Poynting 4G-XPOL-A0001 Cross Polarised 4G Omni LTE Antenna

I live in a fringe 4G area and have tried all sorts of addon 'whip' aerials for my Teltonika 4G router, each antenna set has made some difference in signal and/or stability of the signal - all have been loft installed pinned to rafters. With the router supplied antennas I struggled to get 5 Mbps down and it was flaky. I ordered this external aerial as a 'punt' and, already, am seeing definite benefits. I have just installed it temporarily in my loft while I wait for mounting hardware. Prior to installation of this unit I was using two LTE 'high gain' whips (cheap but effective) and these improved my signal stability greatly and speed increased to over 12Mbps, sometimes 20 but it was still unstable. Several speed tests before and after installation show an average upload improvement of about 20 Mbps (now 40 Mbps or greater), upload has shown about 8Mbps improvement (again this is compared to my router with better aerials, not the originals supplied). I am being conservative with the numbers here. I am quite confident I can improve the speeds somewhat by getting the aerial outside and in the clear and will update this accordingly. I should also say I installed one of these Poynting aerials for a neighbour who had zero 4G signal on her phone handset. We could not achieve a stable connection using a teltonika router with it's supplied magnetic whips. We installed this Poynting aerial upstairs (again in loft space, while waiting for an installer) and achieved a good consistent 21+ Mbps upload / 45 - 61 Mbps Download. Again, I would expect improvement with the aerial located outside in the clear. Both my neighbour and I had been battling with BT to get any service at all, both being at the end of poorly maintained and very long overhead copper. Internet is not a luxury in this day and age, especially out in the sticks. Both connections discussed above are with EE and very much cheaper than a very poor quality landline and ADSL in name only (not to mention the stress of dealing with BT). Mobile handsets can piggyback of the EE connection. I am quite happy with the construction of the aerials, it is supplied with 5M leads terminating in SMA male. The plastics are solid, I can not see anywhere water could ingress and the cables are of sufficient quality to last. I have no qualms about mounting this hardware outside - even in northern Scotland where the weather tends to weed out poor quality hardware. I recommend this product based on 11 years of trying to get BT service without incurring either a coronary or breakdown, several experiments with 4G hardware and 35 years of being a licensed radio operator - not to mention the ability to actually use iPlayer and Amazon Prime Video from these remote wind blown parts.

I have gone from landline broadband of 0.2 mbps to over 11 mbps this is incredible given that my mobile phone reception is so poor and only works with a booster. This ariel was simple to connect and worked straight out of the box. It took a little bit of time to find the exact position but if you live in a good reception area my friend who I recommended this product to went from 4mbps to over 90 mbps in rural Scotland. Everything was included in the box and for once a product just worked, with the omni direction and a good dual router its an excellent product. It gives a good consistent speed it will drop slightly in extremely bad weather but so does a mobile phone, it can also be a bit slower at peak times but again that is more to do with the provider than the equipment. If your looking at this product ave no doubts about buying it as it really does work, its well made and has been exposed over the last few weeks to a variety of severe weather situations and it still continues on. I currently have it stuck to the outside of my window and despite the wind and the rain it hasn't moved. With the good results I got I was contacted by a company who said that their ariel could increase my speed to at least 60mbps, well two hours later and they could not match the speed I was getting with this ariel. Their product was over three times the price of this and was actually quite flimsy when I saw it. If you are looking to purchase you will not be disappointed .

Arrives with the antenna, 5m of (rather stiff) cable, male SMA connectors attached, some screws and so on, and a little booklet. The picture is incorrect, the supplied antenna is the newer version, although it looks very similar. This antenna is quite small, and the aerials inside the unit are probably the same size or perhaps even smaller than the ones in your router. Not only that, but the cable loses signal, as all cables do. So in some cases you aren't going to get better reception than you are already getting. Where this antenna comes in, is if your router is badly positioned, and being able to place the antenna somewhere within the 5m reach of the cables offers a significant improvement. In my case, it did not. In all the positions I tried, there was no noticeable difference. I could tell you that the difference was only 1dbi, but you would probably get different results. The Poynting is very well-made, but it is small, especially for the money. Size is everything with an antenna, and I compared the Poynting with a much larger Chinese unit that was 20% more expensive, but three times the size. Finally, that gave the result I needed. It showed a gain of 7dbi over the existing antenna. It stabilised the signal, so there was a noticeable improvement. My conclusion on this, for me, was that the Poynting was a good option for something like a car or caravan where reception is terrible, and you just need to get the antenna out of the Faraday cage you are sitting in, but you also need compact size. However, if you are at home, and the size is less important, then go for a larger unit. The bigger, the better. Recommended for certain applications only.

This has given me a steady 2-3 out of 5 bars signal mounted on an external pole outside our caravan, where wepreviously had little or no reception with the same LTE (mobile broadband) router using its internal antennas. Good choice of mounting options including pole mount, wall mount and suction cups for Windows. I'm using a Huawei B535, and initially I was disappointed with the results as the router defaults to 'Auto' aerial selection, which I had expected to select the strongest/best signal, but it didn't. Instead, it remained resolutely on the internal antennas only, and I had to log into the router via its web interface and manually switch to external antennas mode for the signal improvement to be achieved. Just mentioning this for anyone who has a similar lack-lustre initial experience as it might be the same thing! It may sound obvious but some mounting / signal tuning tips: - make sure the connections to the router are nice and tight. Loose connectors can lower the signal strength. - it isn't going to work as well inside as it does outside in most cases. - even mounting it on a window that has a clear line of sight to the nearest transmitter is likely to be much better than just having it mounted somewhere inside. - a caveat to the above: mounting it in an attic space (higher up) inside the building can sometimes produce better results than mounting it lower down somewhere outside or on a window lower down. - with signal reception you need to experiment. Even the pros need signal meters most of the time. You probably won't want to splash the cash on a dedicated meter, but most routers will give you detailed signal strength and quality info. - maximum signal strength doesn't always mean better quality - it can be a fine balance. - the signal level on your phone's WiFi has nothing to do with the router's LTE signal level. Some routers offer a user friendly signal strength monitor you can use to wander around looking for the best spot. Depending on the model, this might actually be for the WiFi signal and not the LTE one, so double check before wasting your time. - even though it is an omni-directional antenna, subtle changes of orientation can yield better signal quality.

Right, not sure where to start really? I've got 3 home broadband and I'm in a poor signal area, getting around 6-7mbps. So obviously to improve the signal, my only option was to try an external aerial. Before I did this, I ran tests. I moved the router around, literally every part of my house, the only increase in signal appeared to be in the back bedroom, but that only increased it to around 11mbps. I thought I would try it in the loft. Not really much better unless I had it right on the apex of the roof, then was getting around 20mbps. Only wanted to leave the router in the loft as a very last resort, so I looked around and decided on this external aerial. When it arrived, I tried it all around the house, paying more attention to the rear, seeing that was the side with the strongest signal. Now I can say with all honesty, it increased the signal strength from 3 bars on the router, to 5 bars (full strength) and on the accompanying app, it went from an orange signal into the stronger green zone. But has for download speeds, made no difference whatsoever. So although I was happier with the stronger, more consistent signal, the speeds didnt work for me. So seeing that I got my strongest signal in the loft, I thought I'd fix the aerial to the chimney breast, right up at the apex. So to first test it I took the aerial and the router up into the loft and tried it.....low and behold, i got speeds of 35-40mbps. The signal strength didnt improve anymore, but the speeds did. So i decided this is where I'd fix the aerial. Now as the cables are only 5m long and i was using around 2 metres in the loft, i had only a small amount to play with in the bedroom underneath. So fixed the aerial, fed the cable down into a fitted wardrobe and had the router on a set of drawers next to the wardrobe. Connected it all up, ran tests and only getting around 16mbps. This literally made no sense whatsoever. On the router, you can set the aerial to internal, external, auto and both. So made sure it was set to external, it was. This was confirmed when disconnected (the light went red). Connected it back up, ran a speed test and 16mbps. So I had a choice, live with the speed or send back. Has it happened, the router wouldn't quite reach the set of drawers, due to the lack of cable, so decided to place it on the top shelf of the fitted wardrobe, push the then spare cable back into the loft and coiled it up. Ran another test and 33mbps. I've been continually testing the connection since (approx a 10 days or so now) and the speeds run consistently between 29-40mbps. Dont ask me how all this works, it makes literally no sense, but for whatever reason the speeds seem to work at it's best, if the aerial and router are as close as possible. Now I am fully qualified in aerials, satellites and networking, and I dont even understand it. If the external aerial works independently to the internal aerial, then theoretically the router could be placed anywhere within the 5m the cables allow, but that simply isnt the case. So my advice to anyone thinking of buying this aerial to improve their download/upload speeds, dont just assume you can screw it to any old wall and expect it to work. You have to try it EVERYWHERE. And also have to try and get your router as close as possible too. Now this was my experience and it may well be different for you? I am in a particularly poor signal area, surrounded by trees and buildings. So my advice would be, spend the full day if need be and try everywhere physically possible. There will be a place it works. I believe all the negative reviews are due to people buying it and screwing it to one place and not getting the results they was expecting. Now to be fair, you would think it would be a lot easier than my experience, but it just isn't. So stick with it, put some effort and time into it and I'm sure you can also make it work for you.

To get the suckers in... Use the end of an arm of a bottle opener. Works fine. Just push on the bulge of the top of the sucker pad with the bottle opener arm as you apply pressure on the bottom of the sucker pad to try and get it into one of the four holes of the plate at the back of the antenna. I found it impossible to do otherwise. This antenna.... I've tried it where I am at the moment... A place called Finham in Coventry... It's in a bit of a dip... Consequently you get fairly OK reception outside... And absolutely crappo inside a building... Inside the house I tried the 4g router, a Huawei B315 150mbps with two external rabbit ears as antenna, next to the lounge window and I got a surprising 15 to 25 mbps, averaging 20. I rigged up the external aerial on the highest upstairs window I could reach (1st floor) and found the 5 meter cables gave me enough rope to go through the lounge window and into the router on the windowsill. This configuration was better... Around 25 to 40 mbps, averaging 30. That's a 50% improvement. Well worth around £70. UPDATE... Had this for about a month and a half. FYI the plastic suckers do NOT always keep their grip. I am in between houses and cannot / can't be bothered screwing this into anything... This being stuck to an outside window is where I want to be for now... However, I think the suckers are losing their pull, and are not as poky as they were when new. Consequently I am using the suckers with a little soapy water and am resealing every week or so. The other thing is, this really matters where you use it... A good tip is to hang out the upstairs window, on every available side of your house / flat etc with your mobile phone and see the best window / side of the property i.e. the one place where you get the best reception, and stick it there. The front and back of this house give wildly different readings. I swapped from front to back and the readings are better still... Instead of averaging 30, I am now pulling in over 40mbps.

Installed the 4G-XPOL-A0001 in my office in central London. Unfortunately I don't have fibre in our Grade II listed office and the only current alternative is to use a 4G sim card. The signal fluctuates between 100% to 25% strength usually dropping in the day where I presume there are more users of the mobile data networks. I read the reviews for the 4G-XPOL-A0001 and as always I read a cross section of both good and bad and decided to give this a go as some reviewers leave overly biased reviews either good or bad. Installation was relatively straightforward; I installed the window sucker option, yes these are hard to fix to the device and yes the suckers do not stick to the window for more than 30 minutes at a time. This is as other reviewers experience, which was disappointing and frustrating in equal measure. I can only presume that the sucker option is there to find a good position to then permanently fix thereafter. It can't possibly have another option, unless it was poorly designed. The 4G-XPOL-A0001 is an omni-directional aerial and I think this was the downfall for my setup. There are several mobile phone masts near me with the one I want to connect to being behind my building (and a brick wall with Victorian dimensions) in the way. I thought that the 4G-XPOL-A0001 will generally boost my signal just another 15-25% but unfortunately it had a negative effect and reduced my signal, Upload/Download and latency. For my business I require upload over download and a strong stable signal which unfortunately the 4G-XPOL-A0001 did not provide. I've read several similar reviews and also checked forums for this device and it transpires that boosting your mobile signal can be problematic and a little bit of a mine field if you don't have a degree (or interest) in mobile/radio telecommunications. What I wanted was a device to simply increase and provide stability for my mobile signal, which the 4G-XPOL-A0001 did not provide. The product is being sent back to Amazon.

I already had a fairly decent speed from my TP Link antennas of 30 down and 15 up which was a great improvement from my BT Broadband of 13 down 1.5 up. BT decided they wanted to put there prices up to £36 pm which I thought was a joke considering the speed they were giving me. I decided to go with VOXI on the Vodafone network as this is the strong network in my rural location. They are a little pricey at £35 pm unlimited data but it works for me. So, by changing to 4G I hadn’t saved any money but I had gained double the speed. As I am paying a high monthly price I thought I would see how fast I could get my internet by buying an external antenna. I had tried one external antenna but it only had one cable and it didn’t work. The Poynting antenna feels well made and has a reasonable cable length although a little longer would have been good. When I first contacted the antenna not a lot changed. I was getting the same speed. After some trial and error I managed to reboot and set up the router from scratch which then tripled the down load speed that I am getting. Finding the sweet spot for the antenna is the hard part. A slight movement from its location drastically changes the results. I had planned on attaching it to my drain pipe but I was back down to 30 MBps. My sweet spot seems to be bang in the middle of my upstairs window attached using the suckers. Not where I wanted it but at 96mbps I’m not going to grumble too much. The suckers were difficult to put on the antenna but a previous review had said to use a bottle opener which worked for me.