When I measured the G router's throughput at a distance of 10 feet, I got speeds of roughly 10 to 20Mbps. With the Airport Extreme, speeds on a dedicated 802.11n at the same distance were almost 78Mbps, a middling good speed compared to the other routers in this roundup. At 50 feet, however, the Airport Extreme performed almost as well with speeds measuring 75Mbps. At 200 feet, I measured speeds of 35 Mbps.
(After speaking with the Apple technical team, the company pointed out that the aforementioned 78Mbps figure could be improved if the router was optimized to run in a 5GHz, N-only mode -- meaning that you could only use it with 802.11n devices -- by fiddling with the Airport Utility settings. Upon following the tech's step-by-step instructions, I measured 98Mbps throughput at a distance of ten feet. )
Unfortunately, its numbers on a mixed network failed to impress. At a distance of 10 feet on a mixed network, the router scored just 14Mbps -- a very low showing for such a high-priced router.
The Linksys 802.11g router is incapable of maintaining a connection past the back corner of my home. With the Airport Extreme in the same location, I was able to connect to the Internet at a distance of 100 feet past the aforementioned corner. In fact, Apple's router actually performed better than its publicized 2x range.
The Apple Airport Extreme Base Station is a nicely designed router that has the best setup process of any currently available device. The Airport Utility feature makes it easy for both novice and advanced users to customize the router and an intelligent troubleshoot feature that tells you know when something has gone awry makes this product unique.
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