What is the best cell booster for long trips with the kids?

It’s summertime and you’ve decided to pile everyone into the family truckster for a road trip. When you were a kid, you got through the long drives by counting Volkswagens or playing “I Spy.” You probably know your kids well enough to know that’s not going to quite do it. You’ll be lucky to get them to look up from their phones when you actually get to Mount Rushmore, never mind getting them to look out the window before that.

No, the family’s going to want to be on their phones, that’s just life in 2018. And it’s your job as the parent to make sure that happens, because the last thing you want while you’re on the road are cranky kids. You want this to be the kind of trip that everyone will look on fondly for years to come.

Here’s how you make it happen.

You have to make sure there’s good cell service everywhere, as much as you possibly can. Dropped internet is going to lead straight to kids beating each other up in the back seat, or even worse, touching each other. (“Mooommmmmm…. he’s touching me!!!”)

There are actually parts of our great land where you can’t get cell service, but there aren’t too many of them. The problem is usually congestion. When there are too many cars on the road, the cell towers get overcrowded and it’s first-come, first-served. You want to make sure your kids get the first crack at cell signal as you’re making your way through traffic.

You do that by putting in a cellular signal booster. A cell booster takes a weak signal from a distant tower and amplifies it for everyone in the car to use. In practice this means that your kids’ streaming gets through to the next cell tower before anyone else’s, and as far as those other people, well they snooze so they lose.

Now you just need to choose the right booster.

The Drive 4G-X RV Edition

I strongly recommend the weBoost Drive 4G-X RV edition for road trips, even if that trip’s in a regular vehicle. It’s the most powerful booster you can get for mobile use, amplifying signals up to 100,000 times and sending them throughout the vehicle. While it’s designed for RV use with its white omnidirectional outer antenna, that antenna can be mounted to your SUV’s roof rack too and the indoor antenna can be put anywhere in the average family sized vehicle.

Big antennas are the name of the game here and while there are certainly antennas that are smaller and meant for smaller vehicles, you’ll want the raw power that this bad boy can bring.

Also, it’s important to know that smaller vehicle boosters generally only support one user, while the Drive 4G-X can support up to eight. That’s important when everyone in the car wants to check their social media at the same time (hopefully you, the driver, aren’t doing that but I don’t judge.)

There’s no substitute and for me at least the answer is very clear. You’ll want the weBoost Drive 4G-X RV edition for your next road trip, even if it’s not in an RV. Luckily for you, it’s available now at Solid Signal.

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.