Starlink Review: FAST Internet from Space

thanks to squarespace for sponsoring today's video it seems like we all rely on internet access for at least one daily task in order to function in today's world it's 2021 we all should have high speed internet access right well sadly we don't in fact nearly half of the u.s population isn't using the internet at minimum broadband speeds and this is mostly due to people living in rural areas who don't have the option of affordable high-speed internet or even the option at all luckily papa elon and spacex are here to try and solve that problem with their new groundbreaking hold on that adjective doesn't work here sky-breaking satellite internet service called starlink and i was fortunate enough to try this out this week and i'm here to show you what it's all about what the setup is like and how well it works to see if it's worth the money or not first what is starlink and why is it so important well starlink is currently a beta service by spacex that provides high speed low latency broadband internet to rural communities using low orbiting satellites basically it's the world's most advanced satellite internet service now currently there are over 1 000 starling satellites in orbit that are delivering internet access to beta customers and spacex is regularly launching more satellites into space in fact this evening they're scheduled to launch the falcon 9 rocket carrying 60 more starling satellites and their potential long-term goal is to have over 40 000 starlink satellites in orbit now you may be thinking andy there are already satellite internet service providers what makes starlink so special well first of all the name is starlink and it sounds like it's from a superhero movie and it's ran by spacex the coolest company in the world hold on scratch that universe one of the key advantages for starling's internet service is that it can provide much lower latency compared to other satellite internet companies latency is the time it takes to send data from one point to the next when satellites are far from earth latency is high resulting in poor performance for activities like video calls and online gaming well starlink satellites are over 60 times closer to earth compared to traditional satellites resulting in lower latency and better performance not only that starlink's speeds are pretty fast for satellite internet currently during the beta period customers can expect to see data speeds from 50 megabits per second to 150 megabits per second and latency from 20 milliseconds to 40 milliseconds in most locations those are impressive numbers given the magic invisible internet data is traveling to and from space another key advantage for starlink is that they don't have any data caps at least for right now so maybe you're a subscriber of mine and you want to watch my entire library of youtube videos in 4k and not worry about getting penalized or charged extra for going over a data limit like with other internet companies and one last advantage but certainly not least is that you won't get an email from spacex with a subject line that says your response is required and in the email it's just a freaking advertisement that was a legit email that i just got this week from my isp spectrum and that alone makes me want to switch to starlink it's ridiculous okay now let's jump into the setup and first test of starlink courtesy of a kind follower of mine who reached out and invited me to come check out his brother starlink who was one of the first to get it in our area of louisville kentucky he lives on the outskirts of town and his only option for internet up until now has been 18t with speeds of less than one megabit per second if you don't know how slow that is keep in mind that most people in urban areas probably have access to a gigabit connection which is one 000 times as fast as this guy's internet so of course he immediately jumped at the chance to order starlink and got it delivered really quickly now keep in mind orders will be fulfilled on a first come first serve basis and anyone can input their address on starlink.com to see if it's available currently it's available to a limited number of users per coverage area and it's delivering initial beta service both domestically and internationally and will continue expansion to near global coverage of the populated world in 2021 so how much does starlink cost well during beta the starlink monthly internet service costs 99 a month and the one-time fee of the required starlink kit is 499 which comes with everything you need to get started and it is an extremely simple and fast setup now when you open the box you'll see a quick start guide with three main steps and literally that's all you have to do the hardware consists of a wireless router which looks to be designed by the same person who designed the cyber truck so that's cool there's also a power over ethernet injector that has two ethernet ports which are already plugged into the correct corresponding cable they make it super easy by color coding the cable to the correct port with the white router cable going into the white side and the black antenna cable going into the black side now using the poe injector the 100 foot black cable supplies data and power to the main star of the show the starlink antenna the reason it needs power ran to it is because the antenna will actually detect and melt snow that falls directly on it to help prevent outages and interruptions since starlink does require a clear view of the sky to connect now it also comes with a mounting tripod which is designed for ground level installation or to support a quick start setup to test the internet connection most people will want to do a roof install and customers can order roof mounts or pull mounts directly from spacex for a very reasonable price unfortunately right now the mounts seemed to be taking longer to arrive but hopefully the deliveries for those will become quicker as it goes along after snapping the starlink antenna to the tripod we put it on the roof temporarily held down by some sandbags to quickly test the connection now what's really cool is that starlink has a free mobile app that is similar to google wi-fi in a sense that it walks you through the entire setup process step by step it also lets you use your phone camera to find the best location for the starlink antenna which is very helpful because spacex mentions that optimal location is the most important factor for getting the best internet connection and speed now once the antenna is in place just plug the poe injector into power and walk through the setup guide on the starlink app which will let you assign a wi-fi network name and password and after a minute or so the starlink wi-fi network shows up and bam you're connected it is seriously one of the simplest and fastest setups for an entire satellite internet service in a box it really couldn't have been easier and it only took about 15 minutes from start to finish and i hate to say this but it kind of reminded me of driving a tesla for the first time like oh snap this is a game changer moment now another cool feature from the result of the starlink antenna receiving power from the black cable is it's not only used to melt snow but it's also used to power the tilt motor which automatically adjusts the angle of the antenna to sync up with the nearest satellite so you don't need to manually position the antenna angle it's all done automatically as needed now what we've all been waiting for a speed test as soon as we finished the setup we ran a speed test from google and it got 117 megabits per second download speed and 20 megabits per second upload speed which is insanely fast compared to the 0.5 megabits per second he was getting with a t now even though this speed was the highest speed test out of all our tests we still got a consistently decent speed the second test was from my iphone using the speed test app and it got 27 down and 10 up which was the slowest test on the third test i used google speed test again and it got 60 down and 20 up that time and the last test was actually done with the starlink app it has its own button to do a speed test which just opens up fast.com and that test got 100 megabits per second download speed now going from less than one meg to over 100 megs is seriously not just a game changer it's a life changer like having immediate access to relevant information being able to consume and create content being able to work from home sufficiently that's huge for people who live in rural areas and haven't had access to broadband internet like this i was also able to easily stream one of my 4k videos from youtube after it buffered for a second or two then it played back smoothly without any hesitation at all you can also use the starlink app to view some more speed stats including any downtime or interruptions which is nice so even though i only spent a short amount of time with it i am super impressed with the setup and performance of starlink this is going to make a lot of people happy and i'm sure people will gladly pay the 500 one-time fee and 100 monthly fee for it if they've been living with slow internet up until now also as spacex launches more satellites installs more ground stations and improves networking software then the speed latency and uptime should improve dramatically if you have any questions about starlink leave a comment below are you excited for starlink are you going to get it let me know and speaking of accessing the web if you want to build your own space on the internet you should check out today's sponsor squarespace which is an easy to use platform that allows you to create your own beautiful website it's 2021 everyone should have high-speed internet access and everyone should have their own website with squarespace you don't need to be a professional programmer squarespace has the tools you need to get your business off the ground including e-commerce templates inventory management a simple checkout process and secure payments squarespace also takes the guesswork out of search engine optimization for your website which means you'll get found in search by more people more often to get your own website go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch visit squarespace.com andy sly to save 10 off your first purchase of your website or domain

Channel: Andy Slye

Views: 496,591

Keywords: spacex starlink, starlink internet, spacex, starlink, spacex internet, spacex starlink internet, spacex satellite, spacex satellite internet, starlink review, starlink internet review, spacex starlink review, starlink setup, starlink internet setup, starlink unboxing, starlink first impressions, starlink test, starlink speed test, starlink speed, spacex starlink speed, spacex starlink speed test, starlink speedtest, starlink internet speed, starlink install, elon musk

Id: u8JUYU9MoWY

Length: 9min 32sec (572 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021

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SpaceX Starlink satellite internet unboxing, setup & first impressions!