weBoost Drive Reach Cell Phone Signal Booster for Cars & Trucks

I previously had a weboost cradle type booster, which worked decently well but we wanted to be able to use more phones at the same time and so we purchased this booster. It is more expensive but works really well, much better than the cradle booster that I had before. Yes, you have to be near the inner antenna, but I installed it between the front seats of the car and it works really well. We like dispersed camping in national forests and are often out of cellular range but using the we boost always goes from no service to 2-3 bars at our favorite campsite. We don't always leave it on as it chews through the deep cycle battery which also powers our fridge/freezer but it totally worth it when you need the connectivity to download maps, make contact with family, get texts and emails, or just get on Facebook/insta/etc. I have also added the OTC antenna to our setup as well as using the fin antenna that came with my original driveSleek cradle (since I mounted it in the car already and the connectors/impedance are the same). With the new booster, we haven't had to pull out the OTC antenna yet but if we get really deep in the backcountry and need signal, we will get it that way. Keep in mind, if there is no signal at all, you won't have any signal. If there is a very weak signal, this thing will help the tower hear your phone. There are still a very few places that we don't have any signal (deep hollows in the woods, etc) but it definitely extends the reach of the phone, enough that spending the money was worth it to us.

I bought this product thinking "Well if it doesn't work, I'll send it back." and Now, you couldn't pry it out of my hands with a crowbar. I would take you down protecting this sucker. I am so tired of in-and-out cellular coverage in Vermont. When tourists flood our state, it's even worse with all the increased cell tower demands. So I installed this thing (even simpler than I expected: it took like 10 min tops) and BOOM, magic. I now have zero drop zones on the way to work. In one spot, it gets a little hairy but that phone hangs on to the connection - where before it would drop for a full minute. On my way up I-91N to visit my daughter at Dartmouth, I have previously counted 14 drops in 65 miles, as you weave in and out of the mountain interference. I only had a few and they were in spots with zero coverage, just the ghost dots and that SOS icon. So this antenna won't magically whip up a signal out of thin air, but it will give you 1-3 extra bars to get you past the annoying 1-bar drop spots. ["Bald spots," I think of them - Making this thing a high-quality toupee that actually works.] Go ahead, you won't be sorry.

First, I purchased this because the opportunity to work remote with my vehicle data/wifi package. I really tried to find information on this unit and the dependability, reliability, and quality of signal boost. Very difficult to find any real simple good accurate info and even when I called there number, weboost, they were not helpful before or after purchase. Should have "saw the writing on the booster". I didn't like the lack of information on how this unit really works. Difficult to find what really does boost. They make it sound like this will pick up any cell tower signal and boost it, it wont. It doesn't increase bandwidth, it takes a minimum 10ms ping signal strength to be able to boost, no where can you find this information. WeBoost makes it sound like hook it up plug it in start driving down the road and any signal, the strongest signal, it will pick it up and boost it, i.e. semi truck driving. Not true. You need a cell plan. I have a purchased data plan through my vehicle that sends out a Wi-Fi signal. It should boost the signal that it takes in to get a signal to boost, what they don't tell you is you have to have a cell plan to get a signal, no cell plan no signal, no boost, no good. I would not recommend this unit to anyone unless you are some kind of communications/electronics engineer that can really understand and troubleshoot fix improve this system. I think that I should have done something else to try and boost my Wi-Fi signal. Don't waste your money as they have a lot of excuses why there equipment doesn't work. If you do, buyer beware. Fully understand what you are getting into and understand the operation of this unit. I was really hoping that this unit performed and worked the way all of the reviews said it was going to. I am very disappointed it didn't. And then extremely disappointed in the lack of technical support afterward. In my opinion.

When it works, it is great. There are some caveats to using it and what it does exactly. 1. If there is no signal, well this is not a miracle worker. If say you are on a mountain route without much cell coverage, hills and mountains are very good at completely blocking signal. Granted, I have gone down better covered mountain roads and this has really helped to go from drops all over to nearly perfect. 2. If there is a very weak signal, I have seen up to a 50 dbm gain in signal strength. Amazing! Really, when you are trying to avoid call drops, garbled conversations, and even working remotely on a laptop, this can be a real help. 3. A big thing with this device is feedback loops. The unit won't back off a little when it starts feeding back, but instead just shut off with a red light on the device. Where I really see this is when there is not much in the way of obstructions between the two antennas and when the phone is not really close to the internal antenna. Having the antennas far apart, but not enough obstruction will still cause this to happen. If you move your phone away from the antenna, say 12" to 36" like what the manual talks about and you are just not seeing any boost, check for the red light. It may be that the device tried to boost more to better reach the phone further away, but it ended up in a feedback loop with its other antenna and shut down. I usually keep my phone really close for best results as I have been having some lockout issues. 4. If your carrier supports newer 5G standards such as Ultra-Wideband or Ultra-Capacity and you see the extra symbols on your phone screen, this aging design will not boost. It only boosts older channels used for 4G service with some older 5G using recycled 4G spectrum. So, you may be seeing a weak UW or UC signal or something to the like and your phone will just try to use that for as long as it can. The booster is boosting something, just not what you are using. Kind of funny being in a car with someone with an older phone and they see the boost while I don't because their older phone doesn't support C-band communications. Really, don't care about boosting mmWave as nobody can seem to see this, after all it is the same band used by body scanners and crowd dispersal devices because it can't penetrate anything beyond some clothing while bouncing off and being absorbed some by your body. But the C-band is useful as this fall between the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz used by Wi-Fi, so it can penetrate to a useful degree. Granted, the older spectrum this is boosting is using even lower frequencies that penetrate a lot better, making this still a really useful device.

First the good news. The booster works. I get signal in several places where I never did before and most other places where low signal strength made sending and receiving files a pain I have enough signal now to get them through. Overall it is absolutely worth it Now the bad news and there are several drawbacks from this product, in order from biggest problem to smallest. 1) the range on the internal antenna is horrible. I seem to lose half of my increased signal between 6 and 8 inches away and there is no way for my daughter and I to both benefit at the same time on road trips. 2) Some places it doesn't help much at all and there is no rhyme or reason why. In the parking lot of a local store the boost is from -97 to -95. The park 3 blocks away boost from -101 to -88. Why doesn't it work at the store? Who knows? 3) if you have absolutely no signal it won't help. This at least makes sense. Double nothing is still nothing. And 4) it uses a cigarette lighter port for power instead of USB. Some cars don't even have lighter ports anymore and even those that do have many more USB ports than lighters

I'll start with the positives. This is a great device that REALLY works well. This is the fourth Wilson Electronics booster I've owned over the years and all of them have worked great. This one is no exception. If you can get the green light to turn on (indicating you do not have oscillation between the indoor and outdoor antenna and the device is functioning nominally), you will see a significant boost in cellular connectivity and performance. The design of the main booster unit is elegant and functional. It has a nice heat sink and is a size that can be easily stowed below the driver's seat so you can pull 12V power from the center console. Install of the interior antenna from this location is easy. However...that leads me to the frustration that caused me to return this unit to Wilson Electronics for a refund. The main issue is that Wilson Electronics tried to save a few dollars by going with an inferior quality cable to the exterior antenna. The low quality (I'll say CHEAP) cable is only 8' long. That's a big problem for anyone trying to install this in a van or SUV. If you locate the head unit under the driver's seat and run the wire for the roof antenna up the B pillar behind the driver's seat...then up onto the roof, you are about out of cable when you reach the roof. It's almost impossible to get the antenna far enough back to get away from the interior antenna to avoid oscillation. At best, you'll get a green light and still have sub-par performance from the unit. I'd recommend this unit all day long for a sedan...because the cable for the roof-top antenna is probably long enough to make it work. In this case, you'd want to mount the interior cable on the center console near the factory radio area, etc. If you have a larger SUV, van, RV, etc....don't get this model. (Or plan to buy a different roof-top exterior antenna that has a longer cable. I have a Lexus GX 460 with an overland build. That means I have a big roof-rack system...so I purchased the Wilson Reach OTR which is designed for over the road truckers. (Big rigs). The antenna is pretty large on the OTR model, but the performance is outstanding...and the cable for the roof-top exterior antenna is 12' instead of 8'. That allowed me to mount the omni antenna at the rear of my roof rack (they provide awesome mounting hardware that even allow you to add up to a 24" mast if you want to go nuts on performance). The 12' of cable was perfect to bring the cable in through the rear tailgate area and run along the bottom of the plastic interior trim (along the carpet and then the passenger door sill) to reach under the driver's seat to the head unit. I tested results with two iPhones. (iPhone 13 Pro Max and iPhone XR) Both phones had similar performance gains with the booster enabled. I had 1 bar of service at my rural home for both phones. (-111db for you nerds). When I turned on the booster, my signal went to two bars (-90db). I did a Google Speed Test with and without the booster. Without the booster, my download was 9.8Mbps and my upload was a lousy 0.42Mbps. When I turned the booster on, my download jumped to 45Mbps and my upload increased to 12Mbps. This is a stunning result...which we repeated over and over again with subsequent tests. I was connected to an ATT tower on LTE bandwidth (ATT's stupid "5Ge" service). I'm hopeful that this always-on booster will significantly improve my cellular service in town and when I'm up on the mountain highways that I frequent here in Colorado. Hope this review helps!

I deliver for Walmart in the country. This really helps with my service completely dropping out. I’ve even had SOS turn into a 1 bar LTE signal which was just enough. :)

Just received the weBoost Drive Reach this morning and installed it in my police cruiser. It was easy to install with easy to follow instructions and labeled ports. The external antenna was fixed to the rear of the SUV, via the magnetic base. The cable that leads to the amplifier is a little short, but I had enough to sit it under the driver seat. If I need to I can just open the door and glance down to see the status light. More than enough cable for the power and internal antenna. I had a Wilson Sleek installed previously to this booster that had a cradle, I intend on just leaving in the cruiser on the dash. Prior to turning on the power, my phone was receiving 0 to 1 bars, with around -118 dBm to -123 dBm. The booster increased my signal to 4 to 5 bars, with around -88 dBm to -92 dBm. This means a 30-31 dBm increase in signal strength. I did install the internal antenna about 2 inches away from the phone cradle and notice that the farther I move my phone away the less boost I get, which falls to zero boost somewhere around 20 to 24 inches. I will update this review, once I put it on the road if I need to. So far, I'm a happy camper!!!

Estuve pensando por mucho tiempo en adquirir este producto, si bien es cierto que hay buenas calificaciones y comentarios, solo son de usuarios en US y Canadá, dicho lo anterior, tenía un viaje por carretera México-Guadalajara, ruta que conozco perfectamente de hace 5 años y en más de la mitad de la ruta la señal es muy débil o inexistente, por lo que decidí realizar la compra y probarlo. Una vez instalado debidamente, salí a carretera con una alta expectativa, inicié un playlist en streaming para validar funcionamiento; el primer tramo con señal débil, superado! Mitad del camino, nuevamente baja señal, realice un par de llamadas y sin problema, comunicación estable, finalmente uno de los últimos tramos con prácticamente nada de señal y el celular (Telcel) mostraba señal poca pero suficiente para mantener activo el playlist. En conclusión, trayecto MEXICO- GUADALAJARA, check! Todo el camino con señal y la música en streaming siempre activa. Totalmente recomendable!