The New Airport Express

Apple recently updated their Airport Express wireless base station (the same day that they introduced the new Retina MacBook Pro and all) with an entirely new design. It now looks much like the Apple TV. Just a small little hockey puck-like box that sits wherever you so choose. Except, unlike the Apple TV, the new Airport Extreme is white. It costs just $99.

It's got nice weight to it, so it should sit on a desk without moving much. The dual band support is pretty sweet, allowing the optimal connection for both iPhones/iPods (2.4 GHz frequency) and Macs/iPads (5.0 GHz frequency) simultaneously. The thing that is most impressive though is just how easy it was to set up. Plug it in and your Mac will soon prompt you saying it has detected an Airport router. Give it a name, choose a password, and that's it. Good to go. You can even set these things up from an iOS device. Just go into Settings --> WiFi and choose the yet-to-be-configured Airport Express to set it all up. It's fantastically simple. The range seemed to be pretty good as well, still with two bars of signal strength a floor below the router.

It's got one ethernet port on the back if you'd like to connect one computer over a wired connection. And that's what sets the Express apart from it's bigger brother the Airport Extreme, which has a few more of those ethernet ports. The Express also has a USB port into which you could plug a printer or speakers to easily share on your network. And with AirPrint and AirPlay doing either of those would prove pretty useful.

The truth is, there really is no reason to buy any other router than one from Apple. They are high quality, cheap, and are super simple to setup and — should the need ever arrive (although it probably won't) — to troubleshoot. Apple now makes the best routers in the world as well. The Express is great if you don't need to hard-wire more than one computer. Otherwise, go with the Extreme. And if you'd like a great backup solution, go with the Time Capsule.