Old Airport Express vs. 2012 Airport Express

[jazz1]

I replaced the latest version wall wart of the Express with the new 2012 today. I wanted the dual antenna hoping it would improve Wifi reception in my basement rec. room. According to the Airport application my "connection" has gone from "Average" to "Excellent" feeding off of a latest generation Airport Extreme.

If their translates to better performance I'll be happy. I have a mix of iPhone 4 and 4S iPhones, as well as iPad2's and old and relatively new MacBook Pro's in the house.

I do have one pre-dual antenna Airport Extreme on the network and I'm seriously considering another 2012 Airport Express to replace it so I'll have dual antennas all around. My spouse no doubt would appreciate a smaller sized device in the living room.

Has anyone else found the 2012 Airport Express to be a good replacement of the wall wart version in their home or business. I'll be keeping the old one for mobile use.

 

[marc11]

I replaced the latest version wall wart of the Express with the new 2012 today. I wanted the dual antenna hoping it would improve Wifi reception in my basement rec. room. According to the Airport application my "connection" has gone from "Average" to "Excellent" feeding off of a latest generation Airport Extreme.

If their translates to better performance I'll be happy. I have a mix of iPhone 4 and 4S iPhones, as well as iPad2's and old and relatively new MacBook Pro's in the house.

I do have one pre-dual antenna Airport Extreme on the network and I'm seriously considering another 2012 Airport Express to replace it so I'll have dual antennas all around. My spouse no doubt would appreciate a smaller sized device in the living room.

Has anyone else found the 2012 Airport Express to be a good replacement of the wall wart version in their home or business. I'll be keeping the old one for mobile use.

I did the same thing for the same reason. I have a mix of devices that run on 2.4 or 5 ghz and wanted to have the option to let each device run at its max speed and I was hoping for more range from the new Express over the old as I used the old to extend my network and even that fell a bit short out in some areas.

The new one improved the signal strength and range for all devices connected to it. Well worth the cost to me and I can use my old Express in my garage as a dedictated airplay device for music when I am working out there.

 

[ecschwarz]

I thought I'd add my two cents in - I picked up a new AirPort Express to serve as my main router (I have a relatively small apartment) and wanted something that would be able to reach my Apple TV (the old Netgear model I was using was having trouble). Sure enough, the tiny little AirPort Express solved that problem and also helped me eliminate a grumpy old ethernet print server.

I saw one of the prior models on clearance and thought I'd pick it up to set up as an AirPlay receiver in my kitchen and also take when traveling (after seeing how well the new one worked - I really like the multi-function design). Although the wall-wart design of the old one is much better for travel, the thing got hot after only about an hour of use (much hotter than my MacBook Pro's AC adapter when charging, almost rivaling the bottom of my MacBook Pro when it's doing a lot of things). After hearing about some of the heat-related failures of the old design (I think the G models had more), and seeing how cool the now three-day-old 2012 Express ran, I decided to exchange it and $25 for another 2012 model. Although my setup may seem a little excessive, the price difference (and minor inconvenience of a power cable) is worth it for anyone in the market for a router, repeater, print server, audio streamer, or any combination of the four.

I'm not going to crack mine open, but after seeing what Apple did with the Apple TV two years ago, I'd almost bet this is some sort of iOS/A4/A5-based device. Anyone find any take-aparts online?