Cellular signal boosters use big antennas to improve coverage in your home and car. These are the top-performing boosters for large homes, small homes, apartments, and vehicles.
Now that many of us are working from home, cellular dead zones aren't just annoying, they're mission-critical. If you have weak or no cellular signal in your home, a cellular signal booster can really help.
The basic principle behind signal boosters is simple: A big antenna is better than a small one. Instead of relying on the tiny antenna in your phone, they capture cellular signal using a large antenna in your window or outside your house (or car), then pass that signal through a device that cleans and amplifies it, and out through a rebroadcaster inside your home.
That's the basic plan, at least. Booster makers have to use various tricks to detect the best signal from surrounding towers and then amplify the signal without messing up the carriers' systems. That's why you need to stick with boosters from the big four companies: Cel-Fi, HiBoost, SureCall, and weBoost. Cheaper boosters sold on Amazon often aren't FCC-certified, which means they can cause trouble with surrounding cell sites and networks.
Boosters help the most when you have weak, but not absolutely no signal. Where your phone shows bars, wireless industry folks measure signal in -dBm. A number higher than about -90dBm (like -80 or -70) is a strong signal. Get down below -110dBm and it's definitely a weak signal; below -120dBm and you'll have trouble holding onto any signal at all. Apps like CellMapper(Opens in a new window) can show you the signal you're receiving on your phone.
There is one key trick you can try before investing in a home booster. All of the wireless carriers have Wi-Fi calling now, so you can hook your phone up to your home Wi-Fi network and make phone calls. Unfortunately, we've noticed T-Mobile has a big problem with sending picture messages and group chats over Wi-Fi.
Boosters generally have three main components: an external antenna outside your home; the booster itself, which cleans and amplifies signal; and an antenna inside your home. They're all connected by coaxial cable.
Some of SureCall's products combine the booster and indoor antenna into one unit. That makes SureCall's boosters easier to install and place, which is part of why the SureCall Flare 3.0 is our Editors' Choice for in-home boosters. But if you have a larger home, and you're willing to run some coax cable, you can greatly extend the boosters' range throughout your home by getting a three-part solution, some splitters, and multiple panel antennas. This can get complicated, so, at that point, you may want to get a professional installer to set the system up (especially to reduce interference between multiple, in-home antennas.)
Recently, weBoost came out with its first two-piece booster for small homes and apartments, the weBoost Home Studio(Opens in a new window) . It's small and convenient, but only covers one or two rooms in your home.
Most boosters handle bands 2/4/66, 5, 12, 13, and 17. That includes base coverage bands for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The important missing band is 71, T-Mobile's 600MHz rural coverage band. Because it took a while for TV stations to get out of that band, the FCC hasn't approved any consumer boosters for band 71; you're just not going to find one.
Most home boosters also boost between 64 and 71dB of signal. Once again, that's due to FCC regulations. If you need more of a boost than that, you need to go to Cel-Fi's single-carrier booster line, which can get to 100dB by boosting only the frequencies used by one wireless carrier at a time.
The booster store Waveform has a comprehensive guide to how boosters work(Opens in a new window) on its site.
Boosters for your car are similar to in-home boosters, with one exception: You can get single-device, in-car cradle boosters. These are much less powerful than in-home boosters (the ones we tested boost by 23dB instead of 65–75dB) but are less expensive, take seconds to install and remove, and don't radiate beyond the cradle that grips your phone. We like the weBoost Drive Sleek as a single-device booster.
RV owners and people who need to boost multiple devices in a vehicle can get in-car boosters with small radiating antennas that can handle several devices. These can be tricky, though, because of how close the output antenna is to the input antenna.
You can install all retail cellular boosters by yourself without any drilling, although ideally, you should hide the cables against your baseboards. You also need to find the optimal antenna position on the outside of your home.
Both SureCall and weBoost have options that let you lean on a professional installer to handle the tricky bits like sticking the antenna on your roof and orienting it properly. SureCall works with Dish subsidiary OnTech(Opens in a new window) to install any of its boosters at an extra fee. weBoost has a specific product, the Installed Home Complete(Opens in a new window) , which comes with OnTech installation. The installation costs $200 for the weBoost product (it varies for SureCall products) so whether it's worth it really depends on your budget and DIY ability.
Cellular boosters generally can't boost the "good parts" of 5G networks. AT&T and Verizon carry a small amount of 5G signal on the old cellular bands 2 and 5. Boosters handle that, so a booster may summon you a 5G icon, but that signal doesn't give you an experience that's different from 4G. The fastest 5G networks for AT&T and Verizon are currently on bands n77, n260, and n261, and those aren't supported by any consumer boosters. No booster can handle any of T-Mobile's current 5G networks, which are on bands n41 and n71.
There is a sneaky way around this. While there are no powered boosters for these bands, passive antennas will still improve signal on bands 41 and 71. They may only get you 10dB to 20dB of gain as opposed to 70dB, but that isn't insignificant (and even just the fact that the antenna is outside will help). Waveform's Griddy parabolic antenna(Opens in a new window) and MIMO panel antennas(Opens in a new window) improve signal on the new 5G band n77. Connecting an outdoor cellular antenna(Opens in a new window) to a Wi-Fi hotspot that has a TS9 connector, such as the Netgear Nighthawk M5, can turn an outdoor cell signal into an indoor Wi-Fi signal.
That said, here are our top picks for boosters for homes, apartments, and cars:
Our pick for home cellular boosters, the SureCall Flare 3.0, is affordable at $299.99; supports AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; and uses a directional antenna outside but an omnidirectional antenna inside. That lets you fiddle with the outside antenna to get the strongest possible signal, but also lets you place the inside antenna anywhere you want and still get coverage. It covered three indoor rooms in our tests.
Our pick for in-vehicle boosters, the weBoost Drive Sleek ($199.99), has an excellent, secure cradle for pretty much any kind of phone, with a USB-A port so you can charge your phone as well as boost it. In testing, we got about 17–18dB improvement on T-Mobile and Verizon, which was enough to keep our in-car navigation going for just that extra mile we needed.
The weBoost Home Studio ($349.99) is a two-piece booster with a particularly small, low-key indoor emitter, so it won't crowd up an already crowded room. Like other weBoost products, it uses a directional antenna mounted on a pole or roof outside to capture the best possible signal. Within the room it covers, its boosting potential is about the same as the larger SureCall Flare 3.0. But being a small device, it has a bit less range inside the house than the Flare does, and much less range than a whole-home system like the weBoost Home Multiroom.
Most home boosters claim around 70dB of signal improvement. If you need more because you're very far from the tower you're trying to reach, you need to get Cel-Fi's specially tuned boosters. Cel-Fi's lineup promises 100dB of signal improvement, but it does so by only boosting the frequencies used by one carrier, so you can't switch carriers without switching your booster. The company's premiere home booster, the Go+/Go X, also costs $900, much more than most consumer home boosters.
For apartment dwellers who need a very aggressive booster solution, the Cel-Fi Pro ($699.99) can boost signals far more than the SureCall EZ-4G, to the tune of 100dB rather than 72dB, and without installing an exterior antenna. You plant the antenna unit inside a window facing in the right direction, and you should be good to go. There are downsides, of course. Cel-Fi's solutions only support one carrier rather than all of them, and this booster costs a lot more than SureCall's $299.99 product.
Most consumer signal boosters cover a few thousand square feet at most. The $899.99 HiBoost 15K Smart Link covers up to 15,000 square feet, making it the broadest-coverage consumer booster we could find. HiBoost's lineup also has a unique and cool feature: There are LCDs on the front of the boosters showing signal strength on each of the covered bands. With a large home installation, you're probably going to want to use a splitter and additional panel antennas; one panel isn't going to cut it for 15,000 square feet.
The SureCall EZ-4G ($299.99) is an all-carrier solution for people in apartments or other places where you can't mount an outside antenna. The booster promises the same 72dB improvement as devices that use an external antenna. You won't get the same performance, because an antenna placed in your window probably just isn't in a position to capture signal as clearly as an antenna placed on your roof. But if you can't put something on the outside of your building, this just might deliver the boost you need.
No consumer booster can boost T-Mobile's band 71, the 600MHz low band that really extends T-Mobile coverage. The FCC hasn't approved any consumer boosters for that band because of legacy TV stations that took their time clearing away from it. If you really need a boost on band 71, you need to turn to the $7,000 (!) SureCall Force8, which needs to be set up by a professional installer who gets permission from T-Mobile.
Most home boosters require some DIY work to place the exterior antenna. If that scares you, WeBoost comes to the rescue with a professionally installed solution for $1,199.99. The Installed Home Complete has the same directional antenna and 72dB of signal improvement you'll find on many other boosters, but you can be assured of absolutely optimal indoor and outdoor antenna placement if you go this path.
RV boosters are sort of halfway between car boosters and in-home boosters. SureCall's Fusion2Go 3.0 RV ($449.99) uses an omnidirectional outdoor antenna—useful because your RV is always moving around—and offers two antenna options inside. It isn't as powerful as a home booster, at 50dB of gain, but it's more powerful than small car boosters. The trick with this one is to place the indoor and outdoor antennas properly, which can be challenging, as they need to be as far apart as possible.
Cellular signals aren't the only ones that can benefit from a boost. Check out these quick tips to improve the wireless signal from your router, extend and optimize your Wi-Fi coverage, and speed up your surfing. Or go right to our roundups of the best USB Wi-Fi adapters and the best range extenders.
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I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I've reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also write a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsess about phones and networks.
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