Wireless Space outdoes Time Capsule
Dong Ngo takes a look at how LaCie's Wireless Space outdoes Apple's Time Capsule in performance and other features.
LaCie Wireless Space
When LaCie announced its Wireless Space router/NAS combo solution a month ago, it was like the company planned to stack it specifically against Apple's Time Capsule.
The two devices share so many similarities, including having only three LAN ports (as opposed to four in most wireless routers), a built-in hard drive that can't be replaced by users, support for Time Machine, and an aesthetically pleasing design.
They do have a few differences, however. The Time Capsule is shaped like a thick white floor tile, whereas the Wireless Space is shaped like a black wall brick. Also, the Time Capsule supports true dual-band with guest networking, which allows you to create a separate network for guests; the Wireless Space is just a single-band (2.4Ghz) Wireless-N router with no support for guest networking.
To make up for this, in our hands-on testing, the Wireless Space consistently trumped the Time Capsule in terms of performance, especially in its network storage features. It is by far the fastest among all routers that we've reviewed that have built-in network storage support. Examples include the Cisco Linksys E3000, the Linksys WRT610N, and the Netgear WNDR3700. None of these even comes close to the Wireless Space on our network storage performance charts.
The Wireless Space also offers many features that the Time Capsule doesn't, such as media streaming, a responsive Web interface, and support for external hard drives, in case you want to add more storage. And what's even more important, the Wireless Space is much more affordable.
So for all of you Apple fans who want an alternative to the Time Capsule, LaCie has just delivered. Read our full review of the LaCie Wireless Space.
