The BIGGEST problem with Starlink Internet....and Why You Might Not Want One 

I love my Starlink.... I just don't park near any trees.

About to become a full-time RVer! Thanks for this very helpful review! Makes sense that multiple options are best if you need consistent service, which I will. The most helpful piece of advice I've found!

My seasonal campsite is a remote, heavily wooded area. My dishy is on a 20’ pole aimed at a northwest section of the sky. Only a small area is unobstructed yet my Starlink works flawlessly. We visited a campground in a very populated area where the only choice of location was under a large tree. Late fall so, no leaves, still worked well.

Thanks for the update and keep them coming as you learn more. Finally had a nice week here and supposed to be 85 one day next week. They think the most northern lakes will have ice out some time this week for the fishing opener next weekend. Hope so for all the fisherman/woman/ kids.

Hi Aaron. You might want to consider a peplink or other similar mobile router. Here's a few reasons why. * They can combine multiple carriers into one pipe. So Starlink, LTE (up to two LTE carriers on some models) and wifi all at once. As carriers fall out of service the others take over seamlessly so that means far fewer perceived service drops for you. * The LTE radios in those fixed mobile routers are far better than anything in pocketable hotspots, especially when combined with good antennas. * Easy to configure and manage, especially peplinks. Almost set and forget. * Bonding service AKA sdwan is very inexpensive. You might spend $30-$50/year? It is inherently a VPN too and you can choose from multiple endpoints, globally. It's also not required. You can just wire up multiple carriers and let it work in fail-over only mode. * You'd probably do very well with just Verizon and Starlink and the occasional wifi with one of those routers and some good antennas so no need for additional service lines. But if you were going into an area where you know Carrier X is better just get a pre-paid sim for the time being. These are carrier unlocked so do whatever you want. I've started using these at work for sites where I need LTE fail-over. I recently got to use one for myself for two weeks and really got to put it through it's paces and needless to say such a router is now at the top of my RV stuff to get list. And the one's I've been shopping start around $300 so not too bad. Unlocked pocket routers are about that much and these are so much better. If nothing else I'd consider getting a better antenna than that Netgear. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent device. I have one myself. But even with just a basic pocketatable router similar to your Verizon one (I have a Netgear Nighthawk) I noticed a vast improvement when I went to a fixed roof mount omnidirectional mimo antenna with 8db gain. Carry an omni and a directional and you've got a good road warrior kit. Oh and speaking of antennas. For anyone who has an RV that came with the Winegard 360+ TV antenna and opted not to get their optional router there's a pretty good LTE mimo array in there and one external wifi antenna, all with T9 connectors. You can find the leads clipped on the back of the little beauty cap on your ceiling. One can command strip mount a pocket router right there if it has external antenna connectors [and those are typically T9] and there you go.

I travel in a van and camp as far from society as possible. Miles and miles beyond Verizon coverage. Starlink has been a game changer. No longer do I leave beautiful spots because there is no cell coverage. Now I look for those spots because they keep the riff raff out. I travel in the west in national forests. I can always find an open spot with a northern facing opening. It is wonderful. Well worth the cost.

We just hooked up our starlink rv yesterday, were able to grab a gap in the trees here in gainesville fl. I have a robust att, Peplink system, I see this as an adjunct to that, for when the att has connection problems or congestion. Trees are a problem with starlink, I see us using it sparingly, pausing and restarting the service as necessary. Great job with this update. First time on your channel. Larry

Thank you for your honest answer, I myself have been thinking about traveling over the winter months to warmer states, but I need fast internet speed with no drop out. I work for a call center so my phone system is through the internet

I see that the new "Starlink for RV" program may offer a new solution for managing expected down time as it allows you to pause monthly service. I believe the way it works is that if you know in advance that you can go without Starlink in a given month or months, you can pause service cost for that period and resume service when you need it. I have not investigated this part of the service so I do not know how flexible it is.

Amazing update, super detailed, thanks so much!!!!

I now RV full-time and had mine for the last two months or so. Thankfully, I haven’t had any problems whatsoever. The ordering was easy and the installation was ridiculously easy. I know I’ll run into problems here and there, but so far I’m loving it!

Thanks for the update. We're looking into getting one so this will help with the decision making.

Thank you

We just got our shipping notification for one we are excited!

Good information thanks

Great informative video as usual Aaron. Keep up the great and varied content! Enjoy and stay safe out there.

Thanks for the insight about Starlink. Very helpful to the community. As always enjoyed these techno updates you share on your channel

Thank you for sharing your experience... I don't like the portable antenna and stringing wires all over the place... Think we'll hold out for a slightly more robust installation... Do appreciate your take on it though!...

Great video. This is truly the bottom line with regard to Starlink. If you have to work on the go, as I do, it is a great business tool "option". But it does have its limitations. Thanks for the video.

Thank you for educating me; I was excited too; but have decided to send back.

Thanks for the honest review

I got mine 3 weeks ago. It is amazing.

Very informative. Thanks

Thanks for your updates! Tower congestion on Verizon in Florida is crazy bad. Fort Myers area we just upgraded to new phones thinking our old LG G6'S were at fault. They weren't! When we hit 5G, still rare... it's as slow as LTE. ATT in our trucks OnStar is not better. T-Mobile seems to have a big edge right now on the two larger telecoms at least in SW Florida. Hoping Starlink gets solid coverage here, then we will jump on Starlink.

Thanks for the update! We love our T-Mobile Home Internet we bring it in the RV. Danny and Lynn RV America

There's telescoping antenna masts available for reasonable prices, height increases the visible open sky

We recently got a caravan, and after our first couple of trips we've realised that mobile service can be very poor. We need to be connected for work, so I've just got StarLink RV. I set it up and tested yesterday and got 222mb on the dish speed test. Looking forward to our roadtrip next week!

Nice video keep us updated

Thank you! 💜

Technology is never all-in-one. Every tool works differently in different setting and needs. Great update. Sounds like a good solution if you’re west of the Mississippi.

And don't forget weather. That can impact connections, too. We are on the fence about this service. It is just that cell service speeds are starting to degrade in many of the places we often visit.

Starlink has always stated that trees or tall buildings would be bad for it. That's why you need to take your phone and do a clearance test with it.

Best review I have seen. Thanks.

I went with the RV service...and like that it can be paused when not needed or in use. There are some decent telescopic antenna poles that I'm looking to test, but Starlink clearly shows you don't want building or tree obstruction.

Thanks for the video. We are getting our Starlink on Tuesday. Looking forward to your updates >>> Stuart

Informative

Hopefully it’ll be better when I plan to go full time on the road in a couple years and will be largely out West boondocking.

Thank you for making this video and sharing it with me. Interstate!, as always BS & BK

When you are surrounded by trees, cut them all down OR get a real real long pole that will reach beyond the trees or get a drone that you can mount your star link to it and let if fly up in the sky.

Rual areas in Alaska are gonna love it we pay close to 200$ a month and. The ping at its lowest is 600 and not even 1mb down. So 100 a month is a upgrade and the speeds are also a upgrade.

I'm still waiting. Signed up Nov 2020. Reserved Feb 2021. A month ago, the map said, 'Coming summer 2022' and I thought I'd finally will get it. But recent map update now says, 'Expanding in 2023". Bummer. I don't need roaming. Just good home internet. Thanks for being honest and straight forward about the capabilities and limitations of Starlink.

Must have 100 degree cone unobstructed view of the sky. I would think a canopy of trees is pretty much a deal breaker. The dishy finds, then locks onto a bird as it comes into view (up from the horizon), as the previous one disappears from its view. Plus, when you are "roaming" you are at a lower priority than someone subscribed in that area, so data speeds can be affected. Initially align the dishy either 53 degs either north of south.

Fantastic video. We travel 6 months/year and we carry VZ and ATT. I have Starlink at home and I was considering getting it for the Airstream as well but the tree situation males me hesitate. I do believe that in a year or two, when more satellites will be in orbit, trees will be less and less of a problem. We were in the Smokies last year and the only places to get cell service is at the Visitors Center or in town. Starlink should not work either. Way too many trees… like fully covered. Good luck through and safe travels and don’t forget, Long $TSLA and Elon!

It sounds like a great service for anyone not in the Northeast or Northwest where trees are (thankfully) rampant in camping areas. Essentially it's the perfect service of you have ready access to deserts.

Trees are absolutely an issue. I have been forced to create a mostly clear area for Starlink to work and I have raised the receiver as high as possible. It would be useful to have a longer cable.

I would think, that if you were full time employed, or in business for yourself, on the road, Starlink could make sense for primary use. But, for the average person, initial price, plus multiple monthly use fees add up and it quickly becomes unaffordable. We had considered various connectivity items for us, but found that a Jetpack does the job at a significantly less cost per month. Good review and appreciate the time it took to make.

What do you use instead

the dish must see the sky. that rv site was closed in. On the Starlink app it has a viewer that is easy to use and tells if it is ok, which it would have said it was too obstructed. satellite receiver needs to see satellite or it only works when it is /if it is overhead. there are 2500 satellites so coverage improves with every SpaceX launch

I've had first and second generation GPSes blocked by simple forest cover. It took 13? years before the equipment got sensitive enough to really be reliable.

My wife and I don't travel full time but I still picked this up as soon as roaming was turned on. Previously I had used a combination of AT&T (tethering)/Verizon (hotspot)/TMobile(hotspot) since I wanted to work on the road. We are mostly in the Western US (CO, WY, UT, NM, AZ). Boondocking out here is awesome since there are so many places you can do it, but a lot of it has no cell coverage, especially in the CO mountains. Starlink has worked flawlessly out here. However, trees are few and far between unless you are in the mountains. Right now I'm paying $85 for home internet, $50 for Verizon, $50 for T-Mobile and $5 for phone tethering with AT&T. That's $190 total. I plan to cut everything but tethering and Starlink. That'll drop my bill to $140 ($110 + $25 roaming + $5). When we are at home I might not even move the dish off our class B since the batteries and solar will keep it going and I think the router will reach all of the house. If not I plan to get another cable and just move the dish & router between house and van. I think it's a game changer for people out West at least.

LOL, I bought a service that requires the dish to see the sky and when I don't allow it to see the sky it doesn't work. I'm not happy. LOVE THIS REVIEW. LMAO

Roaming costs can be attributed to capacity issues as well. Starlink has a capacity limit (in theory) in a single area that the satellites can handle. Without roaming, it is much easier to calculate how many dishes can be in this block without impacting performance heavily. Allowing roaming if say a person went into an area at max capacity could have some issues. They most likely added a buffer to ensure this doesn't happen.

Had it 6 month. Gift from God! Didn’t waste time watching this video. Just getting my two cents in regardless of what he has to say.

Every person I have talked to with star link loves it

100 mgps, my house has 30mbps, I envy your connection

we love our star link no issues in north western Canada

likely it is the water content of the trees that is causing the obstruction of the signal. It would be interesting if you used it on a patio with a cover or inside the house. I imagine that the home would be problematic because of the materials, while exterior patio with tin, plastic, and maybe even glass.

This reminds me of the line in Enemy of the State when the meathead agent goes "So they can only look down....seems kind of limited"

I guess if you have enough money to pay for an unusable service, then yes I'd agree, it's worth it. Too many down sizes for the returns you mentioned.

I use an LTE modem (Pepwave) with a MiMo antenna. Two issues. GB are expensive I have an ATT and Verizon plan with 2 SIM cards on each plan. Plus where there are no cell towers there is no internet. I think the Starlink can replace my Verizon plan and give me access when I’m out back.

No surprise there was a price increase soon after a bunch of folks bought Starlinks.

I live in the middle of the woods. Dishy on the ground marginally worked with many drops. I bought an Old Glory Flag Pole (25ft telescopic) and it cured all of my problems. Dishys mounting stem is 1.49” OD, the flagpole’s ID is 1.5” so no additional hardware is needed. Just tape the shoulder to the flagpole. Mounting high is a necessity under tree lines. Height tremendously increases skyline exposure. I have no choice living in a rural area with marginal cell service, no hard wire internet and only high orbit satellite options. Starlink was a game changer for me. Because dishy is not mounted to my roof, theoretically with a spare cable I can take it with me. I do agree that you need cell service when traveling anyway so the combination of cell and Starlink may not work financially for everyone. For me, I had Viasat with a large data package costing $168/m and run out of data. Viasat was unusable for Zoom calls and large collaborative files . Starlink at now $110/m still makes sense for me. I thought the $25/month Starlink roaming could be used only when you need it but I could be wrong. Anyway your decision made sense. It’s a lot of money for the few times on the road you can’t find cell service. I guess it all boils down to your need to be connected with high speed. I think with a pole you could have cured the tee line problem.

Not sure what roaming means, but with the new starlink RV unit you can use it anywhere, and pause service when your not on trips. The areas that don’t have service yet still work , but service will be what they call “best effort” Best thing about trees is you can get around them. What we need is to get a portable pole and long cable . I’m thinking what you want is a carbon fiber base , telescoping or bungee couples rods to get it above the tree line.

This would work great most places out west. Kinda why I want it. My version works great pretty much anywhere east of the Rockies but out west I can be in Ontario Ca and get garbage reception with Verizon.

We have Starlink, and will be going Full Time at the end of June, I have been playing with it for now, I will also be getting a Hotspot from Calyx Institute (T-Mobile) I am considering the Hotspot and Starlink as first Tier services each for different situations, then if they both fail I can turn on hotspot data on our Cricket phones for access to the AT&T network, after that I think we would just move locations, or the kids will have to go to a coffee shop to do school work (online college) I think much will depend where you are. Y'all are in the smokies, But if you were in Idaho in the Cellular Black hole, Starlink should work, and no cell carrier has coverage in a big section out there. so a combo of services is needed if you want/need to be connected. Thanks for the update.

We live in our RV and the Wi-Fi is horrible thanks for the review

I am considering getting a Starlink dish for when we go to Florida early 2023. I was considering the roaming option as well so my question to you is this; since we'll be staying at the same location for 3 months (coincidentally just outside Orlando like you did in the video), could I just move my location to the address of the campground and avoid the roaming fees?

I love my Starlink thanks Elon

I do not know about roaming and RV's. I have it in my home and we have lots of trees and obstructions. But we love ours. I don't do Zoom calls, but I can watch movies all day long without interruptions.

I was just about to buy the larger roaming in motion dish for my rv and boat, but they changed it, wont work on a boat? I know several full time boaters that have had it, I will have to see if it still works for them.

I guess , Starlink is just another option for those who doesn't have the option to get the fiber internet. This would help a lot of people, not just from city who has crowded internet as usual, but the people far from city. It might be another option, but for some, it will be a solution.

It should be great to be able to fix the starlink in the roof of car and be able to move and stay connected!

I'm in rural quebec, cell service is spotty where I live and starlink works great. We've had it for about 8mo and have had one outage which lasted about an hour. Our average speed is well over 100mb/s which is night and day to the 3 we used to have through cellular at a lower price. The seaplane operator I fly for has starlink at all their bases. We have subsized service from the provincial government at 115 cad per month taxes included until 2025.

I live in northern VT in a regular house surrounded by trees and mountains any suggestions about equipment? Good show!

Could you get a telescoping Pole to put it way up in the air when you have trees nearby?

I keep getting the Obstructed warning too, but still getting 150-200Mbps. My Obstructed chart is no where like yours though. On a side note, do you guys ever do meetups? I’m in FL too.

I got starlink today it's totally amazing I could not get anything internet related to work. Starlink is easy to hook up 160% Speed now. Everything works super great it moves to find satellites and melts snow. I love starlink.

My Cox bill keeps going up in price. I gave up cable to lower my bill but they still charge too much just for tv and modem. If I kept the cable it's only $10 more, go figure. I need more options, although we live in an apartment. We did full time RV a couple of years ago but gave it up. We currently live in AZ and have a cat we don't want to risk his air conditioning, sometimes RV resorts had electricity outage at times while we were at work. We always stayed close to work because we don't have the luxury of working at home.

You want a cradlepoint with an MVNO subscription.

So park in open area and do not mount dish on the roof of RV this will give you flexibility to move dish to anywhere near your RV where no trees.

Negative, TREES, duh…c’mon, is that even a question? 😂 Anyway, if you live in an area of the world where there are NO options or NO service, this is all stellar at $2X even if you need to go sit in a open peanut field to rock out;). Party on friends🤙🏼

Camping in beautiful campers and running all over the states isn’t enough fun without internet. Let the women go and learn what truly matters.

Whats the difference between roaming & normal residential exactly? I'm currently in a whole new country & my living situation isn't really fixed yet so idk if I can still get residential & take it with me when moving it take roaming?

So i just got the email today saying my starlink is ready so before i make the final purchase for the equipment i would like to make sure it works good for people who are not roaming and just live in one rural spot with not many trees here in Lehigh Acres, FL. If i don’t have a lot of trees around will i get “Xfinity style high speed connections”? Will i be able to game on this internet? Is it fast enough for my 3 kids to stream videos while me and my wife watch a movie on Netflix downstairs? If not i don’t really see it being worth $110 a month and buying the equipment. If it doesn’t work well can i return it all for a full refund? Thanks in advance for your help!

Trees will be an issue with any satellite system. Hughsnet was the same. Starlink would be great for boats if they come out with an in-motion system.

East coast RVers and FL RV park users all seem to diss SL. However, out west SL is awesome for all those remote UT, CO, NM, AZ boondocking spots..

I guess as a full timer you have to ask yourself how many places do you go and how often that you don't have cell service enough to use your hot spot device, and is it worth the additional cost to have the option of the Starlink service. I suppose if your business can afford it it's a no brainer. If the hot spot gets the job done, then maybe not.

Great place to dry camp no solar because of trees

Is there a Ethernet connection on the router for additional items?

we live in the smokies so I have not ordered Starlink, I figured it would be hard to connect

Hey, I have a question for you. We have a property in Wisconsin and we have a wide open field on our land but it’s about 12 1300 feet from the main cabin. Do you think I can install the dish in the field on our property and send a signal to the main house that kind of distance how can I do that?

As more satellites are launched do you think the required sky-view for the dish will shrink? I have a line of tree-tops to my west that just barely peeks into the sky-view on the phone app. It gives me a message saying that this may cause a 1 - 2% interruption time. If the required sky-view was just slightly smaller this line of tree-tops would not be a problem. So... more satellites, smaller required sky-view?? Anyone?

Yeah, it does suck that we have to pay for roaming but that's not all that sucks. I noticed in the past week that Starlink lost hundreds of satellites all over the US. Not sure why! The Starlink map shows they're no longer there. I haven't went out and tried to connect to see if that's true but they're gone from the map. So with the price increase to $110. The additional $25 per month increase to roam. The throttling while roaming; I'm falling out of love with Starlink really quick. Right now, I'm out $712.28 now with zero connectivity unless I pay $135 per month and move to a location with coverage.

This is the exact vid I was looking for. Currently in Coeur d alene, ID surrounded by trees. Will definitely order starlink prior to going back down to Arizona where we will have open skies! Also, can you suspend your monthly membership? I've heard that's an option which could save you money if you're parked at places with trees for a while.

2nd video that I clicked on from you and not sure if I would consider it “click bait” but maybe you put you should put in the title it’s for an RV.

Hi Aaron, have you simply considered buying a telescoping pole to put your Starlink on?

Florida is very underserved by starlink if you look at the coverage/availability map. Trees would be a secondary issue.

Something to think about if I ever buy an RV.

I live in East Tennessee, starlink is going to be pretty much useless in 80 percent of the area around here and the surrounding nearby states because of trees and hills

Infact I want one but its not available in my country 🙃