what are the top five best selling indoor HD antennas on Amazon
have in common with this more than you might think now before we get started
make sure you hit that subscribe button and the Bell icon so you can be notified
every Wednesday and Friday when we're back here with another video much like
this one but for today we're talking about the top 5 I can come back to this
later the top 5 best selling HD antennas on Amazon in order one two three four
five we're gonna be going into those because frankly we've been talking a lot
about streaming services lately and these fit in very nicely if you're
looking to cut the cord an HD antenna is something that you really want in your
arsenal unless you plan on paying a bunch of money for live TV now as far as
how I rated all of these essentially I just plugged them into the same TV in
the same location by the same window at the same time of day and gave them all
the best shot at an apples-to-apples comparison I really tried to give them
all the best position in the window and all of that sort of thing so we are
trying to do as close a comparison as possible now one caveat before we get
started is that your mileage may vary the results that we got are the results
that we got about 10 miles from the nearest broadcast tower we're close to a
downtown location so we got pretty good results I think based on our situation
but yours may not be as good and may be quite a bit better hard to say anyway
with that in mind let's dive into each individual antenna and look at how it
did alright so first things first over here we have the you must have digital
HDTV antenna but this is kind of a trick because this is the exact same antenna
they nabbed both the number one and the number two spot on Amazon's list so well
done whoever owns you must have you must have great SEO practices so they got
them both on their it they work exactly the same the only difference is this one
is black on this side and white on this side this one's white on both sides that
was the only difference except I should mention when we open the box turns out
some pretty flimsy construction on the on this USB plug right here so
yeah this one broke this was this came with the black unit but the white one
worked just fine once we got them both plugged in they worked exactly the same
so at a price of 2795 we got 51 channels in really pretty good pretty great
picture quality it worked really well so I was impressed with these ones the only
the only thing I would say is flimsy construction watch out for that alright
moving on to the number three slot this is just listed as digital HDTV antenna
you can also search model v8 but you can also find it by the picture because it
is the most different looking of all these this is a tabletop unit it doesn't
go in your window it goes kind of on your windowsill you can see it's a
pretty cheap plastic construction but I do like the matte black finish it's nice
looking at least and the other thing that's different about this is that you
have a built in amplifier you can switch it between short range and long range
depending on how close you are to the broadcast antenna and a note on that is
that you might be tempted to just switch it to long range no matter where you are
because you figure I'm gonna get more signal that way but if you're really
close to the broadcast antenna you could actually distort your signal by turning
on your amplifier so play with this a little bit to make sure that you get it
just right and it works pretty well for you now that little built-in amplifier
is going to cost you a little bit extra this retails for $39.99 on Amazon so you
are gonna pay a little bit more but you get a nice unit that doesn't go up in
your window so if that fits your aesthetic a little bit better that's
great as far as what you get for that $40 it's a little more expensive than
what you're paying over here and you're getting 44 channels is what we got for
one mode 50 on another so like I said play around with the amplifier play
around with the position in the windowsill and you should find a decent
number of channels but a little bit less than what you're getting with the number
one and two option here alright moving on to number four we've got the 1x1
amplified indoor HDTV antenna so that's a mouthful this one is probably the most
disappointing so far out of these there's nothing special about it
aesthetically it's black on both sides put it up in your window just like
anything else it plugs in just like anything else it does have an amplifier
built-in just like this one does but there is no switch to switch between
short and long range that amplifier is just working all of the time so that may
cause problems for some of you for others it will be a blessing but as far
as what we got for this we paid $23 for this antenna and we got 42 channels this
is the lowest channel count that we've got so far and so you're paying a little
bit less than you were on these units but you're also getting less so if
you're worried about channel count this probably isn't the unit for you okay
moving on to number five on the list but maybe number one in my heart this is the
vance key digital HDTV antenna this one has the same price tag as what you're
getting over here on the one by one but you are getting a little bit more for
that price now again there's nothing different about this aesthetically it
looks the same as well most of the other ones so there's nothing different there
but you do get a longer coax cable about 20 feet if my estimate was correct
20 foot coax cable may be great for your living room or it might be too much more
than you want to deal with so you can decide there but what you get for this
$23 price tag is 57 channels if you keep in track that's more than all the other
four it's much much more than what you're paying $23 for here in the one by
one version so the Vance key had the best performance as far as channel count
it also had the best performance in picture quality the one by one was
really lagging there a lot of the channels were glitching quite a bit had
this one very little fuss put it up in the window got great picture quality
with whatever channel we were looking at so that's it for our top 5 Amazon
antennas but now the question is how do they stack up against a little DIY
little doohickey like this so that's what I want to talk about because it is
it was shocking to me here's what I did I gave myself 60 seconds and I grabbed
anything metal I could find within arm's reach I got a spoon an allen wrench a
headphone jack and a paperclip taped them all together and hung them in the
coax jack on the back of the TV and I got 39 channels just with this thing so
the question is is it worth it to buy these well you know they are probably
going to be a little more reliable you don't have to give up a spoon out of
your kit is that worth 20 bucks to you now 39
channels also isn't quite as many as even the lowest on here the one by one
got what was that 42 so you are gonna get a little bit better performance from
an actual antenna but if you want a little hack just to get a few channels
for free you do something like this and just to make sure that this was actually
doing something I took it out and scanned for channels with absolutely
nothing attached to the coax Jack in the back of the TV and sure enough I got
zero channels that way so it really did work how about that now we've got one
more surprise in store for you but that's gonna wait for the next video
we're gonna be taking a look at this guy right here this is the ultra pro signal
finder HD from GE this was sent to us to test and so we did we put it to the test
just like all the other ones the question is whether this flashy full of
doohickeys HD TV antenna is worth twice the price as what you would pay for the
number1 and number2 antennas this one is $60 so we're gonna test it out and find
out whether you get something for 60 bucks or if you get the little GE logo
for 60 bucks that's the question and we're gonna tackle that next week so
make sure you hit that subscribe button and the Bell icon and like this video if
you enjoyed it make sure you comment below on your experience or your
favorite hack for how to get around using an antenna at all if you'd like
anyway thanks for watching guys we'll see you on the next video
you