I live in the mountains so my neighborhood has very spotty cell coverage, at best, and my house in in a relatively low area so I'm lucky to get more than 1 bar anywhere in the house. Normally I have to stand in the back corner of my office to hold a call for more than 3 minutes. In the past I've used a femtocell that connects my phone through my cable modem, but that isn't necessary with WiFi calling so it's not why I want a repeater. Instead, I need a way to connect to the outside world when the ISP link is down, which happens far too frequently.

I've tried at least a dozen different LTE repeaters, including a smaller HiBoost (which didn't survive a lightning strike), and this one is the best - by far. If nothing else, the on-unit display makes this device a no-brainer and greatly simplifies the important job of aiming the outdoor antenna. I didn't have anyone else around to help when I installed the kit, so I pointed an old iPhone at the display and FaceTimed iot while up on the roof so I could watch the meters in real-time. HiBoost does a have an app, but it takes 10-30 seconds to update whereas the on-unit screen shows changes almost immediately. The FaceTime trick let me finish the job (in sub-freezing December weather) in about 10 minutes, versus the 30+ it would have taken otherwise.

Once the antenna was aimed and locked into place, I got the signal strengths you can see on the first image. Even better, I now have a solid 3-bars everywhere in my house and data speed tests went from a few kbit/sec (half of which failed before completion) to 8-10mbit/sec both up and down. It's like time-warping from 1995 to 2022. I don't have a 5G phone but with LTE speeds like this who needs it?

The only thing resembling a downside is that I had to relocate the amp. With my now-deceased HiBoost, the inside antenna was a separate device so the amp was on the second floor where the outdoor antenna wire comes inside, and the indoor panel antenna was on the first floor right in the center of the house. Mounting this amp on the old one's bracket left it too close to the outdoor antenna so they fed back into each other. Using a longer antenna wire, I put this amp+antenna where the indoor antenna used to be and everything has worked like a charm since then.

On top of making great hardware, HiBoost has some of the best customer support I've ever experienced (and I'm in tech myself, so I've seen both side of it). Not only are they knowledgeable and helpful, they're diligent about replying quickly when you ask for help. For over a month after I received this unit, the weather was uncooperative so I couldn't go up on the roof to install the new gear. During that period of about six weeks, Noah checked in regularly to see how the installation was going and if he could offer any assistance. I can't remember the last time a merchant cared this much about my having a good experience with their product.

I can't say enough good things about the people and the products. If you're looking at this review and considering an LTE repeater, I'd bet you have weak cell coverage too. (Otherwise why are you browsing these?) I suggests you stop hesitating and click "buy". Sure, this unit isn't cheap, but it's well worth the money and you'll wonder why you didn't get it sooner.

First of all, this thing works well but you need some patience and likely some customer support to get it working perfectly. I gave the product really high marks and let me tell you why. I bought the booster and then it arrived three days later. The next day, Yoselin, a representative of the company, called me from customer service in China to check to see if I was having any issues with the install or if I needed technical support. It turns out that different cell phone companies connect to different towers and some bands of cell service are not able to be boosted through this device. Joselin walked me through the set up and helped me both position the antenna and maximize the cell tower that my phone connects to. I had zero or one bars of service before the booster and now I have four bars of service inside my whole house. I installed the unit in new construction which has a heavy metal roof along with hardy cement siding so cell phone waves were definitely not penetrating before. I highly recommend the booster And I am grateful for the good quality customer service that I received through Yoselin. She both texted with me and took my phone call when I needed to talk to someone and ask more specific questions. I would definitely recommend HiBoost.

How my cell booster journey began
I have been struggling with getting good cell coverage in my home since I moved in last summer. I typically get 1 or 2 bars in the house. And typically get dropped calls or calls where the other party cannot hear me talking which can certainly be frustrating. Plus my internet speeds through my cell provider have not been all that good either at the house.

When I first started researching cell boosters, I thought the installation would be similar to installing an outdoor TV antenna. While there is a lot similar between the two installations, I think the cell booster installation is more complicated. For one thing, you have to also determine the most optimal placement of the indoor antenna. You may have to angle the indoor antenna to cover the rooms you want to cover.

Cabling and Booster Placement
If you are setting up your booster in your garage, shed, or barn then the cabling layout should be pretty easy. If your booster will be in your kitchen or other living areas of your house, then you will want to put some more thought into how you will be hiding your cabling. I have seen some installs that had the booster up on a high wall shelf. This would be one option to hide the device and some of its cabling. If you want to utilize some existing RG6 coax that you may already have wired through your home, you will need some adapters to make that happen with the HiBoost 4k. And also if you need a cable run longer than 50 feet, you will need to purchase more cabling for that.

Hiboost Support
Noah with Hiboost support reached out to me a few days after I began testing my setup. He was very helpful and offered some pointers that I had not thought of. He was also able to replace an ac adapter that had a tear in the cable.

One final consideration is to make sure you will have enough time set aside to do testing and your final installation.

Bought this for our hunting cabin, where you get one bar of service outside. Brought it up there and mounted it, and nothing seemed to work the way it should. Tried to aim the antenna at the various towers and none seemed to pick up a better boost than any other. The amplifier worked if you were standing right next to it, but if you moved more than a couple of feet away you would lose all signal. The screen to show what you were amplifying was going on and off like it was not locking on to a signal. Brought it home and called customer support and they said it sounds like I received a faulty amplifier, and they would ship me a new one that day. Weeks later I still had not received a tracking number from them and called back, this time I was told that they needed the old one back before they would ship me a different one, so I shipped off that one, waited until a week after it was confirmed that it was delivered and still hadn't received a tracking number, so I called them again and they confirmed that they had received the booster back and were shipping out the new one that day. Another week goes by and I call again, this time the new booster was sitting right there ready to be shipped.... another week goes by and another phone call to be told that "they would have to walk to a different building to see if it was shipped and we will call you back in about an hour".......no call back. Since that phone call I have been unable to get in touch with anybody from HIBoost. The phone just rings, no message leaving no reply from emails. A non-faulty booster from the company might be a good one, but their customer service is terrible or nonexistent.... I wouldn't take a chance on this company again and would try a different booster company first.
Update.. after this review, customer service contacted me and shipped out the new receiver. They went above and beyond trying to help me this time around and I will admit that I have been slow on doing my part. Got the new receiver to the hunting cabin and made a new antenna mount to get it higher and hooked everything up. Still get spotty service from the booster, but probably not the booster's fault. We are in the middle of the woods between three cell phone towers with all of them being around 9 miles away. Hi-boost had even sent me a map of the nearest towers to try to help. Service will jump from 3G to 1X on the cell phone, some guys can make calls others can text, but I guess some service is better than no service. Will keep the booster in place and hope that we get a closer tower some day and keep messing with different antenna"˜a to try and get better service. Changed my review from one star to three as they really did try to help after the first disaster.

The product is very well laid out. Easy to understand for install. However, I have spent years installing telemetry systems for the oil and gas industry. If I did not know a number of items regarding the install it would have taken a lot longer with time spent on Youtube. The instructions need to be more involved and detailed oriented with very simple steps. It is imperative that you have the 20ft(even more s better) minimum vertical separation and the maximum amount of horizontal seperation. The APP is a must for install. The APP really lets you tune the antenna for near perfect alignment. The indoor main unit is easy to install and really makes a big difference in the signal strength. No more dropped calls!