Televes Innova Boss Mix Smart HDTV Indoor Antenna

With its diminutive tabletop design, the Televes Innova Boss Mix is ideal for tight apartments or dorm rooms: This $69 antenna includes a built-in amp to help improve reception, and even has a set of rabbit ears to elicit a touch of nostalgia. 

In our tests, the Innova Boss Mix did a reasonable job tuning in over-the-air broadcasts, especially considering its modest reception radius rating and compact proportions. 

If a compact antenna is all that you need, the Televes Innova Boss Mix is great, but folks wanting top-tier performance that rivals the best TV antennas won't quite find it here.

Design

With an ovoid chassis and a non-marking foam-coated U-shaped base, the Innova Boss Mix is made for tabletop or shelf placement. It stands just over 4-inches tall, but also has two telescoping rabbit ear antennas that can be folded down in back and includes a built-in amplifier (rather than an inline booster). 

On the front bottom of the black antenna are a series of subtle green LEDs to let you know it's powered on and receiving a signal. 

Setup

The Innova Boss Mix proved particularly easy to set up. It has a detachable 4.8-foot coaxial cable — short by any measure. But if you need to place the antenna farther from your set, you can easily replace it with another stretch of cable (a typical 10-foot coaxial cable costs about $10).

In addition, unlike in-line boosters that have to be placed near the TV connection and plugged in, usually via a USB port, the Innova Boss Mix has the amp built into the antenna body. So to power it up you plug the antenna in directly with the supplied power cable. This makes it easier to put it farther away from your set if necessary.

For final placement, particularly given the Innova Boss Mix's rated signal range of only 20 miles, we recommend checking what local over-the-air stations are available in your area by visiting a site such as Antennaweb.org. Popping in your zip code will reveal what local broadcasters are nearby. 

Performance

Televes characterizes the Innova Boss Mix as intended for urban and metro locations. Using a 55-inch Hisense U8 Series QLED TV, which has a built-in NextGen TV tuner, we were initially surprised to find a channel scan found 85 channels in our area. Alas, as with nearly all the antennas we've tested, the number of actually watchable stations was considerably fewer. 

As with most antennas, we were able to receive a solid picture from the local CBS affiliate, as well as from NBC and at least one PBS station. On the other hand, the local Fox channel was a non-starter and the ABC affiliate was just a jumble of pixels. Oddly, we were also unable to tune in the local community broadcast stations, which usually don't present a challenge, but we did get Telemundo clearly.

Ultimately, the Innova Boss Mix was only able to adequately capture 31 of the originally registered 85 stations. That's an average performance result and better than we expected given the physical stature of the antenna.

Verdict

The Innova Boss Mix is a nice compact antenna that's simple to install and does a respectable job pulling in stations in an urban setting. 

However, if you're after maximum station-tuning capabilities or live in a far-flung suburb, there are less expensive — albeit not nearly as fashionable — alternatives such at the Channel Master FLATenna and Mohu Leaf Amplified.

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