Apple Time Capsule (500GB)

The good: Clean design; good deal for Draft-N router and 500GB or 1TB of storage; low maintenance data backup for Mac users; extensibility via USB port.

The bad: Only average networking performance; few advanced storage features beyond backup capabilities, and those only for Mac users.

The bottom line: Apple's hybrid 802.11n wireless router/networked hard drive offers some powerful data backup features for Mac owners, as well as Apple's typical pleasing design. Windows users and anyone who demands speed from their 802.11n network will be disappointed.

Apple's new Time Capsule is one of only two devices we know of that incorporates both a wireless router and a hard drive into the same product. The other, a year-and-a-half-old router from Asus, offers neither the same high-speed wireless bandwidth nor as much storage capacity as the Time Capsule, which comes in 500GB (for $299) and 1TB (for $499) varieties. In its niche, then, the Time Capsule is the most advanced product on the market. Its price is also fair compared with a separate router and network-attached hard drive. Mac owners and the space or design conscious should consider the Time Capsule if they're in need of a router upgrade. Windows PC owners should look elsewhere for more advanced storage capabilities, as should anyone that demands fast wireless performance.

Device type: Wireless router with attached hard drive

• • Network standard: 802.11n (draft), 802.11a/b/g
• • Bandwidth: 2.4GHz and 5GHz
• • Operating systems supported: Linux; Mac OS X 10.4 or later (for setup); Windows XP (SP2) or Vista
• • Security options: WEP; WPA/WPA2; NAT firewalls, MAC address filtering
• • Features: 3 Gigabit LAN ports; 1 Gigabit WAN port; 1 USB 2.0 port; DHCP support; DDNS
• • Notable design features: Antenna-less design
• • Support: One-year warranty; 24-7 toll-free phone support; e-mail support form; FAQs; knowledge base; driver and software downloads

Setup and ease of use
Time Capsule is essentially an Airport Extreme Base Station with a built-in hard drive and an easy-to-use, Mac-only automated backup program. Most of what we said in our review of the original, standalone Airport Extreme Base Station applies to the Time Capsule as far as its networking capabilities. Both products provide you with a 2.4GHz or 5.0GHz 802.11n wireless network. We are happy to report that we were able to connect an Intel-powered Mac Pro, an iMac G5, a Windows Vista-based HP Pavilion tx2000z laptop, and the Windows XP-based Lenovo X300 laptop to the Time Capsule wirelessly with little trouble. Each system was also able to read and write to the Time Capsule's hard drive.

The design of the Time Capsule is clean and visually appealing, and almost identical to the Airport Extreme Base Station. You still get one indicator light up front and a row of ports on the back. That's it. Many routers offer an array of blinking status LEDs, but the Time Capsule gives you only a static green light to let you know that it's working. The backside provides you with a single Gigabit Ethernet port for a connection to your cable or DSL or LAN connection, three Gigabit ports for hard-wired network devices, and a single USB 2.0 input. There's no power button, but you do get a reset button to restore the factory default settings. The power cable (and it's just a cable, not a brick) plugs directly into the back. We should note that while the Time Capsule is basically silent, the top gets hot, especially when the hard drive is moving a lot of data. Be sure to store it in a well-ventilated area.

Apple made the claim that setting up the Time Capsule to manage your network is easy, and if you're comfortable with basic networking concepts, it is. If you don't know whether you have a static IP address or you're unfamiliar with abbreviations like PPP and DHCP, you can still probably navigate Time Capsule's handful of setup screens, thanks to mostly clear English descriptions that accompany each option. You initiate the installation by inserting the Time Capsule CD, and from there (on a Mac) it will update your AirPort Utility, and then prompt you to select various options. Windows drivers are also included on the disc.

With your network established, Windows users should be able to see the hard drive in their network folder, and read and write files to it as with any networked storage device. You can set up a password to connect to the drive, although you get no user management interface like that of the HP MediaSmart Server. You can also access the Time Capsule's drive remotely through a .Mac account, which you have to pay for. The HP Server provides you remote access for free, although it's not a router.

Mac users can use the Time Capsule's hard drive for basic storage as well, but they also get more benefit from Time Capsule than the Windows crowd, due to its interface with Leopard's Time Machine feature. Time Machine lets you set automated backups from the Macs on your network directly to the Time Capsule. It took about two hours to back up a relatively sparse 21GB of data on a Macbook laptop over a wired Gigabit connection to the Time Capsule. Apple has also preset Time Capsule to perform several backups a day for the first week you set it up, several backups a week after the first day, and then throughout each month, until you run out of drive space. Each backup only saves the information that's changed, so you don't have to do the complete multi-gigabyte data transfer every time. You can also tell Time Machine to back up manually whenever you want.

Features
This brings us to the Time Capsule's USB port. The Airport Extreme Base Station had one as well, so much of the functionality is the same. The idea is that you can plug pretty much any networkable USB device into the Time Capsule and share it across your network. It can also accept a USB hub if you want to attach multiple devices. We successfully added a USB flash drive and a USB hard drive, each of which created another distinct drive volume on our network. Apple offers no RAID capability with the Time Capsule (unlike the old Asus router-storage combo product), so it cannot mirror added drives or map them into a contiguous volume. Mirroring a drive already set to backup might be excessive, but it would be useful to create a single volume out of multiple drives.

In addition to adding storage, Apple also touts the USB ports for adding printers to your network. We were able to add a Canon Pixma ip2600 inkjet printer with no trouble, even over a powered USB hub that also had a hard drive connected to it. All of the various Mac- and Windows-based systems on the Time Capsule's network were able to print to it. We also installed a Wi-Fi-enabled Lexmark X7550 to the Time Capsule's network wirelessly. The Time Capsule is not a print server, so if you send a job to the printer while it's printing from another system, you'll simply get an error message, instead of the Time Capsule adding the new job to a queue. That's to be expected, although it's still a bit frustrating, as Apple makes a point to advertise the Time Capsule's suitability for network printing.

You should also not consider the Time Capsule as a one-stop shop for your iTunes library across various systems, nor should you expect it to work with an Apple TV. In other words, a completely centralized Apple home media network is still out of reach. We were able to get an Apple TV onto the Time Capsule's wireless signal, but it would not find any of the iTunes libraries. Further, between the various account management pitfalls and the fact that you're already presumably backing your iTunes library up to the Time Capsule, its media file-management capabilities are also problematic. To be fair, Apple does not advertise Time Capsule as a media server, although we hold out hope that it might improve the possibilities of Time Capsule with a firmware or software update.

One thing we feared about the Time Capsule when we first heard of it is that because it's essentially a closed box, if the hard drive or the router fails, you end up losing both. It's been shown that you can peel off the Time Capsule's rubbery bottom and remove the hard drive yourself, but Apple confirmed for us that even if you were to do that, you couldn't treat the Time Capsule as a standalone router, as the hard drive hosts vital data on it for the networking functionality as well. That's another shortcoming, although Apple assured us that the Time Capsule's "server grade" Hitachi Deskstar hard drive would last a lot longer than the typical desktop or laptop drive.

Performance

As for its performance, we're happy enough with the Time Capsule's capability as a storage device. Results will vary depending on what kind of connection you use (see the wireless performance below, for example) but when you connect a system to the Time Capsule via a Gigabit Ethernet cable, you should feel comfortable knowing that its data transfer speeds lie within the range of what we expect from other network attached hard drives.

Ixia IxChariot maximum throughput tests (at 15 feet, in Mbps)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Throughput max

Netgear RangeMax Next WNR854T

85.5 

SMC SMCWGBR14-N Barricade N

83.7 

D-Link DGL-4500 Xtreme Gaming Router

81.9 

Edimax BR-6504N nMax

76.7 

Apple Time Capsule

65.05 

Asus WL-500W 802.11n

62.9 

LevelOne N-One WBR-6000

47.3 

Ixia IxChariot maximum throughput tests with mixed 802.11b/g and draft N clients (at 15 feet, in Mbps)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Mixed throughput

Edimax BR-6504N nMax

68 

Netgear RangeMax Next WNR854T

67.5 

Asus WL-500W 802.11n

55.1 

SMC SMCWGBR14-N Barricade N

52.4 

Apple Time Capsule

51.51 

D-Link DGL-4500 Xtreme Gaming Router

50.9 

LevelOne N-One WBR-6000

23.9 

Ixia IxChariot long-range tests (Throughput measured indoors at 200 feet, in Mbps)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Throughput 200 feet

Asus WL-500W 802.11n

29.7 

D-Link DGL-4500 Xtreme Gaming Router

27 

Netgear RangeMax Next WNR854T

26.9 

SMC SMCWGBR14-N Barricade N

24.3 

Apple Time Capsule

21.36 

Edimax BR-6504N nMax

11.4 

LevelOne N-One WBR-6000

5.3 

Although we're satisfied with its storage performance, as a wide-bandwidth 802.11n wireless router, the Time Capsule is decidedly mediocre. On the 2.4GHz performance indicated in our charts, the Time Capsule fell behind by a full 20 Mbps on our max throughput test compared with a NetGear RangeMax router. It's also on the lower end of the spectrum when compared on our long range and mixed throughput tests. We don't show 5.0GHz frequency scores for brevity, but our results on those tests scaled in a similar fashion. Anecdotally, backing up and moving data back and forth between the drive and various systems felt reasonably fast, but if you need your network to be especially speedy, our charts show that you have several faster options out there.

Service and support
Apple's service and support support are also unimpressive, but this isn't exactly news. The one-year parts and labor warranty is standard across the industry, but Apple's 90 days of phone support is the shortest coverage plan around. You can get in-person help at an Apple store if you live near one, and online you'll find the standard array of assistance. If you can't find the support you need from Apple's FAQs or troubleshooting document, the Apple user forum is a reliable alternative.

Find out more about how we test wireless routers.