Why We've Finally Taken the Plunge with Starlink

Before setting off on our European motorhome adventure, we decided to treat ourselves to a couple of upgrades. One of the biggest and hopefully one of the best was investing in Starlink.

Now, if you ask Suzanne to explain what Starlink is, she'll probably tell you...

"It's Wi-Fi that comes from the sky!"

To be fair... she's not wrong!

Why We Needed It

Over the years we've tried all sorts of ways to stay connected while travelling. Like most people, we've relied on tethering our phones, and for checking emails or browsing Facebook it's been absolutely fine.

The problem starts when you want to do a bit more.

Suzanne occasionally needs to log into work while we're away, and there's nothing more frustrating than trying to join a meeting or access work systems with an internet connection that keeps dropping out.

Then there's us.

After a day of sightseeing, walking around a new town or enjoying a meal out, we quite like putting our feet up in the motorhome and watching a film. Whether it's Netflix, Prime Video or Apple TV, it's nice to have that little bit of home comfort.

Some people think you should spend every minute outside when you're travelling. We do get out and explore we just also enjoy a cosy evening in the van afterwards!

The trouble is, streaming films soon eats through mobile data. Before you know it, you've burned through your allowance and you're searching for the next decent signal.

So we decided enough was enough.

Enter Starlink

Starlink is a satellite internet service, which basically means instead of relying on mobile phone masts, it connects through a network of satellites orbiting above the Earth.

Or, as Suzanne would say...

"You point the box at the sky and it finds the internet!"

Simple!

As long as you've got a decent view of the sky, you've got a good chance of getting online.

What It Cost Us

We bought the Starlink hardware outright for around £150, so that's ours for good.

The subscription we've gone for is £55 a month, which gives us 100GB of data—plenty for what we need while we're travelling.

One feature we really like is that we don't have to keep paying the full subscription when we're back home.

Once this trip is over, we can simply pause the service and it drops to around £5 a month until we're ready for the next adventure.

That's a nice touch because we're only paying for it when we're actually using it.

Getting It Set Up

One thing Starlink doesn't really help you with is mounting the dish on a motorhome.

We bought an aftermarket mounting kit with four suction cups, which lets us stick it securely to one of the roof lights without drilling holes anywhere.

Hopefully...

...it stays there!

The kit comes with a standard 240V power supply, but because we spend plenty of time off-grid, we also bought a 12V adapter.

It wasn't exactly cheap for what it is, but it gives us much more flexibility when we're not plugged into electric hook-up.

Could It Replace Our Home Broadband?

Here's something we're seriously thinking about...

If Starlink performs as well as we're hoping, it could actually replace our broadband at home.

Instead of paying for a home broadband contract that sits there while we're off travelling, we could simply take our internet with us wherever we go.

That's something we'll decide once we've had a proper chance to test it over the next few weeks.

Was It Worth It?

So far, we'd say yes.

For us, it's not really about watching Netflix, although that's definitely a bonus!

It's about having the freedom to travel without worrying whether Suzanne can work if she needs to, whether we can upload videos, FaceTime family, plan the next stop, or simply stay connected wherever we happen to park up.

Technology like this is making motorhome travel easier than ever, and we're excited to see how Starlink performs as we make our way around Europe.

We'll keep you posted over the coming weeks and let you know whether it's lived up to the hype—or whether Suzanne still thinks it's just "Wi-Fi from the sky!"