AirTies Air 4420-TV review

Whizzing media about the house Wi-fi networking and a USB media server impresses Martin Pipe

If all you need is the ability to stream multimedia files to various players around the home, then this device is for you. The 4420 has a server that’s fully uPnP compliant, and boasts a feature you won’t find on the average NAS – the 4420’s integrated wi-fi capabilites enable you to set up an additional access point, or bridge any networking ‘gaps’ in larger homes.

Highs

To extend the physical ‘reach’ of a network to accommodate, for example, an internet-enabled bedroom TV, you can buy a pair of 4420s.

Supports the established 2.4GHz and newer 5GHz bands. High-speed ‘N’ is supported for claimed data transfer rates of up to 300Mbps.

The uPnP server works very well indeed. I plugged a large FAT32-formatted pen drive, containing a variety of categorised multimedia content, into the side-mounted USB port. All of the content – music, video and photos – was accessible to my array of multimedia players.

Lows

The supplied management software displays a diagrammatic representation of your network, including any 4420s. If one of these has a USB storage device attached, then you can open it up on your PC desktop just like a local hard drive. But transfers are ponderously slow. AirTies says it’s making a firmware update available.

Network Assistant, as this management system is known, is currently Windows-only, and the configuration interface is occasionally unresponsive. In addition, it’s pernickety about Windows workgroup names.


AirTies Air 4420-TV
Price:
£90

Overall: 4/5

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