On almost every hike or camping trip I take in Washington state, 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.
Locating local internet providers
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.
Locating local internet providers
It took about ten minutes for the Starlink Mini to find a connection in the mountains. Joe Supan/CNET
How to set up the Starlink Mini
Setting up the Starlink Mini is incredibly simple. Here’s everything you’ll get in the box:
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