The best indoor TV antenna of 2024: Expert tested

Is the one that works best for you in your location. The cheapest one might give you all the channels in your area. Generally speaking, with indoor models, you’ll want to place it on a window or an external wall there. If you’re having real trouble pulling in a clear signal, you’ll want an outdoor antenna.

When buying a TV antenna, you should consider the following: 

• Location: Before purchasing an antenna, you must find out what OTA channels are available in your neighborhood. The easiest way to start is by going to a site like AntennaWeb, Antenna Direct, or the FCC’s DTV Reception Maps and using their interactive tools to see what OTA channels are available to you. 

• Range: For this list, I considered TV antennas with decent reception ranges to suit suburban and urban homes.

• Indoor/outdoor placement: It’s all about placement. One spot in your home might not get a signal, while another will get half a dozen channels. Still, for some homes, an indoor model won’t cut it. 

Fifty years ago, I was installing a TV antenna on a 100-foot tower in the middle of the West Virginia hills. In those days, I was helping with my dad’s television business. In West Virginia, with few TV stations and lots of hills and mountains, the only way you got TV was by having someone like my dad and his assistant — a.k.a. me — install towers and antennas on top of them.

Even though it’s been decades since I worked professionally with TV antennae, I still keep track of the technology, and went hands-on with nearly every antenna model on this list. When determining the best antenna, I considered several criteria such as range, set-up and installation, and price, and consulted experts who are still in the business. 

OTA TV, through an antenna, offers a variety of channel choices. Most of your local TV stations don’t offer a single channel but two or three different “channels.” Besides the big over-the-air networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, today, there are numerous smaller networks, such as MeTV, AntennaTV, and Comet, which offer older TV shows; Univision, Estrella TV, and Telemundo for Spanish-language TV; and QVC and other home shopping networks. 

A new, better OTA technology, NextGen TV, aka ATSC 3.0, is being deployed now. This will bring you even more channels, and 4K and High dynamic range (HDR) video. To see what NextGen channels may already be available in your neighborhood, check out the NextGen interactive map. 

If you have an indoor-use antenna, you’ll want to place it as close as possible to a window or, failing that, an exterior wall. You can also install it in your attic. Generally speaking, the higher the antenna, the better reception you’ll get. It’s all about reducing the number of obstacles a signal has to pass through before it can be picked up by the antenna and sent to your TV. 

You usually don’t. It was a different story in the analog days, but digital signals don’t gain much from amplifiers. Yes, they can boost signal strength to help you pull in marginal stations. But they also amplify noise. Sometimes, they’ll help, but usually, they cause more trouble than they’re worth. How can you tell? It’s a pain, but the only way is to try your antenna with an amplifier powered on and off. Usually, that means unplugging its power source, which is usually via a USB cable.  

You’ll need special equipment to measure your TV antenna’s signal strength properly. These connect to your antenna’s coax cables, “read” the signal coming from your antenna and measure the amount of interference you’re dealing with.

If you just want to make sure your antenna is pulling in a good signal, you can buy a simple unit like the King SL1000 SureLock for about $30. You’ll want a gadget such as the Augocom RY S110 for more detail for about $110.

If you just want a cheap way to figure out which way you should point your antenna to get the best signal, get a smartphone app such as Digital TV Antennas on Android and TV Antenna Compass USA for iPhones.

Nope. A single antenna is all most people will ever need. Of course, you can add smaller indoor antenna models as needed if you don’t want to drag cable around the house. You can share its signal with a coaxial splitter. That’s a simple gadget that you hook up to your antenna’s cable and then split other cables that go to your TVs, usually from two to eight. 

Some of the best splitters are the GE 33526 cable splitter, which can only split the signal between two televisions, the four-way RG6 RG59, and the Neoteck 8-Way Coax Cable Splitter. You can buy the first two for under $10 and the Neoteck for under $20.

You might want to use an amplified cable splitter if you have over four TVs. My favorite is the $55 Channel Master TV Antenna Distribution Amplifier, TV Antenna Signal Booster. 

Sure. There are DVRs for antenna television. My favorites are the AirTV Anywhere line, The AirTV 2, $130, and its $150 big brother AirTV Anywhere. There’s also the SiliconDust HDHomeRun Flex 4K, $200.

The AirTV models enable you to combine Sling TV streaming with an OTA antenna. Moreover, with it, you can record broadcasts and stream both Sling TV and local broadcasts over your home network. Indeed, you can watch your local shows even when you’re away from home. 

The AirTV2 is a two-tuner broadcast TV tuner that connects to your home network by Wi-Fi or Ethernet. With an external USB hard drive, which isn’t included, you can record and broadcast TV shows using the Sling TV app. The AirTV Anywhere comes with an internal 1TB drive and four tuners. This enables you to record up to four shows at a time.

The HDHomeRun Flex comes with four tuners, two of which are ATSC 3.0 compatible.  To use it as a DVR, you’ll need to attach an external USB drive and get a $35-a-year DVR subscription. All this requires a bit of hands-on work to set up properly. On the other hand, once it’s done, you can watch your recording on any television, PC, or other device on your home network.