Built for the connected nomad, the Starlink Mini ($599) is a compact, portable, and slightly more affordable version of the current Starlink V4 dish used in residential installations. Given its smaller size and convenient design, a lot of people are interested in the Starlink Mini, whether it’s for use in a vehicle or RV, backpacking off the grid, or just getting connectivity where it’s needed most, regardless of the local infrastructure.
I’ve been using Starlink internet at home, both as a reviewer and as a customer, for more than two years now. So when I saw Starlink’s portable Mini, I knew that I wanted to test and review that variant, too. In this initial round of testing, it’s clear where the Starlink Mini really shines—portability, ease of setup, and solid performance—as well as where it may not dazzle users the way the residential equipment does. Let’s see how it did in our testing, and in our hands-on time with the hardware and service.
What Is Starlink Mini?
As the name implies, Starlink Mini is the smaller, more portable version of the current Starlink V4 dish offered by SpaceX. With a smaller footprint, lighter weight, and an integrated wireless router, this little dish is also faster to set up and easier to move than the standard residential installation kit, which is meant for stationary long-term use.
How much smaller is it? With a dish face that measures 11.8 by 10.2 inches, and a slim design that’s just 1.5 inches thick, it’s roughly the size of a large school binder and just as backpack-friendly as a Trapper Keeper. Weighing just 2.6 pounds, it’s light enough to carry on a long hike or to carry one-handed when setting it outside an RV.
Similar Products
The Mini builds on Starlink’s existing technology for satellite internet terminal design, using the same sort of antenna array and beamforming technology that the residential endpoint uses and combining that with a convenient go-anywhere design with an integrated kickstand.
With an IP67 Type 4 rating, it has the same sort of weatherproofing as the V4 dish, as well as the same snowmelt feature to keep the dish clear of accumulated ice and snow. Compared with the residential dish, the Mini has power options that are more flexible, and a simpler setup process.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
Inside the Starlink Mini is a Wi-Fi router, similar in many respects to the Starlink Router (Gen 2) that was paired with older 2021 Starlink dishes. It supports Wi-Fi 5 connectivity, a dual-band MU-MIMO system that can handle up to 128 connected devices. The integrated router simplifies setup, as no extra cables are required to connect the dish to the router, and the modest Wi-Fi range is perfect for a vehicle or campsite.
Who Needs Starlink Mini?
There are several scenarios in which users might want this smaller, more portable version of the Starlink dish and router. Nearly all involve travel, with the smaller size and more versatile design being ideal for getting internet access wherever you are. As long as you can get power for the dish (it doesn’t have a built-in battery) and an unobstructed view of the sky, you can get internet access pretty much anywhere in the country. Note: Where most Starlink users will be using a Residential service plan for their monthly service fees, Mini users will need a Starlink Roam plan, which is meant for users who are using the service on the go or frequently moving locations.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
The small size, weatherproof design, and versatile power options make it great for campers, whether in an RV or hoofing it through the mountains. It’s also great for temporary offices and events that may need connectivity, whether that’s for remote work in the field or providing Wi-Fi for guests at a festival or retreat.
It’s also ideal for emergency response. The compact size of the dish makes it quickly deployable in disaster situations where local internet access may be knocked out for days, weeks, or even months. When connectivity is vital, the Starlink Mini could be a literal lifesaver.
Finally, there’s in-vehicle use. Enterprising customers have set up the Starlink Mini in the rear windshield of a car, on the roof of a van, and in the cabs of a truck and a combine harvester. Because the Roam plan includes in-motion use, you can use the Mini for extreme portability anywhere on land. (Airplanes and boats will require a different plan.) The only issue with vehicle use that we’ve uncovered in our research (we haven’t tested it ourselves yet) is that there’s a direct correlation between vehicle speed and slower internet connectivity. Speeds drop further when a vehicle turns, as it takes some time to recalculate dish and satellite positions.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
Now, there are a couple of other options out there for off-grid internet on the go, and they’re definitely worth mentioning. The first is recognizing that the larger residential Starlink dish can also be used in this sort of mobile fashion, though it may require a slightly more complicated setup to accommodate the separate router and different power requirements. It may also need a different service plan, though some users have reported being able to move from one location to another on the residential plan without issue.
The other competitor is a very different take on satellite internet, using the same technology as satellite phones. The Iridium Go, which retails for around $900, is a satellite-connected Wi-Fi hotspot made for both fixed and mobile use. It uses Iridium’s smaller antenna design and operates in a different spectrum band, but only offers 88Kbps down and 22Kbps upload speeds, making it more suited to voice calls and email. It does, however, have a built-in battery, which might make it more attractive to users who really need to travel light, or need to use it decidedly where there’s no means of powering the hardware.
Beyond those solutions, getting internet connectivity on the go is largely limited to mobile hotspots and similar 5G-based connections, with the same coverage limitations as smartphones.
Starlink Mini: Equipment Costs and Roam Service Plans
The Starlink Mini kit is $599 and comes with everything you need to get started. That’s the same price as the residential Starlink installation kit, but for several months, including when we purchased the equipment, that same Starlink Mini kit has been discounted to as low as $449.
There are two Starlink Roam data plans available for use with the Starlink Mini. The first is a 50GB plan that costs $50 per month; that 50GB refers to the data cap per monthly billing cycle, with additional data costing more money. If that’s too restrictive, you could choose the other option, the Roam Unlimited plan, which costs $165 per month with no data cap.
Setting Up and Installing Starlink Mini: Easy Does It
The Starlink Mini comes with the portable dish/router combo, a 50-foot power cable, a 120-volt power adapter, and swappable kickstand and pole mounting hardware. The inclusion of the pole mount is actually a very nice improvement over the residential kit, which doesn’t offer different mounts in the box, requiring you to purchase one separately. (If you need a more permanent mount, most of the Starlink accessories have a version available for the Mini.)
(Credit: Brian Westover)
Setting up the Starlink Mini is snap-simple and can be done in minutes. The kit comes pre-assembled with a kickstand, which is perfect for plonking down the Starlink Mini on a clear spot of ground with an unobstructed view of the sky. All you have to do is point it in the right direction, plug it in, and activate the dish through the Starlink app.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
The app will walk you through the basics of checking for obstructions and orienting the dish, and with only the power cable to worry about, that’s all you really need to do. Unlike the residential dish and router, the Mini requires no separate hardware for Wi-Fi, and the built-in router has a 150-foot wireless range.
That said, there are a couple of details worth mentioning. First, the included 120-volt power adapter is rated as IP66 Type 4, which means it’s rated for both indoor and outdoor use and should stand up well against falling rain, sleet, snow, windblown dust, and splashing water. That’s ideal for camping and RV use, where outdoor power might be your only option.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
Second, it only comes with the wall outlet power adapter and 50-foot cable. If you want to run the Starlink Mini off 12-volt vehicle power, you can do that without a converter. However, it still needs the appropriate plug adapter and a shorter cable. (The 50-foot cable is actually too long to maintain the required voltage with 12-volt power.) And since it actually works on 12-to-48-volt power, it will work just fine with something like the 16-volt power offered by a Tesla or other electric vehicle.
Plus, for those of you planning to run the Starlink Mini off of a vehicle battery or an off-grid power solution, you’ll be pleased to know that the Mini cuts the power consumption from Dish V4’s 70 watts down to 20 watts.
Testing Starlink Mini: Portability and Performance
To test the Starlink Mini, I set it up in the middle of my lawn (as opposed to my main Starlink dish, which lives up on my roof). With clear visibility of the sky and nothing to disturb it, I simply ran the power cable to the nearest outlet.
Now, going into this review, I knew I had to adjust my expectations. The Starlink Mini is significantly smaller than the regular residential dish and has a lower power draw. I expected these differences to have an impact on performance, so I knew going into testing that the results would not be exactly what I had seen in my other Starlink testing.
But the question isn’t whether the Starlink Mini could replace the larger residential dish I already have. The question is whether the Starlink Mini offers enough performance for internet access on the go.
Let’s look at the data. The first thing we look at is overall download speeds, breaking out the results into low, mean, and high speeds so that we can see what performance was like from day to day, over the two weeks I ran speed tests at my home in snowy rural Idaho…
Over those two weeks of testing, I saw relatively low speeds most of the days that I tested, but I also saw spikes where speeds jumped as high as 140 megabits per second (Mbps). This occurred on several days, even as the average or mean download speed hovered around 20Mbps. This is actually in keeping with SpaceX’s claims for the Mini, which promise typical download speeds from 5Mbps to 50Mbps on the Roam plan.
Overall, the performance is nowhere near as impressive as what I’ve seen when testing Starlink’s regular dish and service. Still, the peak download speeds, when they happened, easily exceeded the 100Mbps that SpaceX claims as the upper limit for performance for the Starlink Mini.
Oddly enough, the high speeds seemed wildly inconsistent from day to day, a curious thing, given that the dish was stationary with an unobstructed view of the sky and constant testing 24 hours a day for the two-week period.
Next is a look at download speed consistency. As you can see, the download speeds were largely 30Mbps and lower, a far cry from the faster speeds we’re used to seeing from Starlink’s residential service, but expected on this equipment and service plan.
Due to the lower download speeds, the upload speeds actually offered impressive parity, with 10Mbps to 20Mbps being fairly consistent in our testing. Given that SpaceX claims upload speeds ranging from 2Mbps to 10Mbps, this also exceeded our expectations.
The one area where the Starlink Mini mostly matches its larger counterpart is in latency, likely due to the fact that SpaceX has been hard at work reducing the latency of the entire satellite and ground-station network. In our testing, we saw the bulk of ping results falling between 10 and 30 milliseconds (ms), and nothing higher than 40ms. It’s worth noting, however, that users outside of the continental US may see higher latency, up to the 60-to-90ms range.
When we break out the latency by server, separating Cloudflare and Google ping results, we again see that virtually all of our recorded ping times are under 30ms. And whether they were going to Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 or Google’s 8.8.8.8, the results are extremely similar. We did see a few stray pings to Google servers that exceeded 90ms, but those were a tiny fraction of the overall recorded results.
Testing: Starlink Residential vs Starlink Mini
If we directly compare the average performance between the portable Starlink Mini and the stationary Starlink Dish V4 that is used for residential subscriptions, the difference is pretty stark…
The larger residential dish puts up average download speeds of nearly 150Mbps, versus the paltry 16.5Mbps of the portable Starlink Mini. Upload speeds are closer, but only because the residential plan averages around 23Mbps, more than double the 9Mbps offered by the Mini.
The latency or ping rate for the two systems is the most similar aspect of performance, averaging 20.47 milliseconds (ms) for the Mini and 28.99ms for the residential equipment. (Both options use similar technology, and work with the same satellites and infrastructure, after all.)
But the bottom line here is clear to see: The Starlink Mini is a great option when you need internet connectivity on the move, but if you’re considering options for long-term use, the residential installation package (which includes the Starlink Dish V4 and Gen 3 router) offers superior speeds and performance. If you’re thinking of opting for the Starlink Mini as your all-in-one home and on-the-go solution, go into it with a clear view of what the compromises are. (They are stark.)
A Few Side Notes on Testing Starlink Mini
One big caveat with Starlink is that performance can vary widely by location. The number of users in a geographic area can significantly affect the speed and latency that the overhead satellites can support, making it harder to get fast performance in areas with lots of Starlink users and easier in sparsely populated areas where fewer users are competing for the same bandwidth and satellites.
Another issue is the individual installation, as local obstructions can disrupt service, and even weather can have an effect how well the signal travels between the dish and the satellites.
We will be retesting the Starlink Mini in the near future, both to see how the service changes over time and to see if the winter weather I was experiencing during our testing had a significant impact on the performance of the Mini dish.
Verdict: A Fantastic Way to Access Starlink on the Go
For our first round of tests with the Starlink Mini and the 50GB Roam service plan, we’re pleased to say that it does everything it says on the tin, including offering capable download and upload speeds, easy setup, and a travel-friendly design. If you want versatile satellite internet, an affordable monthly subscription, and a ruggedness that can survive the elements, this is the dish for you.
The Starlink Mini obviously isn’t for everyone—most users will be best served with the Starlink Dish V4 and Gen 3 Router that is standard for residential customers—but if you’re a nomad in a van or RV, a camper in the backwoods, or an emergency responder setting up internet access after a disaster, this is the solution you’ve been waiting for.
Pros
View
More
Cons
View
More
The Bottom Line
Need satellite internet on the go? Starlink Mini combines around-the-globe connectivity with a compact, efficient design that can travel almost anywhere with you.
Like What You’re Reading?
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links.
By clicking the button, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our
Terms of Use and
Privacy Policy.
You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
About Brian Westover
Lead Analyst, Hardware
