Starlink Mini review: space internet goes ultraportable

Space internet is the reason I’ve been able to work from some very remote locations over the last two years, ever since I subscribed to what was then called Starlink RV. Now, SpaceX has launched the diminutive Starlink Mini. It changes the game for portable connectivity.

The $599 Starlink Mini combines the terminal and Wi-Fi router into a single dish that’s so efficient, it can be powered by a portable battery, despite needing to lock onto a constellation of Starlink satellites traveling at speeds of 17,000mph about 350 miles above the Earth.

Hell, the whole thing fits into a small backpack with room left over for a laptop, folding solar panel, and a pocket-size USB-C power bank, offering hours of connectivity. That makes the Starlink Mini ideal for anyone like me looking to combine remote work with off-grid adventures by foot, bike, boat, or van — either for an extended weekend trip or as a lifestyle.

I recently bought the Starlink Mini, which I’ve been testing when hiking, vanlifing, and at home in the city. It’s not quite as fast as my large and unwieldy residential dish, with its motorized stand and separate Wi-Fi router. But the Starlink Mini is more than capable of supporting connectivity speeds required for both work and play.

After more than a month of regular use in five European countries with up to 10 active devices on the same connection, I can say that if you’re looking for fast internet with low (enough) latency that you can deploy quickly in places where 4G and 5G don’t reach, then the Starlink Mini is for you.

The Mini is an angular, rectangular dish with a removable kickstand. It’s about the size of a stack of printer paper and weighs just 2.56 pounds (1.16kg). In my testing, the Starlink Mini consumes less than half the energy of my much larger Standard Actuated dish with its separate Gen 2 router — a huge savings for a device that might be running on battery power 24/7 when mounted on an RV, boat, or off-grid cabin.

For maximum portability, you’ll need the right USB-C cable and a properly specced USB-PD battery. But once you have that figured out, the performance is rather remarkable.

I tested the Starlink Mini’s connectivity in several scenarios: head-to-head with my Standard Actuated dish and router placed on the roof of my house; placed inside a backpack on a hike through a forest; and mounted in several locations in and around my Sprinter van to test performance when driving and parked.

Running a speed test on a Starlink system can produce a wide range of results as the dish’s antenna switches between satellites every few minutes. You can see that reflected in the max and min speeds I grabbed for each scenario in the table below:

Just look at those backpack numbers! I didn’t think the Starlink Mini’s 110-degree field of view would be wide enough for the phased array antenna to maintain a satellite connection when carried vertically in a backpack. But once I got a satellite lock by holding the pack horizontal in my hands, I was able to maintain it during a 40-minute loop through the forest, with regular drops due to tree coverage. But the connection always returned in the clearings, allowing me to stream Netflix video.

The other big takeaway is how well the Mini (and its integrated Wi-Fi router) performed on the roof of my van when parked. Sure, the Standard Actuated dish would have been faster, but that would have required me to set up that giant terminal, motorized stand, and separate Wi-Fi router for maybe a 20 percent gain in performance, based on my previous experience. Not worth the trouble.

The Starlink Mini’s integrated Wi-Fi router did mean I had to be more thoughtful about placement compared to the standard array with its separate router. When parked, I found that placing the Mini outside on the roof of my van in the gap between my rigid solar panels and windshield was best. Placing it on top of the solar panels cut performance in half; SpaceX’s support page notes that “Wi-Fi performance is best underneath and behind the Mini.”

Setting the Mini on my van’s giant dashboard worked surprisingly well when parked, but I experienced mixed results when driving. At a standstill, it worked almost as well as putting the dish on the Sprinter’s roof. In fact, the connection was usually faster due to the uninterrupted Wi-Fi signal, but I did experience a few seconds of dropped connections every hour or so. Driving with it on the dashboard even on long, straight stretches of treeless roads in central France was frustrating, as it could only hold onto the connection about 50 percent of the time. But it did far better in Belgium and the Netherlands, where it suffered just a few seconds of lost connection during any 15-minute sample.

I also discovered that the Mini’s orientation doesn’t matter too much. The excellent Starlink app offers to help you find the ideal placement with a superimposed target box placed over the dish that updates in real time as you rotate it — something my Standard Actuated dish does automatically. It’s neat but also not often necessary, according to my testing. As you can see in the table, the download speeds for the Mini placed on a table maximally misaligned (on the horizontal plane) were faster than when it was perfectly aligned! I tested this repeatedly and found that orientation didn’t significantly impact performance so long as the dish was relatively flat.

Overall, upload speeds on the Starlink Mini (like all Starlinks) are pretty slow across the board. Uploading a 4K video often means finding a Wi-Fi connection at a cafe or hunting down a 4G / 5G signal. Otherwise, you can always start an upload at night and hope that it finishes by the morning.

Unfortunately, the Mini kit only ships with an AC wall adapter and a 49.2-foot (15m) cable with weather-resistant 5221 barrel jacks on each end. To really take advantage of its portability, you’ll need a properly specced USB-C cable and battery.

The Starlink Mini requires a battery that supports 100W (20V/5A) USB-C power delivery (PD) — something you’ll only find on pricier power banks sold over the last few years. SpaceX explicitly states that the “Starlink Mini will not work with USB PD ratings of 65W or lower.”

I’ve been testing the Mini with a variety of batteries, including a random 140W USB-C PD 3.1 power bank I found on Amazon with a 27,600mAh (99.36Wh) capacity — the legal limit for airplane carry-ons. It powers my Starlink Mini for three hours when mounted on the roof of my home, or about two hours when the dish is in a backpack during a hike.

In practice, the Mini requires very little power. I’ve yet to see it pull more than 50W at peak times like startup or when streaming 4K content. During a normal workday in the center of Amsterdam, the Mini consumed an average of about 30W (usually floating between 22–38W) when plugged into a battery. In rural locations, I average between 15–20W, according to the StarLink app. That’s consistent with what the USB-C port on my solar generator was showing, as the Mini pulled between 12–25W while transitioning between satellite connections and dealing with incoming and outgoing data requests.

The Starlink Mini is therefore much more efficient than my Standard Actuated Starlink system, which consumes an average of about 42W, in my testing. That’s an energy savings of up to 64 percent — exactly what I want to hear as a budding vanlifer and bikepacker.

But you still need the right cable: one that supports 100W USB-C power delivery and can bung into the Starlink Mini’s 5521 port. SpaceX recently started selling a 16.4-foot (5m) USB-C-to-5521 cable for $31 / €31. After testing a few cables and adapters from Amazon with mixed results, I highly recommend buying the official cable.

The SpaceX USB-C cable has two advantages. First, it ensures the Mini maintains its IP67 protection against water and dust ingress. I found some shorter USB-C-to-5521 cables rated for 100W that successfully powered the Starlink Mini, but they left a gap for rain and dust to enter the unit. You’ll need the Mini to be watertight, especially if you’re mounting the dish on the outside of your vehicle for in-motion use. 

The other advantage of the SpaceX cable is the small LED on the USB-C end that glows red if the connected battery can’t produce the required 100W. That can be super useful if your family has a stack of random power banks laying about at home (like I do).

I do wish that SpaceX’s USB-C cable were at least as long as the 5521-to-5521 power cable that ships with the Starlink Mini. I could have used that extra 33 feet (10m) when parking too close to a tree because the Mini — like all Starlink terminals — requires a clear view of the sky for optimum performance. 

I did try using a 5521 barrel adapter to convert that longer cable to USB-C. It worked for a while, but the Starlink Mini would inevitably reboot after losing power under intense load — probably because the added resistance of the long cable was too much for the power bank to overcome.

Pricing for the Starlink Mini varies widely by region. SpaceX sells the kits for less in underserved locations and more “in high-usage areas like the US, where Starlink Mini places additional demand on the satellite network.” Currently, that means the kit costs $599 in the US, but it’s priced closer to $200 in Guatemala. In the Netherlands, I paid €399 (about $438) for the Starlink Mini kit. 

You also have to pay for service, which — importantly — can be paused for the months you’re not using it. In the US, the Starlink Mini is available with either the Roam 50GB ($50 / month) plan or Roam Unlimited ($165 / month). Both allow for use anywhere within the country of purchase, internationally “for up to two months per trip,” and on a vehicle moving at speeds of up to 100mph / 160kph on land or up to 12 nautical miles off the coast. I pay €72 / month (about $79 / month) for my Roam Unlimited plan.

For me, the cost of the Starlink Mini kit and subscription are a bargain for the lifestyle it enables. I had considered paying several hundred dollars for a Star Mount just to have my old Standard Actuated dish converted into a 12V system that could be easily powered by a large power station without any of that inefficient AC/DC conversion mess. Now, SpaceX has done all the hard work for me and I get to keep my warranty.

As someone who likes to occasionally live and work as far off the grid as possible, the Starlink Mini is the dish I’ve been waiting for. It’s the most energy-efficient Starlink terminal SpaceX offers, and its most portable by a mile, with only a modest drop in performance. That makes it an absolute game-changer for anyone who wants to stay fully connected in areas too remote for broadband providers to care about. I humbly submit that those are the best places to be.

Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge