Image via The Verge
With the recent launch of SpaceX’s Starlink for RVs service, which allows month-to-month satellite internet service where active coverage is available, Thomas Ricker writing for The Verge reviewed the latest offering and tested it in Europe.
Starink and its ‘Dishy McFlatface’ satellite dish was put to the test by Ricker with a Ventje T5 camper van in a German forest, a crowded festival in Bavaria, a Dutch beach and in central Amsterdam.
In summary, Ricker was impressed with Starlink for RVs, noting it offered service when there was no mobile data available and was “sometimes 100 times faster”:
If my service was indeed being de-prioritized, it was done with a relatively light touch at my testing locations and times — though I did experience a wide range of performance over the two week period. Using the iOS Speedtest app on my phone positioned less than 10 feet from the Starlink Wi-Fi router, I measured download speeds as slow as 44.2Mbps and as fast as 235Mbps, with uploads ranging from 8.9Mbps to 29.6Mbps. Speeds sometimes varied from one minute to the next, but mostly I was seeing download speeds on the average of 150–200Mbps and uploads between 10–15Mbps.
That’s not particularly fast by home internet standards in Europe. But, in the four remote locations where I set up Starlink RV in Germany and the Netherlands, Starlink was faster (sometimes 100 times faster) than the mobile data networks from T-Mobile and Vodafone, which sometimes failed to connect at all.
Here’s a chart comparing Starlink RV versus cellular service in terms of upload and download speeds:
As for other observations, Ricker noted the Starlink rectangular dish used an average of 48 to 74W, while reduced power to 20W when on standby. He noted the energy consumption might be even lower, as he was seeing 33 to 62W with an average of 42W, after being powered by a portable Jackery unit with a power meter.
Starlink for RVs does not have a wait list and Ricker received his hardware kit in less than a week.
After announcing Starlink for RVs in May, SpaceX said earlier this month the service had already hit 30,000 orders in just 16 days.
