
Minor typo in AFS discussion paragraph in the "WiFi Throughput and Range - Improved page:"Airport Extreme makes a hue difference"
I'm guessing you wanted to write "huge" :-)
Brian Klug - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
Good catch, thanks, should be fixed!-Brian
iwod - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
I just wish they put out a Raid 1 2.5" HDD Time Capsule so i know my data is going to fairly safe. HDD failure are happening more often these days and with their huge capacity i just cant afford to lose some of my content.repoman27 - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
Just use one of these: http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=121Combine with a brace of Western Digital WD10JPVT or Samsung Spinpoint M8 HN-M101MBB and you'll have 1 TB of RAID 1 goodness.
Penti - Sunday, August 7, 2011 - link
Raid 1 doesn't really protect from bit rot, just pure 1 drive failure. However they should take reliability and data corruption seriously, but it's not enterprise hardware so you can't really expect it.jackwong - Sunday, August 14, 2011 - link
I will never go with TC unless they have a better backup solution of the TC itself.I have a Synology 1 bay NAS with a external USB to backup all the contents on it.
cheinonen - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
Though I imagine most people won't be confused, labeling it as "Smaller values are better" when all the values are negative could cause people to read the data incorrectly. Perhaps "Closer to 0 is better" or something else?Brian Klug - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
Totally agreed, edited those tables to make it more easy to follow.-Brian
jigglywiggly - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
time capsule wins an award for stealing your money.500$ for a wireless 3tb hd? Don't be sodding st00pid.
repoman27 - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
$300 for a $150 simultaneous dual-band, three-stream router with gigabit switch, on board SATA controller and an $80 HD, all in one compact little unit along with the PSU? Not a bad deal, really.Paying $200 (2/3) more for a $70 HD upgrade that only provides 50% more storage space? Questionable, but Apple knows that most people won't bother to upgrade themselves because they'd be out of pocket an additional $150 for the drive and then have to open a brand new device to make the swap.