The Wilson Sleek Cell Phone Reception Booster

Shortly before we left for our summer trip the middle of June this year I bought a Verizon 4G Wilson Sleek cell phone booster kit.  Wilson shipped it to me quickly and it was in perfect condition.  My plan was to hook it up to the built in cell phone antenna that came with my coach.  For the first 10 days of our trip there was no reason to try the Wilson as the cell phone reception we got was fine without it.

But soon after we arrived at our campground near Mt Rainier I discovered that the cell reception at the park was so poor that there was not any high speed data available.  And voice calls were not possible.  So I got out the Wilson kit and hooked it up.  The first snag was that there is more than one coax cable connector size and the one at the end of the cable in our motorhome did not match the one on the Wilson.  So I hooked it up with the included small antenna.

You need to have a cigaret lighter to power the Wilson Sleek or some other 12volt source.  So I plugged it in and put my Motorola Maxx in the cradle.  It promptly increased the signal and we got reasonably good data speed and good voice call quality.

After about 30 minutes I went over to pick up my phone and it was very warm.  It seems the Wilson generates quite a bit of heat.  With a phone sitting in the base cradle with no space between it and the base I was worried about ruining my phone.  So I tried moving one side of the phone a bit away from the base plate.  This significantly reduced the heat by allowing it to dissipate and the cell signal seemed to be the same as with all the phone right on the base plate.

During our trip we used the Wilson a couple of times and it worked well each time.  The heat on the phone does worry me.  In my opinion it likely will degrade the phone over time.  I still have not bought the adapter coax connector.  Radio Shack did not have them.  Wilson has them on their web site, but they are not cheap.