STARLINK MINI Testing in Motion & Data Speeds in the Wild

check this out this is the new starlink mini and this panel is like the size of a laptop you could fit this in a backpack and the whole router and everything is built in so all you need is a power source and you can have internet anywhere so I came out here to the middle of nowhere to test this panel out in a variety of ways I made another video about the starlink mini and I had a ton of questions about the capabilities of this panel so in this video I'm going to answer all those questions to the best to my ability and test this out in a few different scenarios and one of the best things about the Starling mini is the size CU you could just throw this into your backpack and it fits just right in the laptop sleeve and now I can take this hiking out to a remote location and you have the capabilities to have internet anywhere as long as you have a nice clear view of the sky to be able to connect to the satellites so first let's talk about price so the price of this panel is $5.99 and the service is $30 a month and this product is only available if you already have Starling service on a residential plan now I expect this to change I'm pretty sure what's going on is they're doing a roll out just initially a small batch this first batch was about 10,000 units and then eventually they're going to make it available to everyone the panel itself will probably be cheaper and there's probably going to be some different plans because right now you get $30 a month and only gives you 50 GB of data per month so one of the questions that keeps coming up again and again is can you use this panel in motion well technically based on what it says on the website when I got it you can't use this in motion it's supposed to be only used stationary however we're going to test that right now so I have the pan set up and aligned right here and I'm going to mount it just on the Jeep I don't really have a good spot at the moment but we're just going to find a place to mount it and I'm going to drive this Canyon where I have no service uh cuz I'm going up to the trail head and there's absolutely no service out here for me so I'm going to drive and see if the starlink works okay so I have it mounted here on my Dash I used some camera mounts that I have here in the car to just kind of secure it as I'm driving right now it says that it's misaligned so I got it all lined up I got it synced up and then I put it up here and it's misaligned but let's run the test I just hit run and you could see that my download speeds are around 125 megabits per second and upload speeds are kind of in the 10 range and 20 26 milliseconds for latency all right so now let's start driving and see if this continues to work I'm up here getting towards top of this hill it's like 20 megabits per second 25 megabits per second back there when I was in the canyon it was getting like 70 80 so it's kind of been bouncing around which makes sense because I'm driving the jeep in different directions so now I'm facing a different heading on the I'm facing more North and now it's back up to like 60 closer to 70 so obviously the orientation makes a huge impact on how much data you're going to be able to use for download and upload but just the fact that I've been able to drive a few miles and I'm able to continue to have internet uh that's pretty good for being a device that says that you can't use it in motion this is showing me that you can use it in motion so super interesting I got this warning that popped up that said you can't use the starlink Mini In Motion it's not part of my plan however I turned it on like way down there in the canyon and it only kicked me off once to get all the way up here and then I stopped re realigned and then I started driving again and it's stayed on the whole way up so technically this panel can't be used in motion however what I'm seeing is that it's allowing me to go in motion and at some point it might just kick you off so I don't know for me if I'm off-roading or something like having this mounted in a way where I can flip a switch grab internet might actually work and especially if I just need it for a little bit and then turn it off until I need it again you do have to keep in mind the alignment makes a huge impact on the data speeds and so you have to spin it and align it to make sure that it's you know facing the right direction to be able to get the fastest speeds however as I was going you're seeing the speeds were changing I was able to do speed test while I was driving and it was bouncing around but in motion that might be enough just to like make a phone call or just check something on a map real quick instead of having just completely no service I don't know again something I might have to continue to test as I work with this more and more all right so I'm going up there and let's answer some more questions about the mini okay I've gotten a lot of questions about speed tests on the trails so right now the starlink is actually just in my Jeep I haven't really taken it out so let me just pull up the starlink app and let's check the speeds that I'm getting right here all right so you can see that it says that I'm online I am partially obstructed and I'm misaligned let's see what kind of speed test we can get with the panel so I'm going to run it so you can see right here it's getting 50 megabits per second second 21 millisecond latency and it's going to pop up with the upload speed in a second so it's 20 megabits per second 16 13 12 back around like 10 to 14 megabits per second so 60 and 14 all right so let me adjust this slightly whoa the bugs are attacking me up here let's do another speed test now that it's mounted properly with a good view of the sky so I'm going to pull up the speed test we're going to Let It Go and out here I'm getting looks like 90 100 110 okay so it's getting up to close to 120 megabits per second with about 10 megabits per second upload so this is what I've been consistently getting when the panel's set up in the right way now when I kind of adjusting and it's misaligned it drops down to 80 sometimes 60 sometimes 40 but as long as it's aligned properly you're getting over 100 megabits per second I had some questions about how much power the panel is actually drawing at any given time because based on the specs it takes about 60 watts to run this panel however in practice what I'm actually seeing is that now that we have the panel up and running and it's been going for a while I'm drying like 24 27 26 up to 30 it's anywhere in the like 20s is pretty much what I'm drying consistently so for those of you who are wondering how much power that the panel is taking it starts with a much higher wattage like 40 to 60 and then it drops down now I'm in the 20s and 30s and that's what I've been seeing consistently as I've been using the starlink mini now check this out I actually just bought a cable off Amazon it's a USBC to 5.5 mm which is going to work on the panel and I'm going to try running the panel just off this cable because for me running off a USBC makes a lot more sense than always having this AC adapter that comes with the panel hopefully they come out with some more accessories because right now this is the only cable that goes with it however this is just a cheap cable I got off Amazon and let's plug it in looks like it's working just fine with this cable it's all works I'm back online so as long as it's outputting enough wattage you're able to use a USBC to plug this in if you have the right cable to connect and there's tons of options out there it's probably not recommended but this obviously works just fine I have one more thing I want to test though now this is my drone battery tri charger so I bring this with me whenever I'm out filming and this is also a power bank so I could use this to power devices and it has an output on it so let's test this cable that I have and I brought my iPad along because this does not have any cell signal whatsoever even though I don't really have any cell signal out here but just to fully test this let's go on YouTube powering off the DJI batteries let's pull up a video to watch there we go full service that's awesome this makes such a difference for those of you who are doing things like backpacking those of you who want a smaller footprint because you don't have to bring a huge battery to be able to use this panel if you have just a little portable battery that you're running to power a few of your devices or you are a Creator and you're using something like drone batteries well you can use this panel off of the batteries and the way that I see using this kind of panel with this setup is if I am doing something like hiking or out on adventure and I only need to really connect to check a few things maybe check in emergency comes up I have internet connection now I always carry a Garmin with me when I'm out exploring as well however having the Wi-Fi just gives you so much capability and the Garment is very much for emergencies this opens up a whole world of possibilities especially bringing such a small panel with a small cable that hooks in USBC and a portable power bank like this is amazing it's kind of a game changer now I've had a lot of questions about my Jeep just in general so I'm going to do a full breakdown of this whole setup that I've built that I use for Adventure film making like when I go out go to explore some place make some videos like this is my base camp and so I'll do another video about that soon and if you are someone who wants to go shoot Outdoor Adventure style content well on my main Channel jeev and doy I teach teach film making I teach audience growth if you're someone who likes to learn with a step-by-step guide well I have a whole program that teaches you exactly how to grow your audience on YouTube and it's on my website called The Creator film school so you can check that out after you're done with this video but my Jeep breakdown will definitely be on this channel soon I have a few more things I want to tweak before I do the full walk through now I've had some comments about the heat on this panel so I'm in Southern California it's 80 something degrees right now up here on the top of this mountain and the panel's been working fine on the hood of my Jeep which is obviously very hot now this isn't like a complete test of how hot this panel can get before it shuts off before it gets destroyed or something but for being in hot weather it's been working just fine and I've been running it pretty consistently all day today and so when I go out to the desert when it's in the hundreds I'll definitely be doing some more testing with this to see if there are any limitations when it comes to overheating and if the panel actually gets too hot so the next question that I have is about range so how far can you get away from the panel and still have good service hold that thought I'm going to grab some food my phone just mounts right here and I picked up some sushi on the way up here cuz why not have sushi in the middle of nowhere all right so let's do a little range test here I'm going to walk up this Trail and we're going to see how long we stay connected we'll just stop at different intervals and we'll check the speed and see if I'm still getting a good signal so I'm standing over here pretty far away says my speed's uh 20 megabits per second all right let's walk a little further I'm going to go up this Trail make sure there's no rattlesnakes up here hi I'm way up here let's run a speed test okay so I don't have service here all right right here I'm starting to get signal again okay that's actually a pretty solid distance I'm going to test this one more time let's back up stop this test go back by this tranch hole run it again failed okay so I think I found the limit it's right near this tree here so my jeep's 19 ft long it looks like it's probably five Jeeps to me so roughly 100 ft distance I'd say not bad all right I'm going to move away from spiders and snakes so I got to pause making this video right now cuz I have a video call that I need to take so let's see how well this works for doing a video call it's going to be over Zoom computer's a little dirty now one question I did get about the starlink mini panel is asking if you only can connect via Wi-Fi or can use ethernet so on the back of the panel you have your power port but there's also a second Port that's ethernet so you can connect via wirelessly or if you do want to have a wired connection you can plug directly into the panel all right I got to take this meeting and uh I'll see you on the other side which will be like in two seconds well that was cool I just did a 45-minute call using starlink it didn't drop out at all I've already seen in the comments of my last video people are hating on the the speeds and the data limits and all that but for what it is such a small panel and I actually do work anywhere so does the starlink mini make sense for you I think it really depends on how you're going to use it if you want to have a panel that's always mounted to your vehicle maybe you're someone who's in a van traveling around or in a Jeep or something like that well you'll probably want the bigger starlink that has the roaming plan because you're not going to be throttled at 50 GB and you also can be traveling while you're using that panel now the Starling mini is perfect for those of you who just need to connect once in a while so for me I don't need to have constant connection at all times but when I'm at Camp I would love to jump online be able to check in with my family back home or be able to just check a few things online but I'm not necessarily going to be using it for tons of data and so depending on how you're going to be using this panel it may or may not work for you but for those situations where you want to throw it in your backpack take it out to a remote location and be able to jump online well this is perfect and it just opens up a ton of potential to be able to have internet pretty much anywhere that you go I'm really curious to see what the prices actually going to be once it's more widely available and also if there are going to be data plans that allow for more than 50 GB and also roaming capabilities so you can mount this to something like the top of a Jeep be able to keep using it in motion wherever you're going however I think the biggest thing when it comes to In Motion this panel has to be manually adjusted to point it the right direction in the sky and for that reason this system is is much better to use when you stop somewhere pop it up grab internet for a little bit and then pack it back away and keep on moving however there's going to be a ton of people that find this useful and I'd love to know your thoughts if this is something that you'd be interested in now if you haven't already make sure you subscribe to my channel follow like do all that it lets me know that you enjoy watching these videos and next you should check out this video right here which is the previous video that I did on the starlink mini and it shows using this panel in a few different ways I'll see you over there

Channel: Jeven Dovey

Views: 13,234

Keywords: jeven dovey, creator film school, starlink review, starlink mini, starlink setup, starlink speed test, starlink internet, satellite internet, is starlink good, starlink review 2024, starlink satellite, starlink reviews in rural areas, starlink review camping, starlink setup and testing

Id: 7uHSmgcBLwY

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 03 2024