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. Not a problem: Trips like these are designed for me to get a break from the internet.
On this brisk Sunday morning in the North Cascades, that off-the-grid 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.
Locating local internet providers
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.
Locating local internet providers
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. Joe Supan/CNET
How to set up the Starlink Mini
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