On the other hand, the Time Capsule offers very good range. In our testing facility, an office building that's not optimised for wireless range, we were able to hold a steady connection to the Time Capsule from further than 90m in the 2.4GHz band and from about 85m in the 5GHz band. Both of these numbers are very impressive.
Since the Time Capsule has built-in storage, we tested it the way we test other NAS servers: by copying data between the router and a computer using a Gigabit wired connection. We used a 7GB file and timed how long it took for the system to write the file to the NAS server's hard drive and read it back. The scores were low, with the Time Capsule achieving only 81.2Mbps in the write test and 114.2 in the read test. These are the slowest numbers among the NAS servers we've reviewed this year. Compared with NAS servers we reviewed in 2008, the scores are about average.
The router ran hot throughout our testing, which made us concerned about the device's lifespan. We recommend you leave it in an open, well-ventilated location when in use.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 |
Mixed mode | |
Range | |
Throughput |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
|
Range | |
Throughput |
(Throughput in Mbps. Longer bars indicate better performance)
|
Read | |
Write |
Conclusion
The Apple Time Capsule is certainly a convenient, straightforward wireless router and NAS server combination, but, at this price, you should get more functionality.
Additional editing by Charles Kloet
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