I am trying a Starlink roaming package. I picked up a standard 3rd generation package online and am pleased overall with the portability and ease of use. I’ve read a few reviews and the commentary thus far has been generally positive, however if you are relying on portable power, it is taxing on power. The good aspects from the reviews I’ve read state improvements over past iterations, regarding connectivity to the StarLink via an ethernet dongle – with is now included in the router.
For my purposes, I would take StarLink when out camping or out to a Ham POTA activation where I am in close proximity to my vehicle or available power and/or use it with my Jackery AC power supply. It is portable, however it isn’t conveniently portable. If you needed to hike to a remote location, one man would need to dedicate packing the equipment and power supplies. Starlink sells a backpack for almost the current cost of the standard dish. Also, For an extra hundred dollars you can get the DC adapter and plug it into a car or DC power source. The power draw I have seen from the testing thus far is on par with the reports – I am seeing a power draw of between 60 -70 watts while StarLink is plugged in and online. For now I think I would plan to have my vehicle nearby for carting and housing the gear, with solar and DC power to keep the Jackery powered.
The speeds I have tested from two different locations range between 150 to 300 Mbps Download and 10-20 Mbps upload, with a ping between 25-50 ms., however that is just on my phone. a Speedtest on other devices outside of my phone produce worse results – typically 1/10th of what my phone is (and I tested with a 2018 iPad Pro and a 2021 MacBook Pro with wifi6. maybe there are some additional configurations I can make, will have to research it further.
So after a couple of hours of use, I’ve used up 15% on my Jackery and a little over 2Gb of Data of the 50 gb allowance. I didn’t really pull down anything too heavy for download, just a FaceTime call and a few minutes on YouTube, and some basic browsing on different sites. I would not plan on doing a lot of internet on the cheaper Roaming package, but for occasional use I think it would serve someone well that maybe out of cellular data range and needs to connect occasionally.