Wilson Electronics 801245 SOHO Repeater Amplifier Kit Review

Overall Rating

Simple to set up.
Very reliable.
This has really improved my signal from around 1-2 bars to a full 4 bars always.
Dual Band - So it works with my cell phone, my data card, my wife's phone and any visitors to our house all get reception.

This does not support the Nextel network, but then none of them do. You have to get a separate repeater to do this.

I have been using the Wilson cellular Repeater Amplifier Kit for a while now and I have to say I have been very impressed. My signal is now always at the maximum on any phone in our house. We do not get any dropped calls since we installed this repeater and the call quality is fantastic. We have since dropped our land-line as we no longer have any use for it and it is cheaper to simply use the contract on our cell phones. We would recommend this to anyone who experiences poor call quality in their building. Admittedly we weren't sure at first how well a system like this would work, but this repeater has vastly exceeded our expectations.

Laptop Data Card

I often work using my 3G data card and this frequently used to only get two bars of reception. The connection would come and go due to the lack of signal and this is a problem because if I was in the middle of downloading a file, for example, this would often cancel the entire download and I would have to start from the beginning - Very frustrating when trying to download large presentations form work. Amazingly, the reception is not only improved (a solid four/five bars) but the internet actually performs much faster. I never realized that I could actually improve the speed by improving the signal strength.

Installation

I do not have any experience in installing antennas or other amplification systems so as always I was apprehensive about how clear the instructions would be and the difficulty of installation. For one thing, the product that turned up actually resembled the images on the website (this never seems to be the case!) and it didn't look to intimidating. There is two antennas to install - one outside, which receives the signal - and one inside, which re-emits the signal. The instructions were very clear on how the system is set up and it turns out that it is just a matter of plugging wires from the amplifier to both the antennas. I put the outside antenna on my roof although I don't think this was even a necessity. All in all I managed to do this in less than half an hour.

Performance

Enough said already. This has done everything I could have asked for and more. It worked as soon as I had it set up.

- Dual Band

I purchased from www.repeaterstore.com mainly because they had the most information about the repeater and was cheaper than anywhere else. I thought at first that I had to find out which frequency I needed as there are two (800 and 1900), but then I found out about dual band. This means it works with both of these frequencies and so is compatible with all the cellular networks. If you use a network provider which uses only one frequency then you can get a cheaper repeater which is only single band. However many networks like Cingular and Verizon which my wife and I use have signal on both frequencies so you have to get dual band. This works out for the best though because if we ever want to change networks or move house to a different area, we know that this repeater will still work.

I give this product the highest rating.