Does Air Port Express still work?

What are you using the Express for?

There is no easy replacement if they are used for airplay. That is something unique to the express.

If the Express are setup merely to extend wireless.. then yes.. much better kit is now available.

There are mesh products from a number of companies. Apple sell the Linksys Velop. (they offer no support only selling).

The top of the charts though is the Netgear Orbi RBK50.

If I was buying mesh system I would go the Orbi. I personally have a wired house and setup Access Points in a few spots.

If you own the house.. I recommend getting it wired with ethernet. You can then choose between a number of systems. The Orbi can use ethernet backhaul.. which means a cheaper set like the RBK40 could also fit the bill.

Ubiquiti is becoming popular as the quality of their products is first rate. Cost wise apart from wiring installation costs you will spend about the same as the Orbi. The advantage is long term spending the extra to wire will give you a robust system and will always be faster than any wireless. Of course if you rent or live in concrete box apartment then mesh is the way to go.

If you are prepared to persevere it is certainly possible to get the apple routers working again. We need to know more details of the models involved and setup with main router or modem. However if you have had the airports for 5 years.. they have reached the end of their economic lives.. it is certainly time to upgrade. Gen2 Express sell well second hand.. and if you are using airplay to speakers you might still want to use them.. which is easy enough with the orbi system.. but use wired connections. The Express are fairly weak n wireless.

Apple did not stop developing the airports yesterday.. they stopped 6 years ago.. and for the Express that is 8 years ago.

Firmware is kept secure but no further development is really expected.. and in fact 7.8.1 firmware caused loads of issues..

Reset all the airports to factory..

Configure the Extreme first if it is working as main router or WAP.

Do not use Apple recommended names.. keep them short with no spaces and pure alphanumerics.

Same for passwords but can be longer.

Once you have configured the Extreme you can configure each airport express which should be pretty much automatic.. just needing to fix the name.

The system should continue to work.. but if the Extreme is bridged and not working as the main router I strongly recommend you supply static IP addresses to all the airports.

This is important as bonjour is essential and non-apple routers often don't work very well.

It is also important that IPv6 is set to link-local only in all the airports.

Post a screenshot from your airport utility once you have it going and show the setup of each airport and we can give more advice on making it reliable.