Poynting XPOL-2 V2 Review & Install

Poynting XPOL-2 V2 Review & Install - Intro

Are you in the market for a Poynting XPOL-2 V2 Directional Cross Polarised LTE MIMO Antenna? Here are the wheres and whys, and my findings having purchased one.

Poynting XPOL-2 V2 Review & Install - What is It?

The Poynting XPOL-2 V2 (Poynting XPOL-2 V2 Directional Cross Polarised LTE MIMO Antenna) is an antenna (like an aerial) that you attached to your 4G router, and it "collects" more signal strength from the available signal, leading to the following advantages:

• Lower latency
• Higher Bandwidth
• Less Drop Out
• Stronger Signal

The antenna consists of 5 meters of high quality low loss coaxial cables, and gold plated SMA connectors, and the antenna itself, which is at 25cm x 25cm (9" x 9") plastic box with female threaded attachments on rear.

The cable come pre-attached, and the box included mounting brackets. You will need a round section pole to mount it on. 

Square 50mmx50mm lower section with round tube on top.

Poynting XPOL-2 V2 Review & Install - How to Install

In order to use this antenna, you will need a 3G or 4G router such as:

• TP-LINK TL-MR6400 (As pictured below - I have this one)
• TP-LINK AC750 MR6400
• Huawei B593 B315 B525 E5186
• NETGEAR M1 MR1100 NIGHTHAWK ZTE MF279
• Huawei E5186

Some of the later model of the TP Link MR200 (Version 3) do not have removable antenna, make sure your router has SMA connectors, or you will have to buy adaptors TS9 is another popular fitting that is easily adapted.

Open the box, and inside you will find all that is required to attached the antenna to a pole  it will not be easy to mount to a square post, or a wall, as setting the direction of the antenna, so its front flat face is pointing at the nearest mobile mast. It will require a round post to the mounted on.

It is important to note that this antenna will likely improve you 3G 4G experience whether it is mounted internally or external. External is preferential owing to lack of obstacles such as walls. 

In my case I used, a square wooden lower post, and a short length of round tube, on the top, which allowed for rotation. If you are looking to fix this to a wall then perhaps a "Satellite Wall Mount Bracket " would do the job.

The cable is 5 meters long. So this runs down from where you have mounted the antenna (some report putting in loft works OK) and at some point you will likely have to drill a hole in the wall. You need a 20mm drill bit, so you can get both connector though side by side. It is best to wrap the connectors in a little masking tape, to stop them getting dusty or scratched. 

Drill a hole in wall to pass through cable (on right in this picture)

One of the trickiest parts of the setup is pointing the antenna accurately at the mobile mast. If you can see the mast then that is all well and good, but if not it can be tricky to envisage where the mast is. I guessed at first and I was around 5 degrees off, which was the difference between 75% signal and 100%, so it is worth getting right.

I used the "measure" function on google maps to draw a line from the antenna location, to the nearest mobile mast. The line will cross something that you can see (house next door for example), and it is easier to line up with something close by than trying to guess. It transpires it is 1.9miles to my nearest mobile mast. 

Poynting XPOL-2 V2 Review & Install - Why Would I Need One?

If you are in any of the following situations, then you might benefit from using this XPOL-2 antenna:

• Rural and urban areas
• Poor data signal reception (indoor or outdoor)
• Slow data transmission connection areas
• Unstable connection
• Increase system transmission reliability
• LTE fringe areas (close to an LTE area, but just out of reach)

In my case I was probably non of these, as I could get about 16MB a second using a cheapo external antenna, but I needed a higher bandwidth so as to get more data (I had three kids using video chat during lockdown for CV19 2020), and had read that a good quality antenna would help. It did.

The new antenna, nearly tripled by down load speed, and upload speeds. I also noticed a slight drop in latency time (a good thing). 

Strangely enough despite this large jump in performance the signal strength did not change. With my router still telling be 75%, which was the same as the cheapo antenna. However, after fine tuning the direction of the antenna, which was off by about 5 degrees this did go up to 100%.

Download speed went up to over 50MB/s after this fine adjustment. 

Poynting XPOL-2 V2 Review & Install - Conclusions

This is a high quality directional antenna, that really works. If I had swapped this for the stock internal antenna, I would have seen a 500% increase in bandwidth, as it stood I still managed to get a 300% increase even when replacing an external antenna from another manufacturer. 

It is quite expensive, at £110 (compared to £25 for cheapo version) but I am very pleased with it. 

If you are out of reception, or not getting enough bandwidth, I would give this a wizz, it works miracles. 

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