Anyone using the new Time Capsule router?

Invertigo

Invertigo

Invertigo

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Basically, the VM Superhub is utter balls, mot even managing to give full coverage in my house. Often times in my bedroom I lose wifi on my phone, and its basically never available in the kitchen.

So, I'm looking at the new 2tb Time Capsule. It gives me a 2tb NAS, which I have wanted to add for a while, alongside support for wireless backups, and of course its 802.11ac, so I should be able to get a better internet connection on my MacBook, as well as my phone and other devices around the house.

Anyone got any experience? The other option is something like the Asus RT56AC and an external drive, but space is very limited and an 'all in one' package would actually be very useful.
 
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I have one, rock solid wifi, much better than anything I have had previously and easy configuration via iOS or OSX. Cannot fault it.
 
supposed to have received poor reviews

for the price, I think something like the netgear nighthawk would blow it out the water, however you also need to include the external USB3 disk to make a fair comparison

In theory, as I am actually thinking about getting one, would my media player be able to access the HDD to stream media?
 
Is the poor Wi-Fi performance due to software issues (like it was for the MacBook Air) or is it just crap because it is? I haven't read any of the reviews so I can't claim to know.

If it is anything like previous AEBSs and TCs, performance will be decent but not the absolute best, features will be OK at best, but reliability and ease of use will be excellent. To be honest I'd probably recommend other, cheaper alternatives if available, provided they are as reliable.

glen8, unless the media player is able to access network drives, you'd need to run a media server. Some routers do provide this though they're not brilliant.
 
I've got an older TC downstairs and the new 208.11ac TC upstairs. WiFi performance seems to be more than acceptable and obviously everything was very easy to set up.

The only downside is that transfers to the TC's HDD aren't the fastest. If you want to use Time Machine, it's great. If you want to use it as a dedicated NAS then there's better (and more expensive!) options out there.
 
To be honest I want it for backups and for storing large files off my laptop, such as movies or similar. It'd be useful to not have to worry about running out of space, since I'm used to 1tb of room on my PC. My MacBook cuts that down to 256gb, so the extra would be useful!

Plus it saves faffing around with external usb discs!
 
I think about them from time to time, but the utter lack of straight DSL modems on the market just means that the devices fight with each other if you use ADSL.
 
kohlditz said:
I think about them from time to time, but the utter lack of straight DSL modems on the market just means that the devices fight with each other if you use ADSL.
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It's a bit of effort but if your ISP supports PPPoE and you can bridge your modem in some way, this can work very well. I have a Speedtouch 546v6 that is running as a bridge (had to be done through Telnet however) to my AEBS which controls the connection entirely. Of course, it isn't worth the money to do this just to get an AEBS, there are plenty of more suitable options available.
 
kohlditz said:
I think about them from time to time, but the utter lack of straight DSL modems on the market just means that the devices fight with each other if you use ADSL.
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Depends, I found quite a few ISP provided routers can be forced into bridge mode when I looked. I was lucky my ISP router could be put into bridge mode (albeit using telnet). Since switching to this setup the whole thing has been rock solid.
 
I have the non-NAS version (Airport Extreme), and it is absolutely amazing. I have owned many different wireless access-points/routers over the years, and this thing is in a league of its own in terms of rock-solid stability. I mean this thing has been rebooted once when a firmware upgrade came out last week, and I've had it since it was released (six months?).

It is, however, very expensive, and nowhere near as feature-rich as something like an Asus. I owned an Asus RT-N66U for a couple of weeks, but I returned it because it just wasn't that stable. I also don't think AC is really that necessary, it was more an impulse buy. I still don't own any AC devices, and realistically, how much bandwidth do you need in 99% of cases? I have 300 Mbps Internet, and 802.11n 3x3 MIMO is capable of well over 300 in real terms.

So even though I love owning it, I don't know if I can justify the cost.
 
rotor said:
I owned an Asus RT-N66U for a couple of weeks, but I returned it because it just wasn't that stable.
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Install Tomato on it and you would not be saying that. It's a definite toss up between that and my Time Capsule for stability and performance.
 
Skyboat said:
Install Tomato on it and you would not be saying that. It's a definite toss up between that and my Time Capsule for stability and performance.
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I'm sure you are right, but it also kind of reinforces my point. I did install one of the alternative firmwares (I can't remember which one now), and during the process I managed to brick the router -- it took me the rest of the evening to get it back working again (with the factory firmware). So I'm not the biggest fan of custom firmwares.
 
The official ASUS firmware has always been absolute toilet. I wouldn't buy one based on that alone. Tomato, on the other hand, is worth buying a compatible router for.
 
I got the 2TB Airport Time Capsule a few months back and sure enough it's been great - minimal set up, then you just don't notice it. Previously I had the BT Home Hub which needed frequent reboots and occasionally gave dreadful wifi performance - I think because the neighbour's wifi was causing interference. With the ATC the only times I've rebooted are when a firmware update gets released and wifi speeds are consistently good.

Only minor gripe is with the Time Machine software which didn't really alert me to the fact backups weren't happening (my fault as I'd changed the device password).
 
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