Spotwave Zen Z1900 Wireless Coverage System

In Brief

Cell phones generally work great in major metro areas, but if your home or office is in the burbs, or simply in a bad location between towers, you may get a barely usable signal indoors, or none at all. The Spotwave Zen can't help in the latter case, since it requires at least some signal to amplify, but if you can get even a bar or two somewhere in your house, or just outside, the Zen really lives up to its billing.

The Z1900 boosted a sketchy 2-bar T-Mobile signal up to 3-4 bars in our wood frame house in Berkeley, Calif., and a 3- to 4-bar Sprint signal all the way up to a constant 5. Sadly, it doesn't work with anything except 1900MHz PCS frequencies, which eliminates Verizon and Cingular data service in this area (Cingular voice was supported). The coverage area is up to 2,500 square feet, enough for a typical house.

While pricey for a home solution at $399, the Zen is still the first truly consumer-friendly cell booster system available. Just take a little time to position the antennas in the right place, and you're done. It just works, and it works very well, vastly improving both voice quality and data throughput.

In Depth

If you think you're a candidate for the Zen treatment, the first thing to do is to go to the Spotwave site and enter your zip code, to see what carriers and services are supported in your area. All primary carriers are shown, although if your service provider piggybacks on the network of a larger carrier in your area, you'll need to find out which one. The other thing you need to do is make sure there is at least one spot within or just outside your house where you can get at least a two-bar signal. Otherwise there won't be enough for the system to work with.

Positioning the "network access unit" and "coverage unit" comes next. Ideally, you'll mount the larger network access unit high on a wall inside the house, although it can also be mounted outside under an eave, if you don't have a good enough signal indoors. That's assuming you have a wood-frame house. If you have alumimum siding, solid brick, concrete or stone, the best option is to mount it in a window. Then you select a spot for the smaller coverage unit that is as central as possible, and connect it to the network access unit with the included 35-foot coax cable (longer cables are available for purchase if needed). Handy indicator lights help you determine the best positioning and confirm signal strength. And all sorts of mounting hardware is in the box, including a desktop stand for the coverage unit.

Note that the fewer the bars of your source signal, the less 5-bar coverage area you will get inside the house. Spotwave says that with 3 bars at the network access unit, you can expect 5 bars within 250 sf of the coverage unit. Five-bar coverage expands to 1000 sf with a 4-bar source signal, and 2000 sf with a 5-bar source. In our tests, our 3- to 4-bar Sprint signal turned into 5 bars almost everywhere in our small 2-story house. Larger and more spread-out houses would have the signal drop off in the far reaches. And as with any wireless system, concrete, stone and metal construction materials will also obstruct signals.

The benefits of the Zen are not just in improved voice quality and data throughput. With stronger signals, your cell phone's battery doesn't have to work as hard, and will last longer. And with reliable cell coverage throughout the house, you can ditch your landline for good. That alone should pay for the system in a year or two.

The bottom line is that the Spotwave Zen is simple to use and works almost magically to boost weak cell signals to reliable levels. If you're tired of poor reception, or just want to get rid of your landline, the Z1900 is a great solution. We just wish it worked with 850MHz signals too.