Constructed for the related nomad, the Starlink Mini ($599) is a compact, transportable, and barely extra reasonably priced model of the present Starlink V4 dish utilized in residential installations. Given its smaller dimension and handy design, lots of people have an interest within the Starlink Mini, whether or not it is to be used in a car or RV, backpacking off the grid, or simply getting connectivity the place it is wanted most, whatever the native infrastructure.
I have been utilizing Starlink web at residence, each as a reviewer and as a buyer, for greater than two years now. So after I noticed Starlink’s transportable Mini, I knew that I wished to check and overview that variant, too. On this preliminary spherical of testing, it is clear the place the Starlink Mini actually shines—portability, ease of setup, and stable efficiency—in addition to the place it might not dazzle customers the best way the residential gear does. Let’s examine the way it did in our testing, and in our hands-on time with the {hardware} and repair.
What Is Starlink Mini?
Because the title implies, Starlink Mini is the smaller, extra transportable model of the present Starlink V4 dish provided by SpaceX. With a smaller footprint, lighter weight, and an built-in wireless router, this little dish can be quicker to arrange and simpler to maneuver than the usual residential set up equipment, which is supposed for stationary long-term use.
How a lot smaller is it? With a dish face that measures 11.8 by 10.2 inches, and a slim design that is simply 1.5 inches thick, it is roughly the scale of a big faculty binder and simply as backpack-friendly as a Trapper Keeper. Weighing simply 2.6 kilos, it is mild sufficient to hold on a protracted hike or to hold one-handed when setting it exterior an RV.
Related Merchandise
Starlink Dish V4 and Router Gen 3
The Mini builds on Starlink’s current know-how for satellite tv for pc web terminal design, utilizing the identical type of antenna array and beamforming know-how that the residential endpoint makes use of and mixing that with a handy go-anywhere design with an built-in kickstand.
With an IP67 Type 4 rating, it has the identical type of weatherproofing because the V4 dish, in addition to the identical snowmelt feature to maintain the dish away from accrued ice and snow. In contrast with the residential dish, the Mini has energy choices which are extra versatile, and an easier setup course of.
(Credit score: Brian Westover)
Contained in the Starlink Mini is a Wi-Fi router, related in lots of respects to the Starlink Router (Gen 2) that was paired with older 2021 Starlink dishes. It helps Wi-Fi 5 connectivity, a dual-band MU-MIMO system that may deal with as much as 128 related units. The built-in router simplifies setup, as no further cables are required to attach the dish to the router, and the modest Wi-Fi vary is ideal for a car or campsite.
Who Wants Starlink Mini?
There are a number of situations wherein customers may need this smaller, extra transportable model of the Starlink dish and router. Practically all contain journey, with the smaller dimension and extra versatile design being superb for getting web entry wherever you might be. So long as you may get energy for the dish (it does not have a built-in battery) and an unobstructed view of the sky, you may get web entry just about anyplace within the nation. Observe: The place most Starlink customers can be utilizing a Residential service plan for his or her month-to-month service charges, Mini customers will want a Starlink Roam plan, which is supposed for customers who’re utilizing the service on the go or regularly transferring areas.
(Credit score: Brian Westover)
The small dimension, weatherproof design, and versatile energy choices make it nice for campers, whether or not in an RV or hoofing it by the mountains. It is also nice for momentary places of work and occasions that will want connectivity, whether or not that is for distant work within the subject or offering Wi-Fi for friends at a competition or retreat.
It is also superb for emergency response. The compact dimension of the dish makes it shortly deployable in catastrophe conditions the place native web entry could also be knocked out for days, weeks, and even months. When connectivity is significant, the Starlink Mini may very well be a literal lifesaver.
Lastly, there’s in-vehicle use. Enterprising clients have arrange the Starlink Mini within the rear windshield of a automotive, on the roof of a van, and within the cabs of a truck and a mix harvester. As a result of the Roam plan consists of in-motion use, you need to use the Mini for excessive portability anyplace on land. (Airplanes and boats would require a special plan.) The one situation with car use that we have uncovered in our analysis (we have not examined it ourselves but) is that there is a direct correlation between car pace and slower web connectivity. Speeds drop additional when a car turns, because it takes a while to recalculate dish and satellite tv for pc positions.
(Credit score: Brian Westover)
Now, there are a few different choices on the market for off-grid web on the go, they usually’re positively price mentioning. The primary is recognizing that the bigger residential Starlink dish may also be used on this type of cellular vogue, although it might require a barely extra sophisticated setup to accommodate the separate router and totally different energy necessities. It might additionally want a special service plan, although some customers have reported with the ability to transfer from one location to a different on the residential plan with out situation.
The opposite competitor is a really totally different tackle satellite tv for pc web, utilizing the identical know-how as satellite tv for pc telephones. The Iridium Go, which retails for round $900, is a satellite-connected Wi-Fi hotspot made for each mounted and cellular use. It makes use of Iridium’s smaller antenna design and operates in a special spectrum band, however solely affords 88Kbps down and 22Kbps add speeds, making it extra suited to voice calls and e-mail. It does, nevertheless, have a built-in battery, which could make it extra engaging to customers who really want to journey mild, or want to make use of it decidedly the place there is no technique of powering the {hardware}.
Past these options, getting web connectivity on the go is basically restricted to mobile hotspots and related 5G-based connections, with the identical protection limitations as smartphones.
Starlink Mini: Gear Prices and Roam Service Plans
The Starlink Mini equipment is $599 and comes with every little thing it’s worthwhile to get began. That is the identical value because the residential Starlink set up equipment, however for a number of months, together with once we bought the gear, that very same Starlink Mini equipment has been discounted to as little as $449.
There are two Starlink Roam information plans accessible to be used with the Starlink Mini. The primary is a 50GB plan that prices $50 per thirty days; that 50GB refers back to the information cap per month-to-month billing cycle, with further information costing extra money. If that is too restrictive, you might select the opposite possibility, the Roam Limitless plan, which prices $165 per thirty days with no information cap.
Setting Up and Putting in Starlink Mini: Straightforward Does It
The Starlink Mini comes with the transportable dish/router combo, a 50-foot energy cable, a 120-volt energy adapter, and swappable kickstand and pole mounting {hardware}. The inclusion of the pole mount is definitely a really good enchancment over the residential equipment, which does not supply totally different mounts within the field, requiring you to buy one individually. (If you happen to want a extra everlasting mount, a lot of the Starlink accessories have a model accessible for the Mini.)
(Credit score: Brian Westover)
Organising the Starlink Mini is snap-simple and may be carried out in minutes. The equipment comes pre-assembled with a kickstand, which is ideal for plonking down the Starlink Mini on a transparent spot of floor with an unobstructed view of the sky. All it’s important to do is level it in the appropriate course, plug it in, and activate the dish by the Starlink app.
(Credit score: Brian Westover)
The app will stroll you thru the fundamentals of checking for obstructions and orienting the dish, and with solely the facility cable to fret about, that is all you actually need to do. Not like the residential dish and router, the Mini requires no separate {hardware} for Wi-Fi, and the built-in router has a 150-foot wi-fi vary.
That stated, there are a few particulars price mentioning. First, the included 120-volt energy adapter is rated as IP66 Sort 4, which implies it is rated for each indoor and out of doors use and may rise up nicely towards falling rain, sleet, snow, windblown mud, and splashing water. That is superb for tenting and RV use, the place out of doors energy could be your solely possibility.
(Credit score: Brian Westover)
Second, it solely comes with the wall outlet energy adapter and 50-foot cable. If you wish to run the Starlink Mini off 12-volt car energy, you are able to do that with out a converter. Nonetheless, it nonetheless wants the suitable plug adapter and a shorter cable. (The 50-foot cable is definitely too lengthy to take care of the required voltage with 12-volt energy.) And because it truly works on 12-to-48-volt energy, it’ll work simply nice with one thing just like the 16-volt energy provided by a Tesla or different electrical car.
Plus, for these of you planning to run the Starlink Mini off of a car battery or an off-grid energy resolution, you may be happy to know that the Mini cuts the facility consumption from Dish V4’s 70 watts down to twenty watts.
Testing Starlink Mini: Portability and Efficiency
To check the Starlink Mini, I set it up in the course of my garden (versus my primary Starlink dish, which lives up on my roof). With clear visibility of the sky and nothing to disturb it, I merely ran the facility cable to the closest outlet.
Now, going into this overview, I knew I needed to alter my expectations. The Starlink Mini is considerably smaller than the common residential dish and has a decrease energy draw. I anticipated these variations to have an effect on efficiency, so I knew going into testing that the outcomes wouldn’t be precisely what I had seen in my different Starlink testing.
However the query is not whether or not the Starlink Mini may change the bigger residential dish I have already got. The query is whether or not the Starlink Mini affords sufficient efficiency for web entry on the go.
Let’s take a look at the info. The very first thing we have a look at is general obtain speeds, breaking out the outcomes into low, imply, and excessive speeds in order that we are able to see what efficiency was like from daily, over the 2 weeks I ran pace exams at my residence in snowy rural Idaho…
Over these two weeks of testing, I noticed comparatively low speeds a lot of the days that I examined, however I additionally noticed spikes the place speeds jumped as excessive as 140 megabits per second (Mbps). This occurred on a number of days, at the same time as the typical or imply obtain pace hovered round 20Mbps. That is truly consistent with SpaceX’s claims for the Mini, which promise typical obtain speeds from 5Mbps to 50Mbps on the Roam plan.
General, the efficiency is nowhere close to as spectacular as what I’ve seen when testing Starlink’s common dish and repair. Nonetheless, the height obtain speeds, after they occurred, simply exceeded the 100Mbps that SpaceX claims because the higher restrict for efficiency for the Starlink Mini.
Oddly sufficient, the excessive speeds appeared wildly inconsistent from daily, a curious factor, provided that the dish was stationary with an unobstructed view of the sky and fixed testing 24 hours a day for the two-week interval.
Subsequent is a have a look at obtain pace consistency. As you possibly can see, the obtain speeds had been largely 30Mbps and decrease, a far cry from the quicker speeds we’re used to seeing from Starlink’s residential service, however anticipated on this gear and repair plan.
As a result of decrease obtain speeds, the add speeds truly provided spectacular parity, with 10Mbps to 20Mbps being pretty constant in our testing. Provided that SpaceX claims add speeds starting from 2Mbps to 10Mbps, this additionally exceeded our expectations.
The one space the place the Starlink Mini largely matches its bigger counterpart is in latency, probably on account of the truth that SpaceX has been exhausting at work lowering the latency of your complete satellite tv for pc and ground-station community. In our testing, we noticed the majority of ping outcomes falling between 10 and 30 milliseconds (ms), and nothing larger than 40ms. It is price noting, nevertheless, that customers exterior of the continental US might even see larger latency, as much as the 60-to-90ms vary.
Once we escape the latency by server, separating Cloudflare and Google ping outcomes, we once more see that just about all of our recorded ping occasions are underneath 30ms. And whether or not they had been going to Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 or Google’s 8.8.8.8, the outcomes are extraordinarily related. We did see a couple of stray pings to Google servers that exceeded 90ms, however these had been a tiny fraction of the general recorded outcomes.
Testing: Starlink Residential vs Starlink Mini
If we instantly examine the typical efficiency between the transportable Starlink Mini and the stationary Starlink Dish V4 that’s used for residential subscriptions, the distinction is fairly stark…
The bigger residential dish places up common obtain speeds of practically 150Mbps, versus the paltry 16.5Mbps of the transportable Starlink Mini. Add speeds are nearer, however solely as a result of the residential plan averages round 23Mbps, greater than double the 9Mbps provided by the Mini.
The latency or ping price for the 2 methods is essentially the most related facet of efficiency, averaging 20.47 milliseconds (ms) for the Mini and 28.99ms for the residential gear. (Each choices use related know-how, and work with the identical satellites and infrastructure, in any case.)
However the backside line right here is evident to see: The Starlink Mini is a superb possibility whenever you want web connectivity on the transfer, however if you happen to’re contemplating choices for long-term use, the residential set up bundle (which incorporates the Starlink Dish V4 and Gen 3 router) affords superior speeds and efficiency. If you happen to’re considering of choosing the Starlink Mini as your all-in-one residence and on-the-go resolution, go into it with a transparent view of what the compromises are. (They’re stark.)
A Few Aspect Notes on Testing Starlink Mini
One huge caveat with Starlink is that efficiency can range broadly by location. The variety of customers in a geographic space can considerably have an effect on the pace and latency that the overhead satellites can assist, making it more durable to get quick efficiency in areas with a number of Starlink customers and simpler in sparsely populated areas the place fewer customers are competing for a similar bandwidth and satellites.
One other situation is the person set up, as native obstructions can disrupt service, and even climate can have an impact how nicely the sign travels between the dish and the satellites.
We can be retesting the Starlink Mini within the close to future, each to see how the service adjustments over time and to see if the winter climate I used to be experiencing throughout our testing had a big influence on the efficiency of the Mini dish.
Verdict: A Incredible Solution to Entry Starlink on the Go
For our first spherical of exams with the Starlink Mini and the 50GB Roam service plan, we’re happy to say that it does every little thing it says on the tin, together with providing succesful obtain and add speeds, simple setup, and a travel-friendly design. If you need versatile satellite tv for pc web, an reasonably priced month-to-month subscription, and a ruggedness that may survive the weather, that is the dish for you.
The Starlink Mini clearly is not for everybody—most customers can be finest served with the Starlink Dish V4 and Gen 3 Router that’s customary for residential clients—however if you happen to’re a nomad in a van or RV, a camper within the backwoods, or an emergency responder organising web entry after a catastrophe, that is the answer you’ve got been ready for.
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Want satellite tv for pc web on the go? Starlink Mini combines around-the-globe connectivity with a compact, environment friendly design that may journey virtually anyplace with you.
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About Brian Westover
Lead Analyst, {Hardware}
