The premise of the Starlink Mini dish is simple: high-speed internet anywhere you want, untethered from a fixed location. Fortunately for me, my home state of Washington has plenty of wilderness areas that could help me put that claim to the test.
On almost every hike or camping trip I take in Washington, there’s a moment on the drive when service drops, music cuts out in the car and texts stop coming in. Trips like these are designed for me to get a break from the internet. But on this brisk Sunday morning in the North Cascades, that moment never came. This time, I brought along a Starlink Mini satellite dish in my backpack.
As my friends waited in line for the bathroom at the trailhead, I pulled out the small white square, about the size of a laptop, plugged it into my portable battery and waited for it to communicate with the Starlink satellites zooming 342 miles above our heads.
This was a slightly unusual way to use the Starlink Mini. The dish comes with Starlink’s Roam plans, which are designed for “high-speed internet on the go,” according to the company. It uses less than half the power of the full-size Starlink dish and weighs a little over 3 pounds, so it’s feasible to bring it along on a backcountry hike or camping trip. But more common use scenarios are RVs, vans and boats that aren’t tied to one specific location.
To test out the Starlink Mini, I also spent three days connected to it at my apartment in Seattle. I did everything I normally would on my regular old cable internet: chatted on Zoom meetings, streamed live sports and completed crosswords online with a friend.
I’ve written skeptically about Starlink in the past, but as I sat on top of a mountain in the North Cascades watching live NFL games in HD, I couldn’t help but grin. In this article, I’ll cover everything you need to know to get the most out of a Starlink Mini, and give you a full picture of the kind of performance you can expect from it.
It took about 10 minutes for the Starlink Mini to find a connection in the mountains.
How to set up the Starlink Mini
Setting up the Starlink Mini is incredibly simple. Here’s everything you’ll get in the box:
- Starlink Mini dish (16.92 x 13.14 x 3.11 inches)
- Kickstand
- Pipe adapter and flat mount
- Power cable (49.2 feet)
- Power supply
- Plug
The Starlink app directs you to hold your phone up to the sky to analyze obstructions in the area before mounting.
I wouldn’t get too bogged down in finding the perfect location. By design, the Starlink Mini probably won’t be staying in one place for too long. If you have a video meeting you want to ensure a stable connection for, you may want to run a quick obstruction check before you hop on. But for most Starlink Mini users, the obstructions surrounding the dish will constantly be in flux.
Plug in the dish
Once you’ve found a suitable spot, you plug one end of the power cable into the supply box and the other end into the dish. The power cable runs 49.2 feet, so you have some room to place the dish far away from the nearest electrical outlet.
Connect to Wi-Fi
Once it’s plugged in, you’ll be prompted to set up a Wi-Fi connection. Remember to follow best Wi-Fi practices to keep your network secure: Use a strong and unique password, create a guest network for visitors and set a time for automatic software updates.
It will take a few minutes for Starlink to communicate with satellites in the sky. Don’t panic if you’re offline or have slow speeds to start. It takes up to 30 minutes to optimize its connection and sometimes you won’t see maximum speeds until it’s been in the same spot for a full day.
Align Starlink
Once your network is set up, you can fine tune the dish’s connection with Starlink’s satellites by tweaking the alignment. You’ll be prompted to rotate the dish until it’s facing the right direction at the ideal angle.
A 24,000mAh Anker 737 Power Bank powered my Starlink Mini for about four hours at a time.
The capacity here is the key number. At 24,000 mAh, the Anker 737 is on the higher end of most power banks you’ll see. Starlink says the Mini consumes between 25 and 40 watts on average. Working from home on the Mini, my power draw was just 21 watts on average. That meant my Anker battery could power the Starlink Mini for about 4 hours at a time.
If you go the power bank route, you’ll need to buy a separate cable that uses a USB-C. There are a bunch of these for about $10 on Amazon. I ended up going with a 10 foot cable that had both a USB-C and cigarette lighter plug. That way, I could use the power bank as my primary source but also use my vehicle in a pinch.
Trees: Starlink’s Achilles heel
Starlink isn’t exaggerating when it says you need a clear view of the sky for it to work properly. I tried putting it under a variety of trees around my house, and it failed to establish a connection under any of them. Even where you could see patches of sky through the branches, the Starlink app still returned an “Obstructed” error message.
It took about 10 minutes for the Mini to establish a connection on my hike.
After 10 minutes, your Starlink Mini should have established some connection to the internet (and should continue to get stronger over the next 24 hours). If you’re still not getting a signal, Starlink recommends unplugging the Mini from the power source and plugging it back in. If that doesn’t work, you can reset it to factory settings, which will require setting up a new Wi-Fi network.
