2024 Starlink Tests: SpaceX's Satellite Internet Keeps Getting Better

I've been living with Starlink for two years: Improved upload speeds, lower latency, and the same pricing as last year make it a better deal than ever.

I'm coming up on two years as a Starlink subscriber, having used the service since 2022. Living in rural Idaho, it's been a life-saver in terms of giving me the internet speed and reliability I need for working from home as a tech journalist. It has stayed connected through snowy winter storms, and it's carried me through long days of work, not to mention binging shows on Netflix and gaming online. And I'm not alone in my thumbs-up: PCMag recently named Starlink one of the best ISPs in the US.

Since I first reviewed the service, several big changes have transformed Starlink, which is owned by SpaceX. The number of satellites in low Earth orbit has climbed from under 2,000 to 5,289 this year. The number of terrestrial base stations has grown to 150. And the biggest change is in the number of users, swelling from less than 500,000 in early 2022 to more than 2.2 million today.

While new satellites, dish designs, and routers are on the horizon, my latest performance testing shows that Starlink’s service has improved markedly for most of its 1.3 million users in the US who use the standard Dish V2 equipment. In the last year, we've seen access to Starlink grow by leaps and bounds, all while Elon Musk's satellite service has maintained excellent download speeds, increased upload speeds, and cut latency, according to our data. New hardware promises additional gains, but for now, the test results show that existing customers like me are already getting a better, more mature service than ever before. For rural users without access to cable or fiber, nothing even comes close.

Living With Starlink in 2024: Stable, Speedy, and Stress-Free

Starlink has been my internet lifeline since moving to my relatively remote home. In an area where the most common options are DSL and other, much slower satellite ISPs, Starlink has been an indispensable part of my life. It allows me to work remotely in my tech-centric job, as well as enjoy the modern conveniences of streaming media, online gaming, and keeping a whole household of users and devices connected.

I've written extensively about my Starlink system, from the basics of setting it up and buying the right accessories to using it for gaming, dealing with bad weather, and even performing a DIY cable repair when my curious dog chewed on a cable.

Aside from that incident with the hound, my Starlink usage has been without stress for months and months. Once set up, the equipment takes care of itself. I can manage everything easily through the Starlink app, and I've even found a few clever tricks for improving the Starlink experience.

Really, my only remaining gripes with the service are the difficulty of reaching Starlink customer service and the fact that I'm paying $120 per month after starting out at $99. Even my complaints about the price are mild, though, given that the cost has stayed stable for more than a year, and the performance has gotten much better, as you'll see below.

Starlink Equipment: More Accessible Than Ever

In the past, Starlink equipment was difficult to buy. Whether you were trying to purchase the Starlink kit that includes the basics (the dish, the dish mount, the router, and power cables) or something more specific, like a pole mount, all of the equipment and accessories were sold only by Starlink, and usually in limited quantities. Early users often waited months for equipment they had paid for—it was enough that many paid extra for Starlink's mobile RV package just to skip the queue for home subscriptions.

But as the user base has grown into the millions, equipment availability has also expanded. You can now buy the standard Starlink kit at Best Buy and Home Depot, and the needed accessories are offered by Best Buy, the Starlink store, and a few third-party manufacturers.

It's still a bit expensive upfront—$599 in equipment costs before you can even get online is nothing to sneeze at—but all of the equipment you need is more readily available than ever.

The quality of the equipment is also getting better. I'm using the second-generation Starlink Dish (now called the Standard Actuated Dish, or Dish V2), which is still the most widely used model, but the recently introduced Dish V4 is the new standard for residential users who sign up today. The new design is sleeker, the service is better, and it comes with a Wi-Fi 6 router instead of the older Wi-Fi 5/802.11ac standard. We'll probably be reviewing the new hardware in the near future, but be aware that my experiences and test results below are based on the Dish V2.

Starlink's 2024 Pricing and Network Availability

As Starlink has grown, so have the types of subscriptions it offers. We have a full breakdown of the current costs of Starlink service, but for most users, you'll have two options: Standard or Mobile.

The standard service package is for residential users. It requires the $599 Starlink Kit and a monthly fee of $120. Starlink has no long-term contracts, you're billed monthly, and you don't have to worry about cancellation fees. The only stipulation is that you need to be within Starlink's coverage area, and have a suitable installation with a clear view of the sky.

(Credit: SpaceX)

Another option is Starlink's mobile service for travelers, campers, RVs, and the like. If you need to regularly pick up your Starlink dish and go to a new location, Starlink's mobile plan is the way to do it, letting you move from one stationary location to the next. Pricing is a little more complex, with different prices for different use cases. The cheapest is a regional plan that is limited to one continent, for $150 per month. If you need to travel globally, Starlink offers a $200 global plan for international use.

If you want to use Starlink in a moving vehicle or an ocean yacht, you'll need to pay for a mobile priority plan, which starts at $250 per month, but also requires a much more expensive high-performance dish, which sells for $2,500. However, unlike the regular mobile plans, it can be used while a vehicle is in motion, or even out at sea with truly global coverage.

Speaking of coverage, Starlink is available in more places than ever before. In the past couple of years, many people considering Starlink have been disappointed to see that coverage was only available in some areas, or that some parts of the country had a waitlist to join. Today, those waitlists are gone for the entire United States. That's a huge improvement from 2022 and 2023.

Caveat: Your Starlink Speeds Might Be Slower (or Faster) Than Mine

Starlink is available across the country, but service quality is still heavily influenced by your location—or, more specifically, the number of other Starlink users in a given location. Because individual Starlink low-Earth orbit satellites can handle only so much data bandwidth from so many simultaneous users, some places could see a lower standard of service than I saw in my testing.

Conversely, if you're one of the few users in a given service area, you might see faster speeds and better service than I do here in Idaho. It's really a question of how saturated the satellites overhead are with data from your neighbors.

That said, Starlink does make specific claims about the download and upload speeds offered in its standard service plans, and everything we saw during testing met or exceeded those claims. If you're a user anywhere in the US, you can feel pretty confident about getting at least that same level of performance.

The other caveat is that individual setups can be influenced by all sorts of factors: obstructions between the dish and the sky, local weather patterns, and, um, cats. But if your dish is properly set up and obstruction-free, you should be pretty happy with your service.

(Credit: SpaceX)

As with our initial Starlink review and the follow-up testing we did in spring of 2023, we've gone to great lengths to eliminate any variables we could in how the equipment was installed and tested. That means using the same dish and router, with the dish mounted in the same position on my roof, and running the same tests.

As in our review, we use a custom test script that runs continuously over a 2-week period. These tests include using Ookla's Speedtest.com to record download and upload speeds, and sending pings every minute to specific servers to measure latency. (Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company.) Over the 14 days of testing, we gather thousands of real-world data points.

In the months since starting with Starlink service and our retesting of the service six months later, I've been very impressed with the overall quality of Starlink connectivity. Last year, I saw clear improvements across the board. Download speeds, upload speeds, and even latency all saw significant improvements. This year, the download speeds held steady, but faster uploads and lower latency show that Starlink isn't done improving. Let's dig into the data.