Starlink - Starlink Mini

This is exactly what I’m trying. I had to mount the dish on the opposite side of the house from what I thought and the cable it comes with means at maximum reach the router is in the kitchen right next to a thick chimney. Signal in the lounge is okayish. Car on the drive out front won’t pick it up at all. The bedroom is poor. Ive ordered a Router Mini which arrives tomorrow. I’m hoping plugging that in right next to the tv will give better signal to the bedroom and the car. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The mini router also works well as a mesh extender with the standard Starlink . I have two setup in my house to share WiFi throughout the two story house I live in.

It’s dual band rather than tri band, also 3x3 instead of 4x4 antennas. It’s also really tiny, so it’s not going to compare to the Gen 3. Starlink says it can cover around 1500 sq ft vs Gen 3 which they claim covers double that. Thats probably a good estimate, around half the range/coverage. But with WiFi 6, WLAN throughout should be decent in the coverage area. For $40 I think it’s going to be great, way better than a range extender.

Unfortunately you would have to run both cables as the Mini doesn't support POE input from the Ethernet port. There are 3rd party "POE splitter" cables that allow you to run a single cable, and then it splits into Ethernet and a DC plug on each end.

Yes wired or wireless compatibility with Gen 3 routers.

Right, which wouldn't make any sense because the Gen 2 router or Gen 3 router that most systems already have would be better than the Router Mini as a main router. For Gen 2 and 3 dish owners, the Router Mini would be best as an additional mesh node, not a main router. The Mini dish is really where the Router Mini fits in as a main router. It's going to be enough of an improvement over the integrated Mini router to justify it as a main router in the system. Plus it separates the router and antenna, allowing you to install the router inside your home or vehicle. The Mini doesn't support POE to begin with, so no router can send power to it via POE. To use the Router Mini as the main router with a Mini, you'll need to run 2 cables (power and data) or get a 3rd party POE splitter and run one cable.

It's a very rudimentary design, devoid of feature sets and carries across the lacklustre WiFi antenna approach. But it does as advertised and provides wired/wireless AP & Mesh. Can't really expect to much for it's quite reasonable price point. IMHO it's definitely worth having in the Mini kitbag for simple plug n play and particularly useful in larger campsites where you may wish to extend or share your SL WiFi.

I think the mini has a lot less range. Less antennas. Both are wifi 6 though. But to answer your question I'm not sure about whether 3 minis would be better. More device handoffs seems less ideal.

Glad to see someone post the same reaction! I just received my order on Wednesday. Set up was very easy. It works as intended. For $40 it exceeded my expectations and solved a very weak wifi signal issue and hosts 13 devices simultaneously. My only complaint is that it says the wifi backhaul to my Gen 2 router is 585 mbit but a device to router speed test with a greater signal than this only yields 150-180 mbit. If I get closer to the gen 2 router and my device switches over then it's much faster. So I'm losing out on a bit of total potential speed. So I am going to order a gen 3 router and see if it fixes this gap in expected backhaul speed. Will also try a wired backhaul temporarily as a troubleshooting measure.

I've only ever seen mine mesh to the Mini at 2.4GHz regardless of how close they are to one another. This limits the speeds being rebroadcast I've found.

Yes wirelessly only. It broadcasts out at 5GHz but only receives from the mini at 2.4GHz.

The Router Mini does not mesh with the Starlink Mini at 5GHz regardless of how close you bring the two. It only meshes at 2.4GHz. It (the mini router) does, however, allow connections on 5GHz although the bandwidth is naturally much lower due to the mesh link running at the lower frequency. Apologies for any confusion.

We have Starlink a little expensive but can’t beat it we have standard dish we recommend it to another boater they gone for mini and they are very happy with it.

The standard dish is a bit power hungry and will be changing to the mini system at the end of our 12 month deal. Everyone I know with the mini is happy with it. Good luck in your search let us know what you settle on and how it works out be interested to compare especially cost wise.

Device handoff between my Starlink main router the mini is seamless. Much faster than the older netgear orbi router + satellite mesh setup it replaced.

It really works super well. I had a situation recently where i had to work from a hotel in a developing country suffering from blackouts due to torrential rain. I had to do video calls, so as a backup i tossed the mini onto the hotel’s roof and ran it off a battery. While the dish’s own internal router didn’t always penetrate the thick concrete roof, the router picked up the signal downstairs and gave me constant wifi even in the worst of thunderstorms. If that hadn’t worked, i still had a ethernet cable as a fallback to run it from the roof. Oh and the dish just tanked hail and water like it was nothing. Some slowdowns in the middle of the worst of it, but 40mbit was the slowest i measured. I gained a lot of confidence in the setup, it feels pretty battle tested now.

Yeah. I carry the cable as a fallback but did not need it in this scenario.

I have Starlink because I need sustained download bandwidth for synchronising my server, and I need it to work everywhere. Latency anywhere from 20-40ms and generally 80–250 Mbps down. The gamers tell me that 5G is better for latency, but it isn't going to work everywhere. My gaming neighbour just turned his boat around (in the marina) for better signal. Your mileage may vary! Starlink has Ethernet directly from the dish. I have the mini, which is power friendly at 28 watts, and it comes with a Wifi 5.5 router which is fast enough for the majority of needs.