SpaceX's Starlink Reviewed: How is it after 4 months?
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- Опубликовано: 4 июл 2024
- I installed Dishy four months ago. Does it really get 300 Mbps down? Yes, sometimes. But what about the long term averages? How much power does it use? How is latency and jitter?
All that and more in this comprehensive review of Starlink after four months installed at my house in St. Louis, MO, in the USA.
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Special thanks to Katie Geerling and Natalie Geerling for help with the camera work!
Previous Starlink setup videos:
- Starlink on my Cousin's Farm: • I took SpaceX's Starli...
- Installing Starlink Dishy on my roof: • SpaceX Starlink satell...
#Starlink #SpaceX
Contents:
00:00 - Starlink Overview
01:33 - Caveats
02:15 - Dishy
06:45 - Starlink Router
09:08 - Power Consumption
11:20 - Performance - subjective
13:07 - Performance - objective
15:27 - Pricing and Contract
16:20 - Drawbacks
17:02 - Verdict 
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I love your channel because you always do reviwes after a ton of testing.. Awesome content bro..
"Starlink shuts down when outside temps reach 50C"
When can we expect the Linus Tech Tips "I water cooled my Internet, and then this happened" video?
He'd probably use liquid nitrogen!
@@JeffGeerling only when overclocking
Just run a raspberry pi that control a valve for a sprinkler.
@@JeffGeerling Ah Linus doesen`t like liquid Nitrogen ,, Steve @ Gamers has that covered lol :)
Really useful when this tech is designed for use in Africa.
You really put a lot of work and research into this, even monitoring the jitter and setting up separate networks through your raspberry pis to run parallel comparisons. Color me impressed, better than most of RUclips reviewers.
Unfortunately, most reviews on RUclips have a very limited allotment of time for the review-e.g. one week or maybe in some cases up to a month... I try on this channel to pour a lot more resources into a more narrow set of reviews of things I'm actually interested in, because I think that (a) helps me understand the things I review better, and (b) would be a lot more helpful to people actually interested in putting money into the thing I review!
@@JeffGeerling Well you got a sub from me.
4:17 Another reviewer's experience: Snow melted and ran off, but then re-froze, forming a column of ice between the dish and the roof, causing the self-orientation mechanism to fail. Dish was sent back to SpaceX.
You need to have 3 foot clearance so icicles to not make contact with roof, otherwise you ruin dish motor since dish is always manually adjusting tilt as needed. Situation like that, use a longer mount or j-bar.
@@learnnorth6192 I'll be curious how much adjusting happens as more sats are added to the mesh. Supposedly (fact check me) Starlink was going to evolve into a flat table 'dish' to track all of the birds available dynamically without mechanical orientation.
So... during winter consider moving dish to a spot you can readily access to clear snow. Copy.
Whoops. Why not mount it on a wall rather than the roof? The water could have dropped off. 🤪
Hey that's the future of technology baby it not working at all get used to it and by the way also you don't own it so we're charging you for damages to our s***** product because it was shittily designed
🥇By far the best, most in-depth review of Starlink, bar none! (Plus the usual fun and great production quality!) Thanks, Jeff! 👍🏼😎✌🏼
Follow up: Almost 24 hours after I watched and commented, we were notified that our Dishy is being shipped! 👍🏼😎 Omen or what? 😉🤣✌🏼
There's a Starlink, waiting in the sky, it'd like to provide you with internet, but there's trees blocking the line of sight. 🎶
I miss David.
Let the children boogie.
Or perhaps “let the children Google”
Thanks for an honest and thorough review. One of the best on RUclips.
Excellent review. Really enjoyed everything on this video: the footage, the review, everything was perfect. Kudos
Would love to see a video on how you're aggregating your two connections when you get down to it!
Happy to see that Red Shirt Jeff watches Photonicinduction!
"Research" he tells me.
@@JeffGeerling its better then research, its SCHIENCE!
@@JeffGeerling 300MPs down. lols in 1GB up and down
@@JeffGeerling enjoy starlink while it lasts the math on the buissness side does not add up
hell yeah
Excellent review, thank you for the work you put into the video!
This was a really well made video! Great job!
Awesome video, the kind of intelligent product review that makes RUclips worthwhile!
I always look forward to a Jeff Geerling video popping up on my notifications
The best Starlink Review available! I appreciate your clear, concise, data driven tutorial.
first straight forward review I've seen. good job
Fantastic and thorough data. Thank you.
nice detailed tech review, with a bit of humor.
Excellent, compare to some others "pure personal opinion", Jeff with a bunch of numbers to back his words.
What a well done video! This is not just an excellent production but is very well written, also. Thanks!
I love the bloopers at the end. You made me smile a little.
😁👍
OK SpaceX, you've won me over with those ASCII easter eggs
But they lost me with worker exploitation. Satellite internet has been a thing for a long time. This is nothing new and is trash compared to fiber.
Jokes aside, I'm not one to pick sides in a market.
In light of ISP monopolies, this should help things to move forward in the states.
Some areas don't get better service than 3mbit, it's a no-brainer for most people.
@@armyofninjas9055 - do a bit of research, all previous satellite services were/are horse shit compared to even dial up… Starlink satellites are in low orbit and beam directly to users rooftop dishes whereas every other satellite service is further away, has less satellites and as a result utilize land repeaters to beam to users rooftop satellites with spotty connections and at painstakingly slow speeds… at a cost to the user on average of about $400/mo compared to Starlinks $100/mo for speeds exceeding that of most peoples cable Internet.
Also, Starlink is not intended to replace physical cable service like fiber which will obviously have faster transmission speeds over wireless (for now). You can’t ding the service for a comparison that you arbitrarily made on your own. Starlink has always been marketed as a solution for rural areas which do not already have internet service.
Hey, jeff. I know this isn't relating to the video so much, but holy COW! look at the quality of your videos! Love it.
well-conducted testing of the equipment and well documented iwth graphs etc. Great job with video editing and good sound throughout the video. Good job :) Enjoyed your review.
RUclips randomly suggested your channel, fantastic content. Keep up the great work!
BTW, thanks for posting timestamps (and outtakes too!)
Thanks for this very complete review.
i don't even have words to express how amazing this channel is though
This was a very well done review!
This video got you another subscriber. Thanks for being so thorough- very well done!
You deserve alot more subscribers. Your review is very detailed and well thought out. Great job Jeff!
We’ve had ours for about 3 months now and we love it! Rural Oklahoma and there is no good internet option. I’ve been using a cell service for the last few years, which was expensive and there are always data limits. We still talk once in a while about how awesome it is to be able to watch whatever we want, anytime, instead of being “almost out of data” ALL THE TIME. As mentioned, it really is life changing for some of us! Worth every penny of the upfront costs.
I'm in choktaw county , I got bumped back to mid next year! I'm happy for you!!
STFU life changing . its trash and the future it will go down . The satilites have to be replaced every 5 years .. Its terrible for waste and space junk . Starlink will go broke .
@@gtxoiltastebad yeah most VLEO satellites do have a 5 year lifespan. That's why they already have backups parked in higher orbit. 2 most VLEOs fail not because of hardware but becuase of orbital decay. why talk shit to someone that hasn't had reliable internet becuase someone finally brought them service. You need to rethink your priorities dude or life isn't gonna be easy on you
@@gtxoiltastebad
You are talking about first generation systems. 5 years of in technology is a long time and 20 years is two human technology generations. Why you think they will go broke now is really a mystery.
Nice proper drilling technique at the angle. Thanks for the video, been looking for more Starlink info.
You don't want water dripping towards the house!
Very good report and presentation. Thank you Jeff.
Hi, Jeff. Great unbiased review. Got my dishy 4 days ago, in Ireland. Same thoughts... I luv the competition it brings, and a good 2 fingers to the other ISP's.
This makes me want to do a similar video on how I run our entire house from here in the UK using a 4G LTE SIM for about £8 ($11)/mo. I can get get close to 100Mbps down, which is enough for us. I'll have to start tracking some stats.
11 Bucks a Month lol. In Germany that would get you like ~2GB of Data and thats it ^^
If you´re lucky it may also be as fast as 20Mbit/s at least around my region.
If you do a Video about that, i encourage you to speak a bit louder, even if it feels totally wrong at first.
I´m looking forward to see something about that!
Please do make the video! Moreover, at UK prices, the cost of electricity for Starlink will be significantly more than the cost of your 4G internet subscription. On internet for rural areas, the phenomenon known as trees, as described in the video, is going to be a common problem. A UK-specific problem will planning permission. In Conservation Areas, and for Listed Properties, it will likely be impossible to get consent from the authorities; dishes for TV reception are already forbidden. You must conceal them carefully if you want one, but these only need to see one point in the sky.
@UCCFYf0B37zl9YPdF5krj8Pw that's true the overall pricing for 4G are pretty ridiculous in Germany. But there's nothing we could do to change that.
What SIM deal is this?
@@chriswatson2407 It's just a unlimited data 3 SIM, complete with a bunch of cashback offers.
Very good review. Thanks for putting forth the effort.
Great review. The quality of your video and audio is perfect. 👌🏼
This was a great review, Thanks Jeff!
Immediate 'like' simply for your attention to detail. Thanks for doing this.
The most thorough and comprehensive review that I have seen on RUclips about Starlink.
From one Jeff to another Jeff,
Thank you!
J S Thomas
You're welcome, Jeff!
exactly the type of review I wanted to see, thanks.
Was waiting for this since you sayd you had Starlink.
Jeff, TLDW will never apply to you.
Doesn't help that his TLDW didn't answer the question.
@@mrlescure It did answer the question. The dish was just as good as his wired internet most of the time, except for a couple of minutes every few hours when it would get obstructed.
Definitely not subscribing to this guy.
@@fubutthole omg... no one cares.
Wow this is a great review - really practical, and understandable (despite nice use of technology to collect and illustrate the findings) -- Thanks for doing this! Subscribed.
Superb review! 🤙🏻
I've got gigabit fiber, so Starlink wouldn't be for me, but my mom's house is in one of those rural spots were there's either cruddy DSL or the option to pay thousands of dollars to have them run fiber out from the highway - she'd be a perfect candidate.
This was a great, detailed breakdown of where the service currently stands, though I feel that your standing obstructions are at once informative but also limiting. How many of the issues you saw would have been mitigated without those obstructions?
It's a good point, and I may never know-however, assuming my cousin's farm opens up to Starlink soon, I'll also be monitoring the connection there (and she has a wide-open view of the entire sky), and I'll report back after a while how that's going.
100%, I'd love this where I am, 10 down and 1 up, but my cousin needs it FAR more than me. He at best gets 150 kbps down and we havent ever been able to measure the upload.. probably cause of how low it is.. gotta love Centurylink. (which we what we both have) Sad thing is, its the best package in his area.
🙌
A wireless connection for your mother to the nearest fiber point would probably be a far more realistic option for high speed internet.
At some point that is going to be the approach that gets used for those in urban areas or rural spots that are still within a few miles of more developed communications.
Unless ur running High def on demand video server a person only needs 6 megabytes download speed. My wife and I have Netflix and out internet is frontier DSL 18megabytes down 1 Meg up and it works great...no buffering at all. I ran all new wiring and new jack Inside. My bill is about 45 bucks
To add to this review...Got mine in February, am rural, and was great,...until Spring. Had to go from the ground to a 12'+ mast to clear the trees. Heavy rain was a problem, but has since beeen alot better. Beats the Verizon 4g JetPack that was formerly the connection to the world.
Nice work. And great editing!
Absolutely a thorough review of Starlink!!!! Thank you so much!!!!!!
175 watts. Holy Toledo!
since those number are only hit during the "heat up" cycles, maybe we should just mount it inside, facing out a window and let it heat up our home "for free"
A newer revision of dishy reportedly uses less, and there are newer "mobile" models also in the works.
Like everything else, Musk does, he is no respect for economy.. But why would he. It's always someone else's money!
Thats the power consumption of the CPU inside my computer. Impressive it uses this little energy to keep the dish warm.
@@richardscathouse is that why he spent nearly all his wealth keeping SpaceX and Tesla from going bankrupt?
It's special how I keep looking at your reviews even though I'm not really interested in this topic because I happen to live in an area where we have good internet.
Why am I watching? educational, good structure. Always the opportunity to dive deeper into the technique through the links. Conclusion: another wonderful review based on facts.
Thanks!
Thanks for this review. One of the best I’ve seen on Starlink. I see a Starlink system in my mobile future.
wow what an in depth review, respect!
I'm really looking forward to seeing what solution you use to aggregate the connections.
Agreed..
Ditto!
"The saint-louis arch weather deflector went haywire" lol
When I was a kid, I lived near New York City area, and we could pickup St Louis Radio stations in the car...I always wondered why that was..but now the mystery is solved...it was the St Louis Arch acting as a signal deflector/amplifier..
@@sanansa4567 Ha! Trivia time... I worked at KMOX, which was known as "the mighty MOX", owing to the fact it was a 24-hour AM radio station with a 50 kW transmitter. At night, when the AM signal can bounce off the atmosphere, you could pick it up in most of US (clearly in much of the Midwest). That's also why the St. Louis Cardinals are one of the most popular baseball teams in the Midwest (not all cities had such a powerful AM station that broadcast the games).
That was seriously informative - thank you. Looking forward to getting it.
I had no idea about this product and I probably will never gonna adquire something like this, but this video was so well made and informative that I had to leave a like
I've had mine for a few months now in Australia. Absolutely love it, it's been a game changer as I've been running off mobile 4G for years which is very limiting with what I can do at home. I don't have obstructions and have only had two noticeable outages. It'll be interesting to see how it goes in the Australian summer where it can get to 45+ degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit, during a really hot summer).
Great review, new to your channel but loving the content I've seen so far!
You've got a young Steve Buscemi going on. Your cadence and phrasing are almost spot on and you do look a bit like him :). First time viewer. Best Wishes and Regards and thank you. for the great content and information!
How do you do, fellow kids!
Brilliant and well detailed review.
Very very well done Jeff, kudos!
If the ping gets into the 20ms range, I will be very interested in Starlink. I'm hoping to buy a house way out in the middle of nowhere, and internet is a factor on where we eventually move.
Starlink: Perfect for those of us who don't want to live in the city anymore.
@@justinhughes4722 Housing prices in rural areas tend to be significantly lower than in urban settings, so I don't understand your point.
@@Igorooooleynikov Because the data caps tend to be low, the prices high, and the service mediocre.
@@shadowtheimpure hmm, maybe it is US problem?
@@Igorooooleynikov could be.. we have a lot of rural areas that are expensive to cover with good cell coverage
@@PaulSullivan828 Not profitable enough to justify 3/4g? Maybe then starlink is one of more obvious plans to make profit, but it does not resolve problem.
Great video, with solid info!
Great review!
I think we should all take a moment to really appreciate the amount of time, energy and effort that went into making this video. 👏
Well done and thank you very much for such a brilliant video; it is greatly appreciated. 👍
Just so you know, there is a big difference between mbps and MB/s. Mbps is megaBITS per second, while the other is megaBYTES per second. since a byte has 8 bits, mbps shows 8x larger numbers than MB/s. Keep that in mind :)
Love your data driven narrative🤞
lots of good jokes and commentary with technical analysis, keep it up Jeff!
Haha, I really like the “Elon time” joke. That is really epic classic considering the FSD availability schedule on Tesla. That 100W power consumption is really a lot on power burning. 🤔. Good data point.
Elon’s also been accurate on many timelines as well .. like model Y production
Are there any plans to allow multiple dishes to be used to effectively expand the field of view? Most folks won’t need it, but I could see it being useful in specific circumstances.
You don't need that since Dishy is really good at knowing the optimal angle to attain the best possible connection.
It's not something that Starlink has to support directly. You can just use network bonding to combine two or more network connections together to make a single connection with the combined bandwidth.
@@darkfoxfurre
The same thing can be done with a local area wireless system that bridges the last few miles of fibre box to the home.
I'm not a subscriber to your channel, however, your video was the one I chose when doing a search for Starlink. I'm glad I selected it because the content was excellent. It was an informative and honest review of the Starlink service which is what I wanted. Thank you.
Thank you so much for the review! It helped me make a decision. Your video was so thorough, that I'd like to learn more from you! Subscribed.
it's so funny how bad your internet connection is even in big cities... i live in Czech Republic in a small town with less than 8000 people living and my internet connection is a 25 euros a month, fiber to the home with 500 Mbps symmetric down/up... of course no data cap and hidden fees and no termination fees ... go to the big city, and for the same price you get 1 Gbps symmetric ...
it's mind blowing how bad things are on the other side of the ocean
You don't need to get wet in the ocean. 😉 Just go to Germany. 😑
I don't have a defense for it, although I have an explanation. America is physically large, which makes running fiber more expensive. Also, we don't bother to regulate our ISPs, and are quick to grant local monopolies to carriers. Finally we are corrupt. Comcast is one of the biggest ISPs and one of the biggest lobbyest.
Should see Australia.👎👎👎
The internet is the city is just in our cities, this is for people wanting to get out of those shit holes.
With the dish at that temperature I am surprised that you don't have a bird nesting on it 😁
I think birds make their nests where they are less out in the open. Plus the nest would probably fall off every time the dish moves itself.
I think a nest _under_ the dish would be more probable.
@@eDoc2020 I think the birds might like a fairground ride😁
Came to your channel for the Pi content, stayed when I learned you are one of the best tech RUclipsrs hands down. Subscribed and donated!
Looking forward to you muxing the two services and how you do it. Thanks for the research!
I'm hyped about the "internet aggregation" video.
So it won't work well here in Eastern Australia - I know my roof goes over 50C in summer, and it was -5C this week (although I don't have good temperature measurement on the roof at the moment)
AT LAST! Actual reporting and data. Thanks for the super useful review and video. I think I'm gonna hold out until there's more coverage (especially for remote working and zoom all day)
Superb analysis… thank you
I am not sure if you know: after the current flood in Germany, they are using Starlink to create a stable internet access in the flooded areas.
I think it's hysterical that you find "below 5mbps!!" internet to be paltry. We have only one provider here in rural PA (no cable, absolutely no fiber, only one DSL provider who doesn't maintain the network well because.....monopoly), and we're 'provisioned' under 3mbps for our 6mbps plan (the lowest we can get, so we pay for 6x the service we are actually provided), and have never received more than 2mbps, we usually hover at 1 or below. There are really no options in the genuinely rural US, and I, for one, am very excited at a possibility opening up.
That story is the same for rural living all over the world. Your issue is not that it is a monopoly but the fact it is not commercially viable to be able to run new high speed networks into the area without a massive investment in replacing copper transmission with fibre.
Where I live the local community got together and paid for a fibre line to brought into the area and we are no on our second fiber line building so as to try and make the system more robust. Another option that will come up in the future is to connect homes to the fibre lines with wireless technologies.
Thanks for an open and honest review. We live in a rural area and have a microwave based wireless internet service which was a big step up from dial up, but could use more speed. The ISP has been great but there are limits to this technology, so something like Starlink is interesting to consider for the future.
Great video sir!
Maple tree blocking the internet has got to be the most Canadian thing I've ever heard
Starlink is faster than my wifI!
Good point. So many people are using ancient routers.
Made in what? 1979?
Your an excellent communicator. Thanks
Nice review thank you for it all
So much useful information. I did not know about the thermal cut off at 122. That's probably a game ender for everybody living in the desert. It was also interesting to know they have a self heating mechanism to remove snow. Though they have to work on the bug problem. So much power is used on that POE device. And you say the specs for POE say the max is 100W yet they are pushing 150W through it when clearing off snow. Well, with Elon at the helm he probably tested things. As far as losing money I'm sure the monthly rental quickly pays back any immediate loss. He is the richest man in the world because he's like a magician. "Look, I'm giving you the dish at half my price. However, I'm charging you so damn much that within a single year I'll be doubling the profit"! The overall ROI is probably atronomical. And finally, I did not know they were really tied to the geography because they were hardwired to a land connection. I should have realized that until the satellites can talk to each other the satellites would be tied to land locations. This is one of your best if not best episodes yet!
Note that they do have truly astronomical (heh) costs outside just Dishy-launching all the satellites costs money, building and developing the satellites and base stations costs money, etc.
The idea is that within some period of time (1 million customers? 2 million? not sure the breakeven point), they would start turning a profit, even if the user terminal (Dishy) is still sold at a loss (just a smaller loss, probably, like how Microsoft did with the Xbox).
@@JeffGeerling didnt they get a billion dollar grant for some of it?
Great review. It’s very interesting however CGNAT sucks, it makes basically impossible to host anything. And I don’t know what to say about the power consumption that is just crazy…
Does Starlink support port control protocol so get around the lack of ability to properly set up port forwarding and therefore allow hosting stuff? It's been a thing for years, I'd be both surprised and disappointed to learn that thry hadn't at least bothered going as far as using a standard developed and used to mitigate some of the downsides of CGNAT going back a decade or so now
Considering that ninety something percent of people don't use port forwarding I don't think it's a huge deal. A VPN should be sufficient for incoming connections.
Excellent review. I've got relatives in rural areas who are on the list to get Starlink. I know they'd love those massive performance boosts.
Well done, sir. Thanks for the useful information.
If Starlink goes out of business, you'll see the ascii middle finger graphics when you try to login.
@Cory Barrett DirectTV is to name one, and they wanted to provide internet to USA and Canada. Not Global.
@Cory Barrett They did back then. You needed a phone line for your uploads, but you'd get the downloads from the satellite dish that was used for the TV as well.
Can't wait for starlink to get oversubscribed by people who have viable alternatives!
Great review of the Dishy.
Thank you so much for this very detailed review. It's not too geeky for e to follow and covers my main issues which are rural coverage (and non-coverage!).
I love how I paid $90 for the beta, I live in the middle of nowhere, and the mofos still haven't gotten back to me.
You signed up for a waitlist on a beta service, timeline advised before you paid deposit. It’s a hard wait but you’ll be so happy once you finally get it. I just got mine, and it’s great.
I've been thinking about using Starlink as a secondary internet source because Spectrum is buttcheeks.
Hello fellow Spectrum user!
isn’t that the truth 😫
@@JeffGeerling Howdy, Jeff. I'm a big fan of your channel. Let us know when we can buy a Red Shirt Jeff shirt ;)
@@RaidOwl In red, natch
AWESOME objective review which is a rare thing on youtube.
you input is awesome, i live just north of the st louis area so local!!!