The Best Indoor HDTV Antenna (2024)

I’ve worked as an editor or writer on audio/video publications for more than 30 years. I’m one of the first 10 people certified for video calibration by the Imaging Science Foundation, and I have conducted previous multi-product tests of TV antennas for Wirecutter, as well as Home Theater and Home Entertainment magazines.

I’ve also been a cord-cutter since 2000, relying entirely on broadcast TV, DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming for my video entertainment.

Despite the popularity of streaming services, many viewers still want the live-TV experience for news, sports, special events, or local foreign-language broadcasts. If most of the live-TV content you want to watch is on local broadcast channels, installing a TV antenna is much less expensive than getting those channels through cable or satellite TV or a live-TV streaming service like Hulu or YouTube TV.

However, TV antenna performance is notoriously unpredictable, and no one can promise that any antenna will give you all the over-the-air channels you want in your area. On top of that, different brands of TVs may be optimized to work better with different signal strengths. For this reason, we suggest that you start with an inexpensive passive model and see if it pulls in your desired channels. If it doesn’t, you can step up to a more advanced (and expensive) model. Make sure to buy the antenna from a vendor with a lenient return policy, because there’s no way to be sure how it’ll perform in your home until you try it.

That said, as long as you are within about 30 miles of the local transmitting towers and not blocked by trees, buildings, hills, or mountains, your antenna should receive free live programs from most or all of the major networks, as well as many independent stations. You can get the locations of your closest towers at AntennaWeb or RabbitEars.

For this guide, we focused on indoor TV antennas, which you can place in a window, on a wall, or behind your TV. These devices are all easy, practical, and affordable to install in a house or apartment. Depending on your location, you can probably receive more channels with a rooftop or attic antenna, but many people can’t or don’t want to install one of those. For more about this topic, see When to consider an outdoor TV antenna.

To decide which indoor TV antennas to call in and test, we considered the following parameters:

TV reception is unpredictable. As one antenna manufacturer explained, “The antenna that works great for you might not work for your neighbor because their house is constructed differently or they have to place the antenna differently.” So we can’t promise that you’ll get great results with the antennas that worked best for us.

In the hope of finding antennas that would work well under a variety of conditions, we tested them in multiple locations—some within a few miles of the TV transmitter, and others as far as 40 miles away. Our most recent testing rounds took place in various locations in and around Seattle and Portland, Oregon.

For each round of tests, I connected the antennas to a TV to see how many channels I could pick up. For antennas that incorporated signal-level meters, I tested them in the same positions as the other antennas and then tried using those meters to see if that would help me find a better antenna position. I created rankings for each antenna in each location, after which I averaged the rankings across all the locations to create a final ranking.

I finished by using a TinySA radio-frequency spectrum analyzer to examine each antenna’s performance in the frequency ranges from 50 MHz to 300 MHz (VHF) and from 450 MHz to 600 MHz (UHF). This step allowed me to see how strong each antenna’s signals were within different ranges of the broadcast band, as well as how noisy their output was—because if an antenna had lots of noise, the TV would have a harder time picking the signal out of the noise.

The Best Buy Essentials Thin Indoor HDTV Antenna offers an affordable, low-risk way to get started on the cord-cutting lifestyle. Through multiple rounds of testing spread across two cities, this antenna performed the most consistently, always one of the best models in the number of channels it could receive. Its passive, non-amplified design makes it easy to install, since it doesn’t need to be close to a power source (either a TV or a wall outlet).

In every location, this antenna’s reception impressed us. Most of the other antennas that achieved above-average performance tested in the middle of the pack in at least one location; this was especially true of the passive models. But the Best Buy Essentials antenna never seemed challenged by any of our tests. It wasn’t always the best, but it always ranked among the best.

In most locations, other good passive and active antennas may deliver the same number of channels, but based on our tests, we’ve concluded that this model is the most likely to pull in a couple of extra channels in a problematic location.

It’s unobtrusive and easy to install. This Best Buy antenna is as simple as TV antennas get, consisting of a rectangle with a 10-foot cable attached. Because it’s passive, you have no amplifier to connect, and it doesn’t require external power.

The 11.75-by-8.25-inch antenna is reversible, with black and white sides. It comes with three adhesive strips (two thick strips that attach to the body of the antenna and a slim one that attaches to the wider part where the cable comes in) that you can reposition as needed.

It’s inexpensive. Because this antenna is passive and simply designed, it’s inexpensive. You can find cheaper passive models, but they aren’t that much less expensive, and none of them performed as consistently well for us.

It is possible to get a powered antenna for the same price as this passive model, but we haven’t found one that consistently outperforms it—and powered antennas require more connections and are a little more complicated to install.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The Winegard Flatwave Amped Pro is the indoor TV antenna for those who demand the absolute maximum number of channels and don’t mind using a smartphone to get the best results. Its Bluetooth-connected signal-level meter and mobile app show you how many TV channels you can get in any antenna position—it’s like getting the results of a channel scan in just six seconds rather than several minutes. But this antenna costs a lot more than our other picks.

This system’s precise metering might give you more channels. The Winegard Connected app (iOS, Android) provides a count of strong, moderate, and weak stations that updates every six seconds. In my former home’s living room in Los Angeles, the Flatwave Amped Pro pulled in 57 stations from the aesthetically convenient position where I also tested all the other antennas; using the signal-level meter, I quickly found a position where I could get 112 channels, exactly what the app promised.

In another room, the detailed data I got from the Winegard app allowed the Flatwave Amped Pro to go from 82 channels in my original testing position to 110 channels, three more than the app promised.

In more challenging locations, though, the app may not help much. In my Seattle home, for example, the app indicated 31 channels, but my TV found only eight when I did the scan. We’ve also received a few comments from readers that this antenna provided too strong of a signal for some TV sets when used within 5 miles of a TV transmitter; in this situation, a passive antenna would probably work better.

It’s pretty easy to install. You have 15 feet of permanently attached white cable between the antenna and the amp, and another 3.3 feet of cable connecting the amp to the TV. The amp can draw power from the included USB supply or from a spare USB port on your TV.

The Winegard antenna is also reversible, with black and white sides, and it measures 13 by 11.75 inches. The only downside is that it comes with only two small, removable adhesive patches for mounting; you might need more, but you can use adhesive putty in a pinch.

If you want a very affordable, very small antenna: The One for All Indoor HDTV Antenna measures only 8 by 3 inches, and in our tests it usually pulled in just as many, or nearly as many, channels as our top pick. It also costs about half as much. It has a fairly short, 10-foot cable, and it’s reversible, with black and white sides. If you are within about 20 miles of your town’s main TV antenna array and not dead set on getting every available channel, it’s a good choice.

If you want an antenna that nearly disappears: The Ultravizion Transparent Indoor Amplified 4K HD TV Antenna has a transparent design that’s barely noticeable when it’s attached to a window. In one test within about 10 miles of the main antennas, it ranked among the top performers, but tests at longer distances placed it in the middle of the pack. It comes with 19 total feet of cable. It might be a good choice if looks are important to you, if you’re within about 20 miles of the main antennas, and you don’t necessarily need to get all available channels.

Thanks to outdoor TV antennas’ generally larger size and their ability to be positioned where there are no walls to interfere with the TV signal, they have the potential to pull in more channels than indoor antennas can. For example, in my former Los Angeles home, my outdoor antenna could receive 144 channels, while the best indoor antennas, in the best location I could find, got a little more than 100 channels.

However, installing an outdoor antenna is complicated, requiring either a tall mast (ideally, one that places the antenna 30 feet off the ground) or rooftop mounting—and even with that, nearby buildings and trees may interfere with the signal. You also need to run a cable into your home, either by snaking a flat cable adapter under your window or by drilling holes into the home’s exterior.

With indoor antennas, the trial-and-error process of finding the best location is relatively easy, but with outdoor antennas, repositioning the antenna is difficult and time-consuming.

We recommend installing an outdoor antenna only if you’re confident that the antenna will have an unobstructed shot at the transmitters for the channels you want to receive. To find out, use the search map features on AntennaWeb or RabbitEars.

Below are capsule descriptions of some other TV antennas that we concluded might be of interest to Wirecutter readers. If you don’t see a certain model you’re interested in, check out our running list of antennas we’ve tested or considered.

Compact and circular, the Antennas Direct ClearStream Eclipse was a top pick in an earlier version of this guide, for which testing took place in New York and Philadelphia. But we found that it didn’t perform quite as well in Los Angeles.

The Antennas Direct ClearStream Flex is our former top pick. On average, it’s the best-performing powered indoor antenna we’ve found, but it’s nearly as pricey as some models that have built-in signal-level meters to assist in finding the best position for the antenna, and the best passive antennas perform just about as well for a much lower price.

Although the Channel Master Flatenna ranked among the top performers in places where the TV signals were strong, in places with a weak signal it tended to pull in fewer channels than our picks.

The Mohu Leaf 30 is the antenna that put flat antennas on the map. It’s still available, and it performs pretty well, but not as well as our picks. Mohu was purchased by Antennas Direct.

The One for All Suburban 14424 soundbar-style antenna offers an attractive design; in our tests it typically provided middle-of-the-pack performance. The smaller Suburban 14450 model performed poorly in our tests.

The Philips Indoor Switch is similar to our top pick but costs almost twice as much, and it didn’t perform quite as well.

We were excited to try the extra-wide RCA ANT2160E, which we thought might outperform smaller flat antennas, but our picks generally surpassed it.

This article was edited by Adrienne Maxwell and Grant Clauser.