Technologies

God of War: Ragnarok’s Touching Ending Explained

Here’s how Kratos and Atreus’ Ragnarok adventures come to an end. Be warned — significant God of War: Ragnarok spoilers inside (duh).

God of War: Ragnarok has been lauded for a lot, and many argue it’s the best game of the year. Of all the things it does well, its touching and thoughtful story is perhaps its greatest strength. «Touching» and «thoughtful» may be surprising descriptors for a game called «God of War,» but anyone who played Ragnarok’s 2018 predecessor likely would expect as much.

As the title suggests, God of War: Ragnarok is about a cataclysmic war known in Norse mythology as Ragnarok. At its core, however, it’s much more about the relationship between a father and his son. That father just happens to be an unstoppable killing machine. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: Massive God of War: Ragnarok spoilers below.

The short version of God of War: Ragnarok’s ending

After spending much of God of War: Ragnarok fiercely rejecting the idea of war, Kratos is eventually pulled into participating in Ragnarok — the great war against Asgard. Before that happens, it’s revealed that Tyr, the Norse god of war who’s been staying at Kratos & Co’s headquarters, has actually been Odin all along. Odin used his godly powers to disguise himself as Tyr, and spent the whole game spying on Kratos, Atreus and Freya.

Odin makes his grand revelation by stabbing and killing Brok. That turns Sindri, normally gregarious and deferential, into an angry Dwarf, deeply resentful of Kratos, Atreus and their role in setting up Brok’s death. Sindri helps them out at Ragnarok, but only because he wants revenge on Odin. He uses a tool that gives the gang a way to penetrate through the wall that surrounds Asgard.

Inside, Kratos battles and defeats Thor. Just as Thor begins to repent for his sins and heed Kratos’ plea to be a better god, Odin appears and kills Thor. Kratos, Freya and Atreus then battle and defeat Odin. Atreus uses Giant magic to trap Odin’s spirit in a marble, then Sindri appears, snatches the marble and smashes it to bits with a hammer. Like I said, angry Dwarf.

The gang manages to escape Asgard thanks to Angrboda, a Giant who Atreus meets early in the game. After the battle, Angrboda tells Atreus she knows he’s had Giant visions, and that she needs to tell Kratos. He does so, informing his father that there are other Giants out there, and that he alone needs to find them. In the moment of Ragnarok, Kratos embraces his son and tells him he’s ready for his own adventure.

Atreus says goodbye, and Kratos sees on a shrine revealed to him by Agrboda that the Giants long ago prophesized him as the hero of Ragnarok.

Santa Monica Studio, God of War’s developer, has said Ragnarok is the end, and that God of War won’t be spun into another trilogy. But the way the game ended absolutely opens up the possibility of a follow-up that focuses on Atreus — possibly with Sindri as a villain. Dwarf magic is established as immensely powerful in God of War: Ragnarok, and Sindri’s obvious hatred of Kratos and Atreus is one of the conspicuous threads left untied by Ragnarok’s end.

That’s the short version of God of War: Ragnarok’s ending. Read on for a more comprehensive look at how God of War: Ragnarok played out.

The lead up to Ragnarok

To understand God of War: Ragnarok’s story trajectory, you need to understand a little about how its story is told. Unlike the 2018 God of War, in which Atreus is by Kratos’ side for almost all of the adventure, the two go their separate ways for a lot of Ragnarok’s story.

About halfway through the game, Atreus hatches a plan. Odin at the beginning of God of War: Ragnarok invites Atreus to Asgard. What if Atreus goes to Asgard, pretends to switch sides, buddies up with Odin and learns his Ragnarok plans?

Atreus gets into Asgard by having Odin’s ravens transport him there. After climbing the giant wall that surrounds Asgard’s city, Atreus learns that Odin is motivated by a tear into another dimension. «The rift, possibly the birthplace of reality,» he tells Atreus of the tear. «I looked inside and something was there looking back at me.»

Entering the tear, Odin says, will grant infinite knowledge. Odin knows he has to die at some point, but he needs to know what’s next before he does. The rift can grant that knowledge, but going in there without requisite protective gear means sure death: Odin tells Atreus that peeking into the tear is how he lost his eye. Odin has a fragment of a mask he reckons will protect his face enough. The mask fragment is inscribed with Giant script that Odin can’t read — which is why he needs Atreus.

Odin tasks Atreus with finding the other mask fragments. To do that, he needs to work with both Thor and Heimdall, who’s blessed with the ability to read people’s intentions. While Atreus does that, Kratos and Freya, who are now a team again after Kratos helped break Odin’s curse that trapped Freya in Midgard, are left to their own devices.

Much of the game’s plot revolves around destiny. The previous God of War ended with Kratos seeing a Giant’s prophecy that he would die at Ragnarok. Kratos scoffs at such predictions, and says that we make our own fate. Just to be sure, however, Kratos, Faye and Mimir visit the Norns, the masters of fate. The Norns agree with Kratos — that there is no such thing as fate — but the choices people make are so predictable so as to make prophesizing easy business. More importantly, they reveal that Heimdall intends to kill Atreus.

With his son’s life at risk, Kratos makes his decision. Heimdall must die — even if that kicks off war with Asgard.

The big twist

To protect his son, Kratos has to kill Heimdall. Heimdall can read people’s intentions, so attacking him is hard. Kratos asks Sindri and Brok if they could forge a new weapon to help him beat the Aesir god, and the two Dwarfs come up with the Draupnir Spear. To create it, Brok escorts Kratos to Svartalfheim, where they gather materials and get a weird Mermaid creature to craft the Spear. It’s a whole thing.

Kratos gets his chance to use the weapon when Heimdall confronts him in Vanaheim. It’s a success! Heimdall can read people’s intentions, so can catch the spear every time Kratos throws it at him. But the spear can implode and regenerate, which allows Kratos to harm and ultimately kill Heimdall. (Yes, if Heimdall could truly read intentions he would know Kratos intends to implode the spear, and so he’d avoid it rather than catch it. Don’t think too hard about it.) He tries unsuccessfully to walk away from the defeated Heimdall, but Heimdall won’t relent. Kratos has no choice but to strangle him to death.

After collecting one of the two missing mask fragments, Atreus tells Odin he wants to go home. Odin allows it. But with Heimdall dead, Atreus decides he should return to Asgard. Odin will soon figure out that Kratos killed Heimdall, and that will surely lead to war. In the brief period of time before that happens, Atreus wants to head to Asgard to help Odin complete the mask. That can both distract Odin and allow Atreus to learn more of his plans — and possibly steal the mask, too.

On his return to Asgard, Odin gets Atreus and a superdrunk Thor to travel through Niflheim. Atreus locates the final fragment. At that moment, Odin appears and asks for the mask. The next moment, Thor’s wife Sif appears and reveals that Kratos killed Heimdall. Thor goes into a rage, trying to attack Atreus. Atreus uses a gadget given to him by Sindri to escape at the very last second.

Back at Sindri’s house, Atreus, Kratos, Tyr and Freya devise a plan. If they can go to Asgard, they can lure Odin out with the mask and kill him. That way they won’t have to initiate Ragnarok, and war can be avoided. Tyr, keen to avoid war at all costs, says this is a fabulous idea. And in fact, he has just the thing: a secret path to Asgard.

Everyone is hyped except for Brok. Brok wonders why Tyr never mentioned this path to Asgard before, and why Tyr is calling Atreus «Loki.» Tyr says he’ll show them the path after he collects his «things,» but Brok points out that he has no things — what a burn — and slaps the mask out of Tyr’s hands. As everyone surrounds Brok, treating him like a crazy Dwarf, Tyr fatally stabs Brok and reveals that he’s not actually Tyr — Odin has been pretending to be Tyr the whole time.

After a standoff, Odin takes the mask and goes back to Asgard. Ragnarok it is.

Ragnarok cometh

It’s prophesized that Surtr, the fire demon of Muspelheim, kicks off Ragnarok with an attack on Asgard. Kratos and Atreus travel to Muspelheim and, after some wrangling, convince Surtr to mount his attack. After that, it’s officially on.

Kratos is named general of the army attacking Asgard: It’s comprised of Freya, her brother Freyr, the Valkeries, the dark and light elves of Alfheim, the World Serpent Jormungandr, Angrboda, the Hel-Walkers from Helheim, and Surtr. Using Gjallarhorn, a horn which Kratos took off Heimdall after killing him, Kratos is able to open a portal to Asgard in Tyr’s Temple.

Sindri has been understandably morose after the death of Brok. «You don’t know what sorry means,» Sindri snaps at Atreus when the latter tries to apologize for Brok’s death. «I gave you everything: my skills, my friendship, my home, my secrets, my treasures, and you just kept taking. And now what have I got? Not even my family.» Still, Sindri said he’d enlist the help of the Dwarfs. When he arrives in Asgard, though, he’s on his lonesome. His people have shed enough blood for others, he says. Luckily, Sindri didn’t come empty-handed, as he has a that reveals a flaw in the giant wall that surrounds Asgard. Atreus is able to exploit the flaw and enter Asgard, where Kratos almost immediately gets in a fight with Thor.

Kratos wins, but spares Thor. «No more,» Kratos says, putting his Leviathan Ax away. «For the sake of our children, we must be better.» Before Thor can say anything though, Odin appears and berates him for talking. «You don’t talk, you don’t think! I think, you kill,» Odin says. Thor drops his hammer and says he won’t be Odin’s killing machine anymore — which prompts Odin to fatally impale Thor, his son, with a spear.

That kicks off the final battle against Odin, a two-part boss fight in which Kratos, Atreus and Freya are victorious. Atreus beseeches Odin to be better — like father, like son — but Odin refuses. «I have to know what’s next. I will not stop,» Odin says. «Why’d you have to say that?» Atreus replies regretfully.

Atreus uses Giant magic to remove Odin’s spirit and forge it into a marble. Kratos, Freya and Atreus go back and forth on what to do with it. Kratos lets Freya decide, but Freya puts the decision on Atreus’ young shoulders. Before the lad can decide, however, Sindri appears out of nowhere, puts the marble on a table and smashes it with his hammer. «That’s what comes next,» he says before vanashing on the spot.

The bad guy is beaten, but unfortunately Surtr, now a giant and uncontrollable fire demon, is still wrecking Asgard. They all need a way out. Agrboda is the gang’s ticket outta there: She arrives with Garm and opens a rift into another realm. (When Kratos asks how, she simply replies: «Giant stuff.») Everyone makes it out except Freyr, who sacrificed himself holding off Surtr so the rest could make it out.

God of Peace

After the cataclysm ends, Atreus wakes up in Midgard. He walks along a spiral path, passing by all the friends he met in God of War: Ragnarok, until he gets to the top, where Angrboda is waiting. She tells him she knows he’s been seeing Giant visions, and that he needs to tell his father.

«Every part of me is telling me this is what I have to do, I just don’t know how to say it,» Atreus says.

Kratos walks in at that inopportune moment, but before Atreus can speak, Angrboda says she wants to show them both something. It’s a shrine that reveals that Faye long ago destroyed Atreus’ shrine in Jotunheim, allowing the pair to forge their own path. This is a little confusing, because Faye didn’t destroy Atreus’ shrine — it was there, clear to see for both Atreus and Kratos at the end of God of War, but that’s fine.

Atreus has a heart-to-heart with his dad. «There are other Giants out there, and I’ve got to find them,» Atreus says to Kratos, giving Sony the option to follow up with a Loki game. «I think I know where to look, but they’re my responsibility. I need to do this alone.»

Atreus says he’s frightened by the idea of a solo adventure, but Kratos says that’s why he must do it. Kratos says they only survived Ragnarok because of Atreus’ decisions, and that he’s ready to fend for himself. They embrace. It’s deeply emotional.

Atreus scampers off with Agrboda before bidding his father Adieu. Left on his own, Kratos closes the shrine, only to find a second side on the back. There the Giants show Kratos to be the hero of Ragnarok — more god of peace than god of war. Kratos is overwhelmed, even letting out a few tears and whimpers at the vision of him as a savior instead of an instrument of death and destruction, as he was in Greece.

«What did you see in there brother?» Mimir asks Kratos. «A path,» Kratos replies. «One I had never imagined.»

Epilogue

Credits roll after Atreus leaves you, but the story isn’t over quite yet. Remnants of Odin’s forces have landed aross the realms, and finishing the main quest unlocks the side quest of clearing out this riffraff. If you travel to Niflheim, where Odin’s Ravens chill, you’ll see a new area can be accessed.

If you follow the new path, it’ll take you to a secret prison. Get to the main cell at the bottom and you’ll discover none other than Tyr, the real Tyr. Tyr doesn’t say much. Mimir gives him the TL;DR of God of War: Ragnarok — that Odin is dead thanks to Kratos — and Tyr responds by saying he needs space to process this information. If you visit the other realms, you’ll sometimes bump into Tyr. I found him doing some Tai Chi stuff in Vanaheim and Helheim.

The other sidequest that opens up after the main story ends is a funeral for Brok. This is quick and easy. You go to Svartalfheim, to Durlin’s office, and then you’re directed to a beach area, where Brok gets a final send-off into Valhalla. Kratos places Brok into a little raft. Before Brok is pushed off, Sindri materializes, cries over his brother’s body and says he loves him.

Sindri holds a flaming torch for Freya, who lights an arrow and shoots it into the now floating boat, lighting it aflame. Kratos puts his hand on Sindri’s shoulder and tries to offer consoling words, but Sindri peels Kratos’ hand off and gives him a look of scorn. He says nothing, walks a few steps and then vanishes.

Earlier in the game, Brok had given Mimir a riddle. What gets bigger the more you take away? It bedevilled Mimir for a long time, but finally Mimir gets the answer. «A hole.» The screen fades to black as the credits roll again.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Feb. 4, #499

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Feb. 4, No. 499.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a tough one. One of the words —«fronton» — might not be known to all the people who attempt the puzzle. There’s also a heavy focus on one specific team, which can be tough if you don’t know that roster well. If today’s puzzle has you stuck but you still want to crack it, keep reading for hints and answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Nice victory!

Green group hint: I’ll give you that guy for this guy.

Blue group hint: Where to play.

Purple group hint: Florida hoops.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Win smoothly.

Green group: Fantasy sports trade options.

Blue group: Areas of play, in different sports.

Purple group: Members of the Orlando Magic.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is win smoothly. The four answers are breeze, coast, cruise and waltz.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is fantasy sports trade options. The four answers are accept, counter, propose and reject.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is areas of play, in different sports. The four answers are course, court, fronton and rink.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is members of the Orlando Magic. The four answers are Banchero, Bane, Black and Suggs.

Toughest Connections: Sports Edition categories

The Connections: Sports Edition puzzle can be tough, but it really depends on which sports you know the most about. My husband aces anything having to do with Formula 1, my best friend is a hockey buff, and I can answer any question about Minnesota teams.

That said, it’s hard to pick the toughest Connections categories, but here are some I found exceptionally mind-blowing.

#1: Serie A Clubs. Answers: Atalanta, Juventus, Lazio, Roma.

#2: WNBA MVPs. Answers: Catchings, Delle Donne, Fowles and Stewart.

#3: Premier League team nicknames. Answers: Bees, Cherries, Foxes and Hammers.

#4: Homophones of NBA player names. Answers: Barns, Connect, Heart and Hero.

Technologies

Xbox Cloud Gaming Ad-Supported Tier: When Does It Start, How Much Will It Cost and More

Ads could remove the sting of Xbox Game Pass price hikes, but will it be worth it?

Xbox Cloud Gaming is one of the key selling points of Xbox Game Pass, and it generally works well. The service lets gamers stream Xbox titles to a wide range of devices, including phones, tablets, handhelds and select smart TVs from Samsung, LG and Hisense. However, following the Xbox Game Pass price increase from November, streaming alone may not be enough to keep some subscribers on board, which is where an ad-supported tier could come into play.

Microsoft confirmed the existence of an ad-supported tier last year but has not shared details on when it will launch or what it will include. New screenshots shared by players suggest the tier may be arriving soon, though questions remain about how it will work and what limitations it may have.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

When will the Xbox Cloud Gaming ad-supported tier launch?

Microsoft hasn’t made an official announcement yet, but it’s expected to roll out sometime this year, according to Windows Central. Last month, some gamers saw a different loading screen for Xbox Cloud Gaming with a message saying «1 hour of ad-supported play time per session,» which would point to the ads coming soon.

looks like ad-supported Xbox Cloud Gaming is coming soon 👀 pic.twitter.com/c8hAERrVB9

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) January 17, 2026

How much will the Xbox Cloud Gaming ad-supported tier cost?

In October, Microsoft confirmed it was internally testing the ad-supported tier, and at the time, said it would be free. Going by the load screen message I mentioned earlier, there will likely be a limit on how long people can play on the tier and during internal testing, players would have to watch a 2-minute ad.

What games will be available on the ad-supported tier?

Rumors about the internal testing suggested players would only have access to certain games for free, but the question is, which ones? Microsoft has a significant number of games available to stream, whether it’s purchased digital games or those available with an Xbox Game Pass subscription. Microsoft may allow all the digital games in a player’s library to be streamed and might make a few games available for free on a weekly or monthly basis, similar to the Free Play Days games.

Technologies

My Experience With United’s Starlink Service: How All In-Flight Wi-Fi Should Be

No need to load up devices with movies on long flights. You can stream them — and even live events — on Starlink-equipped United flights.

If I weren’t buckled into a seat, I might not have noticed that I was using in-flight Wi-Fi. When it came to working on my laptop and streaming movies on my phone and tablet, I could have been on my broadband at home.

But instead I was 30,000 feet up connected to Starlink Wi-Fi, on a United Airlines flight between Chicago and Minneapolis and thinking back to all the times I’d fought with expensive, slow, annoying internet access on planes. The ginger ale offered by a friendly attendant was a nice addition, too.

This experience was a demonstration flight on United’s first mainline Boeing 737-800 aircraft to be outfitted with the new satellite hardware. United now offers Starlink Wi-Fi service on 25% of its fleet, which includes 300 regional aircraft and dozens of mainline planes during 2025. It’s aiming to install the low-profile technology on up to 500 aircraft by the end of 2026.

At a time when our phones and smartwatches have satellite connectivity options — helping us reach emergency responders or send text messages when we’re out of range of a cell signal — Starlink and United are providing travelers with an upgraded convenience. What’s more, we’re getting in-flight Wi-Fi with speeds and connectivity that rival what we experience at home or the office.

Air travel presents a conundrum: If you need Wi-Fi in the air and it’s not working, you’re cooked. There’s no stepping out to a coffee shop hotspot or rebooting your home router. In-flight Wi-Fi has improved over the years, but it still feels risky whether it will work well or at all. And you don’t discover that until you’re already in the air.

The plane I traveled on isn’t the first United aircraft carrying Starlink’s satellite Wi-Fi equipment. United began outfitting many of its regional Embraer E175 jets in March after signing a deal with Starlink’s parent company, SpaceX, last year. Although it’s the inaugural United mainline aircraft, Hawaiian Airlines got the jump late last year when it outfitted its Airbus planes with the technology.

The Boeing 737-800 I flew on went into active service the next day, starting with a leg from Houston to Fort Lauderdale. Over the coming months, United expects to outfit approximately 15 mainline Boeing 737-800 planes per month with Starlink antennas.

United is offering Starlink Wi-Fi access free to United MileagePlus members. The Standard Wi-Fi option costs $8 or 1,600 miles for MileagePlus members, or $10 for everybody else. Subscriptions for frequent travelers start at $49 a month (or 7,500 miles).

In-flight Wi-Fi is all about the experience

Believe me, I want to talk about speeds and bandwidth and what a Starlink connection could mean for getting work done or being entertained in the air. But it all starts with getting connected, and too often, that experience sucks.

On my flight from Seattle to Chicago the day before my demo, United’s Standard Wi-Fi took nearly an hour to connect to any of my devices. (United uses different internet providers depending on the aircraft and operating area, and this flight was connected by satellite internet provider ViaSat.) Once the main menu page loaded, selecting most options, including «sign in» and «free messaging,» timed out with an error that there was no network connection.

That cut into my work time, but more importantly, it was incredibly frustrating. Many of us look forward to focused time on a flight to get things done without interruptions, and more frustration is the last thing we want to add to our air travel experience.

Two experiences stood out when I was on the Starlink-equipped plane. First, it operates gate-to-gate, so you can connect on your phone or tablet (laptops still need to be put away during takeoff) as soon as you get settled in your seat. After we’d landed and were taxiing back to the gate, I forgot that I was still connected through Starlink.

For almost as long as I’ve owned a cellphone, wheels-down meant it’s time to switch off Airplane mode and embrace the familiar connection of local cellular.

Second, the few sign-on steps I had to go through weren’t any more onerous than getting on a public cafe or hotel Wi-Fi network. After connecting to the United Wi-FI network, a portal window opened with a trio of screens explaining how great the new service is (you can skip them) and a field to enter my United MileagePlus account and password.

Oh, and then there’s a video ad, which is 15 seconds or less. (If you’ve been reading so far and thinking, «Wait, it can’t really be free, can it?» there’s your answer.) That ad turns out to be important: You aren’t connected until the video completes.

I was impatient and dismissed the ad on my laptop, which led to some trouble getting connected. Another journalist on the flight mentioned that he encountered the same situation, and the friendly United tech staff on the flight were curious whether the ad had played when they helped me diagnose the issue. I also emptied my browser caches and told the computer to forget the Wi-Fi network, essentially starting me from scratch.

As far as I can tell, no one else on the flight experienced this problem, but it’s safe to say there could have been some prelaunch bugs being worked out. United’s tech support won’t be on hand for regular flights, which is why one of them mentioned they were trying to iron out any points where flyers might run into difficulty.

Once connected, I could concentrate on trying to use as much bandwidth as possible and look outside occasionally since United scheduled this flight on a beautiful autumn day (instead of bringing everyone to Chicago in the dead of winter).

How Starlink Wi-Fi performed

The hardware that makes this happen is a pair of low-profile 500Mbps antennas mounted on the top of the fuselage. Unlike current units on planes offering standard Wi-Fi, the antennas are essentially exposed to communicate with the network of nearly 8,000 Starlink satellites operating in low Earth orbit (LEO), or about 350 miles in altitude.

To compare, the antenna module on a non-Starlink-equipped United plane parked at the next gate was much larger to shield its antennas, which need to adjust their angles during flight to talk to high-altitude satellites about 22,000 miles up.

In the time it takes a signal to go from a plane to high-altitude satellites, the signal can round-trip the distance between an aircraft and the Starlink satellites 70 times, according to Mara Palcisco, United Airlines vice president of engineering and reliability.

(This is also different from T-Satellite, the Starlink-powered satellite technology offered by T-Mobile. T-Satellite uses a separate collection of satellites to work with phones using a portion of the cellular spectrum.)

What does that mean in terms of the internet experience? Honestly, I’d think I was at home on my high-speed fiber internet if not for the cabin noise and the occasional tight banking turn. I streamed the (underrated, in my opinion) movie Cowboys & Aliens over Netflix on my iPad, played one of United’s available videos in a window on my MacBook Pro and watched YouTube videos on my iPhone.

Also, because this was a special flight for the press and several United employees, I initiated a video call with two colleagues. Usually, video and voice calls are not allowed — in fact, they’re illegal — and United makes a point of telling customers that they shouldn’t engage in any behavior that disturbs the people around them, including calls, listening to audio without headphones or watching media that would make others uncomfortable. You can watch a live call, but technically not talk on one, and that’s behavior flight attendants will have to enforce.

In this instance, we were encouraged to go ahead, so I had a hard-to-hear video conference with CNET managing editor Patrick Holland and senior reporter David Lumb (maybe it’s time to invest in a pair of AirPods Pro 3). The video quality was stellar — no, I’m not making a Starlink pun, I promise — even better than a few recent calls we’ve had in our respective offices. A FaceTime call with a friend was similar: clear, sharp video with no telltale streaming artifacts.

But let’s get to numbers. It’s always a nerd joy to go to Speedtest.net or run the Speedtest app and be surprised at the numbers it sends back. I consistently got around 250Mbps of download speed and anywhere from 25Mbps to 65Mbps upload speed. I saw that on all of my devices: iPhone 17 Pro, M1 iPad Pro and a 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro chip.

To put that into perspective, SpaceX says that Starlink residential internet gets up to 350Mbps download speeds, depending on location. According to an Ookla report, Starlink’s median performance is 105Mbps download, 15Mbps upload and 45ms latency. CNET senior writer Joe Supan saw similar performance when recently testing the Starlink Mini in Washington’s North Cascades mountains. (Disclosure: CNET’s parent company, Ziff Davis, also owns Ookla.)

To make what now looks like an unfair comparison, when I did get United’s standard Wi-Fi access the night before (which I paid $8 for), my speeds were 9.65Mbps down and 1.03Mbps up. Yes, those decimal points are in the correct places.

Streaming video, whether watching in-flight movies, catching up on a series on Netflix or Apple TV or watching live sports, will undoubtedly become more prevalent on flights when this level of bandwidth is available. In fact, when I chatted during the flight with Grant Milstead, United vice president of digital technology, I asked whether the in-flight videos available via United’s portal were cached on a server aboard the plane. (On my flight the previous night, I could view those even when an internet connection was elusive.)

He said that for mainline flights, which carry roughly 170 passengers, the company would still maintain those local servers for redundancy. But the regional Embraer E175 jets, the first of United’s fleet to be outfitted with the Starlink technology, rely on streamed content with no local backup. Given that the video and audio quality, from my perspective, was indistinguishable from broadband at home, that doesn’t come as a surprise.

While waiting for my trip back home (on a plane not equipped with Starlink Wi-Fi), I pondered my lasting impression of this assignment, which had me fly to Chicago, circle above Wisconsin for a couple of hours and then fly back to Seattle.

On my flight with Starlink Wi-Fi, I had uncompromised internet access. I wasn’t thinking about latency, artifacts or whether I was getting my $8 worth. I could work, watch videos, play live video games and just be bothered with any of the usual complications. And that was the best experience.