Starlink Offers High Performance Broadband Dish to Homes

SpaceX’s global Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based ultrafast satellite broadband service – Starlink – has made it possible for residential customers to optionally take their “High Performance” dish (antenna) instead of the “Standard” one, which could result in better service performance (speeds). But you’ll need deep pockets.

Starlink’s mega constellation currently has around 3,023 LEO satellites in orbit around the Earth and their initial plan is to deploy a total of 4,425 by 2024. Customers in the UK normally pay from £75 per month and £460 for the kit (standard dish, router etc.). But for that you can expect unlimited usage, fast latency times of 20-40ms, downloads of c. 50-200Mbps and uploads of c.10-20Mbps (speeds may change as the network grows).

However, residential customers can now optionally choose whether they take the “Standard” dish or Starlink’s “High Performance” alternative, which was previously only made available to those taking the provider’s more expensive ‘Premium’ business package.

The high-performance dish is a much more durable piece of hardware and one that can see more of the sky, which overall tends to deliver greater connection stability and performance. The catch is that it’ll set you back $2,500 (vs $599 for the standard dish). We haven’t put a GBP price on that because our test order didn’t give us the option to take it, thus we’re currently unsure whether it’s available to UK users yet.

Stated Benefits of High Performance Dish

➤ Improved weather resistance.
High performance is rated IP56, or resistant to water jets. Standard is rated IP54, or resistant to water spray.

➤ Better performance in hot weather.
Download speeds are typically 3x better at > 35°C (95°F)

➤ Better performance in the snow:
1.7x better snow melt capability (Inches/hour). Put another way, it melts up to 40mm / hour (1.5in / hour) vs up to 75mm / hour (3in / hour).

➤ Better visibility of satellites.
Your Starlink needs a clear view of the sky so it can stay connected with satellites as they move overhead. The High Performance can see 35% more sky, allowing it to connect to more satellites and better serve users with atypical installations, unavoidable obstructions, or in polar (>59 degrees latitude) and equatorial regions where there are fewer visible satellites.

Put another way, it has a 140° field of view, which compares with just 100° degrees on the standard dish.

We should point out that there are other differences too, such as is in terms of power consumption (very relevant in the current climate). The standard dish has an Average Power Usage of 50-75 Watts, while the High Performance kit averages 110-150 Watts. It’s also physically a bit larger and with double the antenna capability.

According to Starlink, users of the high performance dish can expect download speeds of between 150 to 300Mbps (capacity allowing – the operator’s network is already putting pressure on this). Hopefully one day this will become the standard for all customers, albeit at the normal price.

In any case, if you’re lucky enough to have $2,500 to throw around at such things, then this may be a useful way of improving your mileage. But at present this only seems to be offered to new customers and existing customers will still need to take Starlink’s business plan if they want to get a better dish, which seems a bit silly.