We got Starlink! Unboxing + Setup + Pros and Cons of Starlink Internet

we live out here in the middle of the arizona desert obviously we don't have broadband so internet has been one of our primary concerns when we first moved out here in 2019 we started with this verizon mifi device it was okay to begin with but it really started to suck maybe it was over congestion on the cell towers or something very unreliable very slow so after this we upgraded to t-mobile's home internet that was way better way more reliable and faster i just did a speed test the other day we got like 25 megabits per second down which for sell isn't bad but we spend our lives online i do a lot of podcasts and stuff through zoom over the internet and i still need something faster hence starlink there's a lot of starlight unboxing videos on youtube and i'm gonna make my own hey pepper's helping so the base installation comes with this four prong tripod or stand every single one of them comes with that and the dish with the cable already connected to it there we go snaps into place like that as you can see this is a rectangle dish starlink started with a round dish but there were some problems with the heat especially in hot summer desert climates like ours so this is the next version this is like the gen 2 version which is supposed to withstand way more temperatures way higher temperatures so i'm hoping that's the case and this is the supplied router that comes with it really everything here is pretty simple you have the dish you have the router you have the stand and 75 feet of cable and on the end of the cable you have a nifty little connector here that makes it super easy there it is just connects right in penny's curious now too everyone's helping you're making this difficult dogs the router also comes with a power cable but this cable is called a power over ethernet cable which means the router is going to deliver power mode the router comes with its own power cable but this cable is called a power over ethernet cable which means it'll deliver power from the router to the satellite dish move away through this cable so you don't need to plug this into a power source which is nice it's just this cable and last but not least it also comes with this instruction sheet on this piece of like cardboard which shows the process of setting up your satellite connecting to the router and then setting up your network your wi-fi network on your cell phone so i'm gonna do all that now and show you what that looks like we've temporarily set up the satellite dish out in our center courtyard i stress that's only temporary it comes with the mount as quite frankly that's just a temporary mount although i suppose you could use it but i think we're going to mount it on top of the house eventually but for now we just wanted to get this set up and going and make sure it works for us so it's out there right now the next step is to download the starlink app connect to the network and set things up that way so let's get to it all right start setup next open wi-fi settings connect to the temporary starlink network that comes by default now i will create the new network name now i've created the new network so now you have to disconnect from the default starlink network and reconnect with the network that you just created all right i'm joining now all right i have successfully joined the network so now back to the starlink app all right now it is booting up which means it's going to be finding the satellites outside so you might see the satellite dish move around a little bit so the whole setup process took about five or six minutes but once it was set up um we started doing some speed tests our very first speed test on the phone uh we got between 80 megabits and 120 megabits down and between like six and 10 megabits up i did one on the computer 160 megabits down what i'm going to do over the next few hours is take a bunch of speed tests to get a feel for how fast this is going to be but keep in mind that it takes the starlink dish about 12 hours 10 to 12 hours to fully calibrate to where it's at and the alignment of it in relation to the satellites and all that good stuff so keep that in mind what you see right off the bat right after you first install it isn't necessarily going to be what you see for the duration of your time with starlink so i'm going to continue doing that and i will report back to you with some more concrete findings and my general impressions of using starlink in a couple days i've got to use starlink for several days now and here are my general impressions there are both pros and cons and there are as many cons as there are pros by the way so it's not all just roses and dandelions there are there are some negatives with starlink at least in our case so let's do pros first the first pro is starlink was very easy to set up within about 10 minutes we were running so all we had to do was set up the satellite dish outside plug it into the router the router gets plugged into an ac outlet inside and everything just worked we did have one problem with connectivity and we didn't have the the cable that runs from the satellite dish to the router plugged in fully like fully seated into the router so be sure that your plugs are plugged in fully to the router so the router sits flat on your table or wherever it is and not leaning one way or another so within 10 minutes we were up and running so that was super nice another pro is the download speed we got anywhere from 80 megabits a second to 120 sometimes 130 megabits a second compared to our t-mobile and especially our former verizon mifi device that is a huge increase however the download speed is also a con and i'll talk about that later in the con section but we're certainly getting much much faster speeds than we're used to being out here in the arizona desert with over 100 megabits a second on average so that's always a good thing i do a lot of podcasts online through zoom and i had a podcast yesterday actually it worked flawlessly no skips no buffering no pixelation so it worked great so i'm really really happy with that and another pro and this is something that you don't hear a lot about but the range of the starlink router is actually really impressive i was able to walk 300 feet away from the router and still maintain connectivity and being able to browse the internet 300 feet away that is incredible and our router is inside our cinder block house our concrete block house so that that alone makes it tougher for signals to travel through but this router was able to maintain communication with me over 300 feet away if you are worried about where you're gonna place the router um in respect to where you are going to be actually using the internet you probably have a lot of flexibility there at least i did out here so the range of the router was a huge plus for me and the last pro is the starlink app it's actually really useful when we first set up the starlink satellite dish i use the obstruction finder which is built straight into the app where you just show your camera around the area where you think you're going to put your satellite dish and then it'll survey the area you just point the camera all around and in the sky so it gets gets to see where your satellite dish is and where the obstructions might be like buildings and trees and things like that the app will tell you whether the place you're thinking about for your dish is a good place being out here in the middle of the desert there's basically no trees and nothing so we can put our satellite dish almost anywhere and it will be a good place but if you live in a heavily wooded area or there's a lot of buildings around that might be a little bit more complicated for you so definitely use that obstruction finder when you set up your satellite dish and starlink's app will try to determine whether that place is going to be a good place for your satellite dish another thing i like about the starlink app is the outage detector where it will detect when it loses communication from the from the satellite dish on your property to the satellites in the sky so whenever there's a miscommunication or just can't find a satellite it will report that down for whatever reason it will report all those outages so you could easily see them again we don't have that problem because we don't have obstructions so so there's literally nothing between our satellite dish and the satellites so we haven't had a lot of problems with that so that's good but if there are problems in your your area you'll be able to see all those outages straight from the starlink app so that's great those are the pros so let's talk about the cons a minute and i'm going to start with the download speed so i just said the download speed was a pro but it's also a con because we are getting between 80 and 120 megabits a second and that's great that's much faster than anything that we've tried but it doesn't come close to some of the speed reports that i've seen online people are getting like 200 megabits a second 300 megabits a second 400 megabits a second and sometimes even faster than that out here we haven't come anywhere close to that it could be because we're close to the equator and you need more satellites around the equator because it's a larger geographic area that starlink has to be able to cover so that might have something to do with the fact that we're not getting faster speeds yet so as starlink launches more satellites maybe it'll be faster in the future i don't know but we're certainly not seeing those blazing fast speeds that some people are it's a con that we're not getting those extremely fast speeds here in arizona at least yet the second con is the upload speeds are just flat slow with every test that that we ran we averaged from between maybe three megabits a second to eight megabits a second upload now a lot of people won't use upload but we upload a lot of videos to youtube so that is your upload speed the faster your upload the faster you'll be able to well upload videos and other things to the internet and i've heard this before from other users where download speeds are great upload speeds are not great and i am definitely able to confirm that in fact we may even have faster upload speeds from our t-mobile home internet connection than we do with starlink so the upload speeds are not impressive at all however they however it does work we're able to upload at a reasonable speed but it's certainly not fast so if you do rely a lot on upload then you might want to look at more asynchronous connections like fiber or something like that even though it's certainly not available in all areas the third con is there's no ethernet port on the router i mean come on spacex not even a single ethernet port yes there is an ethernet adapter that you can buy for 25 where you will be able to plug in a couple ethernet cables and connect to your wireless router but there's nothing built in there's nothing that comes with it that was stupid spacex you should at least have given us one ethernet port but there's nothing it's wi-fi or you're paying an extra 25 for an ethernet adapter yeah i really wish spacex would have at least included one for us but there's nothing the fourth con is the cost it's a hundred and ten dollars a month now which is way more expensive than our t-mobile internet which was 50 bucks a month for unlimited data starlink is also unlimited data it is faster but it's also more than double the cost now if you compare it to some cable and satellite and fiber connections then it probably will be around the same cost for your monthly fee but remember that there's also a 599 dollar fee for the equipment however if you did put down a deposit for spacex that cost drops a little bit it's still almost 600 bucks if you're a new customer to buy the starlink equipment and then you're paying 110 bucks a month and according to the email i got from starlink in march if you did put down a deposit for starlink earlier that brings your equipment costs down to 5.49 although i've seen reports of people paying 569 for their equipment and quite frankly we only paid 536 for our equipment so the costs for the equipment are kind of all over the place but they're still within about 50 60 bucks of each other so be prepared for an upfront investment and then that 110 a month fee for the service so those are four positives and four negatives of starling so overall we are fans of the starlink service even though there are some things that we wish would be improved like the ethernet port and things like that but i mean those are those are relatively small things this is a game changer if you live in a rural area and you want internet and you have something that's slow like cellular or maybe you have nothing this is an absolute game changer so that's it thanks for watching this video about starlink and our setup i will report back in a few weeks or maybe a few months with my impressions after using starlink for a longer period of time but this is just something initial after after the setup and we started using it for a few days so far so good thanks for watching and we will see you next time [Music]

Channel: A Dreamin' Life

Views: 477,463

Keywords: full-time rving, airstream, airstream life, airstream living, rving, rving life, airstream travel, rv travel, airstream vlog, airstream life vlog, airstream living vlog, airstream travel vlog, rv travel vlog, rv, rv life, travel vlog, full time rv living, full time rv, best rv youtube channel, best airstream youtube channel, airstreamers, full time rv living, camping, rv living, full time rv lessons

Id: nz_6hkPeylc

Length: 14min 45sec (885 seconds)

Published: Tue May 10 2022