Following a holiday discount, SpaceX is dropping the price of its portable Starlink Mini dish even more to $199.
The new price began appearing today on Starlink.com and at a few retailers, including Best Buy and Walmart. In the US, the portable dish first launched for $599, but last year SpaceX reduced the price to $299. In November, the company then offered a temporary discount to $229, or what had been its lowest price. It’s now dropped below $200 at the following retailers:
(Credit: Starlink.com)
On Starlink.com, you can access the $199 deal by signing up for the Roam plan, which is required to receive satellite internet on the portable dish in the US. SpaceX charges $20 for shipping, while retailers offer in-store pick-up, and potentially faster delivery for free.
SpaceX has also been offering the Mini dish for “free” to both new and existing customers through a rental program. The perk is part of the rebranded Residential plan, now called Residential Max, which maintains the $120-per-month price. Demand has been so high that the company has even slowed invites to claim the offer.
The free rental’s catch is that “if you change your Residential service plan or cancel the service plan on your Mini, you must return the Mini or the cost will be charged to your payment method,” SpaceX says in a support page.
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In contrast, owning the dish means you can keep the portable hardware as a backup, even if you decide to cancel your Starlink Roam plan, which lets you use the dish on-the-go and in more than one location outside a home address. The Starlink.com Roam site also indicates the Mini dish’s normal price is now $249, down from $299.
The Mini dish is not only great for its portability, it can even be placed on top of a car, making the product useful for road trips, as PCMag’s Brian Westover discovered. About the size of a school binder, the Mini is significantly smaller than the larger standard Starlink dish. But on the downside it usually offers slower internet speeds. That said, in one speed test during his trip, Brian’s Mini dish reached 308Mbps down and 28Mbps up.
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About Our Expert
Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
Experience
I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. Earlier this year, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I’m now following how President Trump’s tariffs will affect the industry. I’m always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.
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