Starlink Gen3 In-Depth Setup and Review

Starlink Gen 3 is here. And I mean, literally, like he's here, right? So what's new with this third generation router and satellite dish? And is it worth upgrading if you already have one of the previous models? In this video we will talk all about the new specifications of the third generation Starlink equipment. I'll set it up in my backyard and then we'll try it. We have a lot to cover, so let's get started. We have helped many people with their Starlink satellite dishes at Rogue Support. Whether you're looking to set up Starlink as your primary internet source, use it as a failover, or maybe it just doesn't work at all, the friendly network technicians at Rogue Support can help you fix it.

One of the things we've seen a lot is that the Starlink router uses a very common network subnet for its own LAN. So when you connect it to the WAN port of a router that also uses the same subnet for its LAN, it won't be able to route any traffic to the Internet. Now, if you didn't understand anything I just said, then don't even worry. Let Rogue Support help you and you'll be surfing the web from the stars in no time. Visit us on the web at rogue.support for all your computer, wireless, and yes, even Starlink network support needs.

You will not be disappointed. It was almost exactly three years ago that I installed my first Starlink Gen 1 satellite dish and it was absolutely incredible. The fact that we could get solid broadband internet from satellites anywhere in the world was an absolute game changer. Now the wonder of that moment has passed and Starlink has gone through many growing pains. They released a second generation dish that required purchasing an Ethernet accessory separately. They've had all kinds of crazy price and plan changes. Their support services have gone from pretty good to almost non-existent and they have struggled to maintain solid speeds while oscillating between adding more satellites to their constellation and adding more customers to their user base.

This led them to begin imposing data caps on customers who had originally signed up for unlimited service plans. Now I started on Starlink for $99 a month with unlimited data, but I canceled about two years later when my plan had slowly increased to $120 a month with a one terabyte data cap. But I canceled because I didn't really need Starlink, right? I am not in a rural area. I have easy access to not only standard terrestrial Internet, but also much cheaper 5G LTE Internet options. I pay about $30 a month for home Internet from T-Mobile and get about 400 megabits with that service.

Others are not so lucky. For some people, Starlink is the only real option for broadband internet speeds and they're happy to pay $120 or $150 a month for the service, right? They're going to ride out those fluctuations because it's still heads and tails better than anything else available. So even though I canceled the service I was using with my generation one antenna over a year ago, when I received a notice that the generation three antenna was available, I spent $599 on this new version and opted for the mobile roaming plan . which allows me to turn off the service during the months I don't use it.

Ok, now let's take this new dish out of the box and talk about some of its features. First of all, compared to the gen one chainring, this one is obviously a lot smaller, right? Compared to the generation two dish, the generation three dish is actually a little larger, but it does not come with a motor-driven stand. Let me get rid of this thing. Okay, it's also a lot lighter. Now, the third-generation dish only has a manual mount, but you can still purchase all the standard mounting accessory options. Alright, here's the dish itself. See that support here?

Wow, very nice. Alright, we have our instructions. Here is the third generation router. We'll talk about that in a moment. Starlink power brick, power cable and parabolic cable. Alright, the Starlink satellite dish comes with a 50-foot cable, but you can optionally purchase a 150-foot cable if necessary. Now, I really really like this option as the 50 foot cable should be fine for most installations, but you have the option of a longer cable if you really need it. The generation one dish had a cable, I think it was 75 or 100 feet, but it was connected. Like you couldn't change it or remove it, which was kind of a pain in the ass.

The third-generation dish is now IP67 rated, meaning it's even better at resisting dirt, dust, and water than the previous version, which was only IP54 rated. However, it consumes more power, averaging 75 to 100 watts, while the second generation dish had a maximum of 75 watts. I'm going to measure the power later in this video. That higher wattage could be a problem for some people, especially if you're using Starlink in an RV or if you're off-grid and trying to power it with solar. 75 watts will drain your batteries very quickly, so it would be best to only have the antenna on while you are using the Internet.

Now, as for my own RV, this is one of the main reasons I prefer the T-Mobile Home Internet Router. It only draws about 10 watts of power, but of course you have to be within range of an LTE tower to use it. Now let's talk about this third generation router because it is one of the biggest improvements to the overall package. The third generation router is now four-by-four multi-user MIMO WiFi six, which means it has a lot more bandwidth, wireless bandwidth, than the previous generation, which only had WiFi five. But what does that really mean here? Starlink's non-prioritized internet speeds are typically around 100 megabits per second, perhaps up to 200 megabits per second.

That's well below the speeds you'd get with WiFi five or WiFi six. Therefore, devices that connect to the Internet will not really be able to take advantage of these improved wireless capabilities. But if you have devices that need to communicate with each other internally, you may see some benefit with WiFi six versus WiFi five. Like, for example, if you copy a lot of files between your WiFi six laptop and a network-attached storage device or something. However, a big improvement is the inclusion of not just one, but two external Ethernet ports. These can be used to connect wired devices directly to the Starlink router, or they can be used to connect to the WAN side of your own router if you want to use Starlink Internet service with your own equipment.

I have now made several videos on how to use Starlink with your own router. You can find them if you search for Starlink on my channel. With the first generation router, Starlink gave you an Ethernet port, which is great. However, the second generation removed the Ethernet port entirely and required you to purchase a separate Ethernet dongle for wired connectivity. Now, this didn't just upset a lot of people, right? But these Ethernet dongles were not always available. So people were stuck wanting to use Starlink as a WAN source for their own equipment, but they couldn't until that ethernet dongle arrived.

Now also, logistically for Starlink, I'm sure this caused a lot of issues and support issues, not to mention additional order processing. So with the Gen three router, we now have two built-in Ethernet ports. So you could connect up to two wired devices or maybe even use Starlink as a WAN source for two completely different networks. I'll have to try it. Another feature of the Gen three router is that you can now connect up to three of these routers to increase your wireless coverage area. Although, frankly, if you really wanted a wireless mesh network in your home, I wouldn't use Starlink.

I would purchase one of the many mesh wireless products on the market and then use Starlink for the WAN side of those products. Or better yet, access a modest Unifier TP-Linko style network, which is much more reliable and flexible than wireless mesh. Now, I think you could also do a wireless mesh with the Gen two router, but of course it will be Wi-Fi five, so slower connectivity between the mesh endpoints. And with the Gen three router, I think it's backwards compatible. So you can connect to other Gen three routers and you can also connect to Gen two routers if you have one of those.

Alright, without further ado, let's take this Starlink Gen three dish outside and set everything up. Starlink configuration is really simple and straightforward. You take everything out of the box, you connect it like this, where the platter goes to the router and the power supply goes to the router. And of course, you want to position the dish so that it has a very clear view of the sky like this and not like this. Finally, you use the app to orient the dish and then it connects to Starlink and does its job. Alright, let's get started. Ok, now I have the Starlink app started and ready to go.

We'll say start

setup

and we'll choose the Gen three dish and confirm, we'll find a clear view of the sky. I have a location, install the mount, continue with the kickstand, the Starlink position will align you in a moment, place your Starlink outside with a clear view of the sky. Cool, and it has a little compass at the bottom. It actually tells me that North is in that direction, which is a little different than what the compass on my phone told me. So let's take a quick spin there. Starlink is configured. Alright, connect Starlink and the router.

My Starlink is on. Connect to Starlink Wi-Fi. Okay, here we go, open settings. Alright, we're connected. Establishing connection to your Starlink network. Starlink paired successfully, wonderful, continue. Starlink offline, router not configured. Tap to finish setting up your Starlink router. Alright, let's do it. Star man. First he wanted me to give him a wireless SSID and password, which I did. Alright, it says Starlink disconnected disconnected or restarting. Make sure your Starlink is plugged in. Your Starlink appears to be disconnected or rebooting. Please

review

the following. All connections are secure and fully seated. Let's try that first. This is good.

Oh, and that one wasn't good. Alright, initializing. Now it says searching for satellites. Now, if you are installing this on the pole mount or one of the other types of mounts, this is where you will really want to try to adjust it to get the best possible alignment and the clearest possible view of the sky. Starlink found a satellite and is trying to join the Starlink network. In fact, this app has come a long way since I last used it over a year ago. Orientation calculation. Alright, Starlink is talking to satellites to determine which direction it's pointing.

Okay, so Starlink is 12 degrees misaligned. Tap to align for better performance. Rotate your Starlink to match the outline. Oh, look at that. Starlink is aligned. Your Starlink is pointing in the right direction. Made. Downloading update. Alright, I'll let you download your update and then we'll come back and start doing some speed tests. Alright, it started raining quite a bit so I shuffled everything around and moved the router inside. I still have the Starlink dish outside, as you can see here outside this door. The entire Starlink

setup

took about five minutes to unpack and physically connect everything, and then it took about 20-30 minutes to boot up and connect to the satellites, run a couple of updates, and finally it was fully online.

Looking at the app here, we can see that we are online. If I click on statistics, we can see the uptime, we can check the interruptions, we can see the latency and throughput. Right now absolutely nothing is happening on this network. Clicking on network will display the devices connected to the wireless network, as well as the wireless mesh nodes if we have any of them configured. I'll skip the speed test for now. Let's take a look at the settings. So within the settings itself, we have the router settings or the Starlink settings. For router configuration, we can change our wireless network including 2,4 and 5 gigahertz split if we want.

If we don't do that, by default, they are combined and your device can choose which frequency it connects to. We can also completely hide the SSID if we want. We also have content filtering, which I assume uses DNS to filter malware or malware and adult content. There is a link to more information about it if you want to check it out. We can restart the router. We can set custom DNS settings. For example, if we're running a circular hole in the network, or if we just want to use our own DNS for Windows Active Directory or something, we can use custom DNS settings, or we can use bypass mode, which completely turns off wifi in the routerStarlink.

That's what you'd want to do if you're using the Starlink router only for a WAN connection to your own equipment. Great, I'm really impressed with the improvements this app has seen since I last saw it, which has been over a year, especially the alignment stuff that actually shows you how to position the chainring. it is really nice. It does it in real time. He gives you a box. It says, no, tilt it this way or tilt it that way. That works very, very well and I was happy to see it here. Alright, let's go ahead and do a speed test and see how we do.

Alright, the Starlink speed test gave us 155 megabits. That's really good, and it also bounced even more than that at the beginning of the test. So it ended up being 155 megabits less for 9.3 megabits more. Let's do another speed test, but let's not use the Starlink app. Let's use speedtest.net. And speedtest.net got a really good result of 308 megabits less for 31.2 more. I mean, if you're in the middle of nowhere and Starlink is your only internet option, those are really good speeds. Alright, now let's look at power. In terms of power consumption, here you can see that the Starlink satellite dish is not plugged in.

The only thing currently on is the Gen 3 router, which draws only about 10 watts of power. So let's go ahead and plug in the Starlink dish and see how it changes. There it jumped to 105 watts, now 108 watts. And after the dish starts up, we can see that it settles right in the middle, I usually see this between 35 and maybe 48 watts or so. And when it's idle, it's right in the same range with fluctuations obviously increasing a bit more. It's still starting up, so that's probably why it jumped there. But yes, when it is idle, it averages between 35 and 45 watts.

For me, power consumption is the biggest drawback of Starlink satellite internet. I mean, it's not a problem if you use it at home or when your RV is plugged into the ground, but if you're boondocking or living off the grid with a solar system, this is a big problem. Aside from the power issue, I love everything about this new chainring. It's super small and portable compared to the Gen 1, and even compared to the Gen 2, sure, the platter itself is a little bigger, but without that articulating stand, the overall footprint of the Gen 3 is much smaller. Setting up Starlink is as simple as ever and I really loved how the app helps you orient the dish graphically in real time.

The speed tests were pretty much what I expected, and in fact, even here in my office, with the Starlink router in my garage on the other side of the house, I'm still getting really good download speeds, usually between 150 to 300 megabits per second. Built-in content filtering is also a nice added bonus. I wanted to try it and do some research, right? So I enabled content filtering and then tried browsing some adult sites and got completely blocked. This is a very useful feature for those with children who are on the Internet. And finally, while I didn't actually try connecting the Gen 3 router to the WAN side of a third-party firewall, I love that you can disable the built-in Wi-Fi so you don't have competing SSIDs crowding the airwaves. .

Now I'm going to test Starlink Gen 3 as an Internet source for other devices in another video, so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any new content. My final thoughts on the Gen 3, I mean, I like it, right? I actually like it more than I expected, but I still feel like it's not for everyone. If it's the only broadband internet available to you, then it's really like a miracle product, right? But if you are like me and live in a neighborhood, in a populated area, there are surely more profitable and reliable options such as cable or fiber internet.

Now, if you're looking to use Starlink as a backup internet service, I'd still say that if you're in a populated area, some of the 5G LTE internet options are faster and cheaper than Starlink. Personally, I'm pausing my Starlink service now, one of the added benefits. I'm going to put this back in the box and store it in my RV. That way, if I go camping in an area that doesn't have LTE connectivity for my normal T-Mobile Internet service, I'll have Starlink ready to go and simply have to resume service. And it's much more compact than my Starlink Gen 1 dish.

I can easily find a place to store it. Now, just keep in mind that when you resume pausing, you'll be charged for the entire month's billing cycle, even if you only have a few days left in the month. If you have any questions about Starlink or would like to see me try something, please leave a comment below. And if you want to keep this party going, I've selected two videos for you to watch below. The video above is my recent

review

of Ubiquiti's new Wi-Fi 7 hotspot, the U7 Pro. And the video below is my full review of T-Mobile's 5G LTE Home Internet.