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After testing several new antennas, including passive models, we recommend starting with the affordable Best Buy Essentials Thin Indoor HDTV Antenna and stepping up to a more advanced model if needed. 4g Antenna Outdoor
If you live within 20 to 30 miles of a TV transmitter tower, you can probably get most network and local channels by using a good indoor HDTV antenna instead of paying for live-TV service.
Any antenna’s ability to pick up a given over-the-air TV channel in a given locale is unpredictable, so we test antennas in a variety of places to gauge average performance. The affordable Best Buy Essentials Thin Indoor HDTV Antenna delivered consistently good results, so we recommend starting with that model. Step up to a more advanced, expensive option only if the basic model doesn’t give you the channels you want.
You can install our favorite indoor HDTV antennas in a minute or two with included adhesive tabs.
Because many over-the-air TV channels are now on lower frequencies, we tested through the VHF and UHF ranges.
Two of our picks incorporate a signal-level meter, which makes an antenna easier to position for the best reception.
Although we tested many designs, we generally favored flat indoor antennas that can hide behind TVs and furniture.
Of all the antennas we tested, this passive, non-amplified antenna gave us the best results on average, and it’s affordable and easy to install.
Across seven test runs in two cities, the Best Buy Essentials Thin Indoor HDTV Antenna pulled in the most TV channels on average, although by only a small margin. Most important, it didn’t perform poorly in any location, something we can’t say of other passive antennas we tested.
Because this antenna is passive, there’s no need to connect power for an amplifier, so installation is easier and more flexible. Just plug the 10-foot antenna cable into the TV, and you’re done. The antenna’s flat design makes it easy to hang or hide.
It’s possible to get more over-the-air channels using an antenna with a built-in signal-level meter and amplifier, but if you live someplace where pulling in TV signals is generally not too hard, the Best Buy Essentials antenna is the best option.
This amplified antenna incorporates a signal-level meter that lets you quickly find the best antenna position, but it’s a bit lacking in installation flexibility.
If you live in an area where it’s more challenging to find and hold over-the-air (OTA) TV channels, the RCA ANT3ME1 is a great choice. This flat, amplified antenna has a built-in signal-level meter that helps you find the optimum position for the strongest signals and potentially tune in more stations, without tedious trial and error.
When we used the meter to fine-tune the ANT3ME1’s positioning, it sometimes outperformed the Best Buy Essentials antenna. The meter itself is easy to read—it’s just a series of LEDs on the amplifier, which is built into the antenna’s 12-foot cable. But the amplifier requires an AC power outlet rather than USB power, which limits placement flexibility.
This amplified antenna’s app-driven signal meter allows you to get the absolute best reception and the highest possible number of channels. But it carries a high price and requires the use of a smartphone.
The Winegard Flatwave Amped Pro is the best choice for those who savor a high-tech, high-performance approach, who want to get the absolute maximum number of channels, and who don’t mind paying extra for it.
As you move this “smart” antenna around a room, the accompanying smartphone app gives you an update every six seconds on the number of channels you can receive. In every one of our trials, using the app to position the antenna helped the Flatwave Amped Pro rank either first or second in the number of channels received. A USB-powered amp is included, and the antenna has 18.3 feet of cable length.
However, the Flatwave Amped Pro is usually about twice the price of typical amplified flat antennas, and it requires a smartphone for you to make full use of its capabilities—which may not appeal to everyone.
Of all the antennas we tested, this passive, non-amplified antenna gave us the best results on average, and it’s affordable and easy to install.
This amplified antenna incorporates a signal-level meter that lets you quickly find the best antenna position, but it’s a bit lacking in installation flexibility.
This amplified antenna’s app-driven signal meter allows you to get the absolute best reception and the highest possible number of channels. But it carries a high price and requires the use of a smartphone.
I’ve worked as an editor or writer on audio/video publications for more than 30 years. I’m one of the first 10 people certified for video calibration by the Imaging Science Foundation, and I have conducted previous multi-product tests of TV antennas for Wirecutter, as well as Home Theater and Home Entertainment magazines.
I’ve also been a cord-cutter since 2000, relying entirely on broadcast TV, DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming for my video entertainment.
TV antenna performance is notoriously unpredictable, and no one can promise that any antenna will give you all the OTA channels you want in your area. Start with an inexpensive passive model and see if it pulls in your desired channels.
Despite the popularity of streaming services, many viewers still want the live-TV experience for news, sports, special events, or local foreign-language broadcasts. If most of the live-TV content you want to watch is on local broadcast channels, installing a TV antenna is much less expensive than getting those channels through cable or satellite TV or a live-TV streaming service like Hulu or YouTube TV.
However, TV antenna performance is notoriously unpredictable, and no one can promise that any antenna will give you all the over-the-air channels you want in your area. For this reason, we suggest that you start with an inexpensive passive model and see if it pulls in your desired channels. If it doesn’t, you can step up to a more advanced (and expensive) model. Make sure to buy the antenna from a vendor with a lenient return policy, because there’s no way to be sure how it’ll perform in your home until you try it.
That said, as long as you are within about 30 miles of the local transmitting towers and not blocked by trees, buildings, hills, or mountains, your antenna should receive free live programs from most or all of the major networks, as well as many independent stations. You can get the locations of your closest towers at AntennaWeb or RabbitEars.
For this guide, we focused on indoor TV antennas, which you can place in a window, on a wall, or behind your TV. These devices are all easy, practical, and affordable to install in a house or apartment. Depending on your location, you can probably receive more channels with a rooftop or attic antenna, but many people can’t or don’t want to install one of those. For more about this topic, see When to consider an outdoor TV antenna.
An indoor TV antenna can pull in dozens of local TV channels for free, but finding the best location can be a challenge. Here are some tips.
To decide which indoor TV antennas to call in and test, we considered the following parameters:
TV reception is unpredictable. As one antenna manufacturer explained, “The antenna that works great for you might not work for your neighbor because their house is constructed differently or they have to place the antenna differently.” So we can’t promise that you’ll get great results with the antennas that worked best for us.
In the hope of finding antennas that would work well under a variety of conditions, we tested them in multiple locations—some within a few miles of the TV transmitter, and others as far as 40 miles away. Our most recent testing rounds took place in various locations in and around Seattle and Portland, Oregon.
For each round of tests, I connected the antennas to a TV to see how many channels I could pick up. For antennas that incorporated signal-level meters, I tested them in the same positions as the other antennas and then tried using those meters to see if that would help me find a better antenna position. I created rankings for each antenna in each location, after which I averaged the rankings across all the locations to create a final ranking.
I finished by using a TinySA radio-frequency spectrum analyzer to examine each antenna’s performance in the frequency ranges from 50 MHz to 300 MHz (VHF) and from 450 MHz to 600 MHz (UHF). This step allowed me to see how strong each antenna’s signals were within different ranges of the broadcast band, as well as how noisy their output was—because if an antenna had lots of noise, the TV would have a harder time picking the signal out of the noise.
Of all the antennas we tested, this passive, non-amplified antenna gave us the best results on average, and it’s affordable and easy to install.
The Best Buy Essentials Thin Indoor HDTV Antenna offers an affordable, low-risk way to get started on the cord-cutting lifestyle. Through multiple rounds of testing spread across two cities, this antenna performed the most consistently, always one of the best models in the number of channels it could receive. Its passive, non-amplified design makes it easy to install, since it doesn’t need to be close to a power source (either a TV or a wall outlet).
In every location, this antenna’s reception impressed us. Most of the other antennas that achieved above-average performance tested in the middle of the pack in at least one location; this was especially true of the passive models. But the Best Buy Essentials antenna never seemed challenged by any of our tests. It wasn’t always the best, but it always ranked among the best.
In most locations, other good passive and active antennas may deliver the same number of channels, but based on our tests, we’ve concluded that this model is the most likely to pull in a couple of extra channels in a problematic location.
It’s unobtrusive and easy to install. This Best Buy antenna is as simple as TV antennas get, consisting of a rectangle with a 10-foot cable attached. Because it’s passive, you have no amplifier to connect, and it doesn’t require external power.
The 11.75-by-8.25-inch antenna is reversible, with black and white sides. It comes with three adhesive strips (two thick strips that attach to the body of the antenna and a slim one that attaches to the wider part where the cable comes in) that you can reposition as needed.
It’s inexpensive. Because this antenna is passive and simply designed, it’s inexpensive. You can find cheaper passive models, but they aren’t that much less expensive, and none of them performed as consistently well for us.
It is possible to get a powered antenna for the same price as this passive model, but we haven’t found one that consistently outperforms it—and powered antennas require more connections and are a little more complicated to install.
This amplified antenna incorporates a signal-level meter that lets you quickly find the best antenna position, but it’s a bit lacking in installation flexibility.
If you’ve found that a low-priced passive antenna isn’t finding and holding enough over-the-air channels in your area, consider moving up to the RCA ANT3ME1. This antenna incorporates an inline amplifier with a meter that shows the strength of the OTA signal, so you can try different potential mounting locations and find the best spot in just a minute or two. Its relatively short cable and hardwired AC adapter limit your positioning options, though.
The built-in signal-level meter makes finding a strong signal easy. The meter incorporates five LEDs: two red, one yellow, and two green. As you move the antenna to different places in a room, more LEDs illuminate as the signal strength increases. You could accomplish the same thing by using your TV to perform a channel scan in each antenna location, but with most TVs, each scan takes several minutes, which might mean an hour of trial and error.
In my former home’s living room in Los Angeles, getting even one extra LED to light up on the meter made a huge difference. When I mounted the ANT3ME1 in the same aesthetically convenient place I used for the other tested antennas, it picked up 51 channels out of 144. Moving the antenna to an adjacent wall caused an extra LED to illuminate and bumped the channel count up to 115.
However, the meter seems to cover a broad spectrum, including FM radio stations, so it’s no guarantee of success. In my Seattle home, a five-bar reading on the meter contrasted with the antenna’s actual performance, as it pulled in only six TV channels.
If you already have a strong TV signal in the room where you’re placing the antenna, the meter is unlikely to offer an advantage. Also, the five-step meter doesn’t offer the precision of the meter included in the app for the Winegard Flatwave Amped Pro, so you might miss a few channels that the more sophisticated meter would find.
It’s a well-designed antenna regardless of the meter. The ANT3ME1 is not listed as having low-VHF capability, but it gave us the best measured results with low-VHF signals of all the indoor antennas we tested. Although there’s never a guarantee that any given antenna will pick up any particular channel in a certain place, the ANT3ME1 does seem to increase your odds if you’re unlucky enough to have a major TV station on a hard-to-receive low-VHF channel.
It can be inconvenient to install. The cable between the amplifier and the antenna is only 9 feet long; the cable between the amp and the TV adds another 3 feet. If you have a large room, you may find that you need an extension cable.
Also, the amp is powered by a hardwired AC adapter rather than USB, so it’s another thing that you have to plug into the power strip. Four adhesive patches are included in the package; you can remove and reinstall the antenna, but if you use the signal-level meter, you probably won’t have to do so.
The ANT3ME1 is reversible, with black on one side and white on the other, but it’s a little large, at 14.13 by 11.88 inches. And it’s considerably more costly than our passive-antenna top pick.
This amplified antenna’s app-driven signal meter allows you to get the absolute best reception and the highest possible number of channels. But it carries a high price and requires the use of a smartphone.
The Winegard Flatwave Amped Pro is the indoor TV antenna for those who demand the absolute maximum number of channels and don’t mind using a smartphone to get the best results. Its Bluetooth-connected signal-level meter and mobile app show you how many TV channels you can get in any antenna position—it’s like getting the results of a channel scan in just six seconds rather than several minutes. But this antenna costs a lot more than our other picks.
This system’s precise metering might give you more channels. The Winegard Connected app (iOS, Android) provides a count of strong, moderate, and weak stations that updates every six seconds. In my former home’s living room in Los Angeles, the Flatwave Amped Pro pulled in 57 stations from the aesthetically convenient position where I also tested all the other antennas; using the signal-level meter, I quickly found a position where I could get 112 channels, exactly what the app promised.
In another room, where all five steps on the RCA ANT3ME1’s meter were almost always lit (though the actual number of channels received varied across the different antenna locations), the more detailed data I got from the Winegard app allowed the Flatwave Amped Pro to go from 82 channels in my original testing position to 110 channels, three more than the app promised.
In more challenging locations, though, the app may not help much. In my Seattle home, for example, the app indicated 31 channels, but my TV found only eight when I did the scan.
It’s pretty easy to install. You have 15 feet of permanently attached white cable between the antenna and the amp, and another 3.3 feet of cable connecting the amp to the TV. The amp can draw power from the included USB supply or from a spare USB port on your TV.
The Winegard antenna is also reversible, with black and white sides, and at 13 by 11.75 inches, it’s smaller than the RCA ANT3ME1. The only downside is that it comes with only two small, removable adhesive patches for mounting; you might need more, but you can use adhesive putty in a pinch.
If you want a very affordable, very small antenna: The One for All Indoor HDTV Antenna measures only 8 by 3 inches, and in our tests it usually pulled in just as many, or nearly as many, channels as our top pick. It also costs about half as much. It has a fairly short, 10-foot cable, and it’s reversible, with black and white sides. If you are within about 20 miles of your town’s main TV antenna array and not dead set on getting every available channel, it’s a good choice.
If you want an antenna that nearly disappears: The Ultravizion Transparent Indoor Amplified 4K HD TV Antenna has a transparent design that’s barely noticeable when it’s attached to a window. In one test within about 10 miles of the main antennas, it ranked among the top performers, but tests at longer distances placed it in the middle of the pack. It comes with 19 total feet of cable. It might be a good choice if looks are important to you, if you’re within about 20 miles of the main antennas, and you don’t necessarily need to get all available channels.
Thanks to outdoor TV antennas’ generally larger size and their ability to be positioned where there are no walls to interfere with the TV signal, they have the potential to pull in more channels than indoor antennas can. For example, in my former Los Angeles home, my outdoor antenna could receive 144 channels, while the best indoor antennas, in the best location I could find, got a little more than 100 channels.
However, installing an outdoor antenna is complicated, requiring either a tall mast (ideally, one that places the antenna 30 feet off the ground) or rooftop mounting—and even with that, nearby buildings and trees may interfere with the signal. You also need to run a cable into your home, either by snaking a flat cable adapter under your window or by drilling holes into the home’s exterior.
With indoor antennas, the trial-and-error process of finding the best location is relatively easy, but with outdoor antennas, repositioning the antenna is difficult and time-consuming.
We recommend installing an outdoor antenna only if you’re confident that the antenna will have an unobstructed shot at the transmitters for the channels you want to receive. To find out, use the search map features on AntennaWeb or RabbitEars.
Below are capsule descriptions of some other TV antennas that we concluded might be of interest to Wirecutter readers. If you don’t see a certain model you’re interested in, check out our running list of antennas we’ve tested or considered.
The Antan DVB-T9033JA was one of the top-performing passive antennas in most of our tests, but in a couple of locations its performance was below average.
Compact and circular, the Antennas Direct ClearStream Eclipse was a top pick in an earlier version of this guide, for which testing took place in New York and Philadelphia. But we found that it didn’t perform quite as well in Los Angeles.
The Antennas Direct ClearStream Flex is our former top pick. On average, it’s the best-performing powered indoor antenna we’ve found, but it’s nearly as pricey as some models that have built-in signal-level meters to assist in finding the best position for the antenna, and the best passive antennas perform just about as well for a much lower price.
The Antier AN2019 is an unusual, apostrophe-shaped powered antenna that performed respectably in our tests, although not as well as the best of the flat antennas. If you want a compact antenna that sits on a tabletop, it’s worth a try.
Although the Channel Master Flatenna ranked among the top performers in places where the TV signals were strong, in places with a weak signal it tended to pull in fewer channels than our picks.
The Mohu Leaf 30 is the antenna that put flat antennas on the map. It’s still available, and it performs pretty well, but not as well as our picks. Mohu was purchased by Antennas Direct.
The One for All Suburban 14424 soundbar-style antenna offers an attractive design; in our tests it typically provided middle-of-the-pack performance. The smaller Suburban 14450 model performed poorly in our tests.
The Philips Indoor Switch is similar to our top pick but costs almost twice as much, and it didn’t perform quite as well.
We were excited to try the extra-wide RCA ANT2160E, which we thought might outperform smaller flat antennas, but our picks generally surpassed it.
This article was edited by Adrienne Maxwell and Grant Clauser.
Brent Butterworth is a senior staff writer covering audio and musical instruments at Wirecutter. Since 1989, he has served as an editor or writer on audio-focused websites and magazines such as Home Theater, Sound & Vision, and SoundStage. He regularly gigs on double bass with various jazz groups, and his self-produced album Take2 rose as high as number three on the Roots Music Report jazz album chart.
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