You’ll find Roku TVs with a wide range of features, sizes, and prices from a long list of vendors, including TCL, Sharp, Hisense, RCA, and Walmart’s Onn brand. If you’d rather buy a TV with built-in streaming features instead of a separate player, Roku gains the advantage. As long as you avoid the budget Fire TV Stick, Amazon’s platform delivers a better hardware value. Fire TV devices are also better at remembering your place in recent apps, whereas apps on Roku always restart after you exit them. Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K and Fire TV Cube support all off those things. The Roku Streaming Stick+ is the best Roku for most people, though many other options exist.ĭespite all those options, Roku doesn’t offer a single model with Dolby Vision, HDR10+, or Dolby Atmos decode (which is required to get Atmos support in Netflix). Best Buy also sells a variant of the Streaming Stick+ with a headphone jack on its remote for $60, and if you want USB and ethernet ports along with programmable remote buttons, the Roku Ultra will set you back $100. The Walmart-exclusive Roku Express+ is a better option for 1080p playback, while the $50 Roku Streaming Stick+ hits the sweet spot for 4K HDR. I’d suggest staying away from the $30 Roku Express and $40 Roku Premiere, as they both use infrared remotes that can feel unresponsive and don’t have TV volume or power controls built-in. Roku, meanwhile, currently offers six streaming players. The Fire TV Stick 4K is a great value even if you don’t have a 4K TV. If you want the best performance and hands-free Alexa voice control built-in, get the $120 Fire TV Cube. For much faster performance and 4K HDR video support, you can spend a little more on the $50 Fire TV Stick 4K. If you want the cheapest streaming device and can tolerate sluggish performance, get the $40 Fire TV Stick (though I’d advise against it). (Roku does support hands-free controls with Echo and Google Home speakers, but the syntax is clunky and the controls are limited.) Amazon’s Alexa assistant also allows you to control smart home devices, ask general questions, or view security camera feeds using the Fire TV remote, which isn’t an option on Roku players.Īdvantage: Fire TV Hardware: Streaming playersĪmazon’s Fire TV device lineup is pretty simple. It also supports tuning to live channels in some streaming services, and if you have an Echo speaker, you can launch movies and shows without even touching your remote. While both platforms allow you to search by voice, Fire TV lets you launch videos and music directly through its voice remote in more services than Roku does, including Netflix and Amazon Prime. As a result you’ll probably spend more time in the apps you know best instead of discovering what else is out there. And while Roku offers editorially-curated “zones” for different genres, you have to search and drill though several menu layers to access them. There’s a “Featured Free” section on the home screen that spotlights free movies and TV shows to watch, but that doesn’t help if you want to know what’s new on Netflix or Hulu. Roku’s attempts at content discovery are much more conservative. Jared Newman / IDGĪmazon throws movie and show recommendations directly onto the Fire TV home screen. While this approach can feel inscrutable-mostly because Amazon doesn’t let you customize the recommendations that appear-it is helpful for those times when you’re feeling indecisive. Most come from Amazon’s own Prime Video service, but you might also get recommendations from other apps, such as Netflix or HBO Now. Keep scrolling past the app list, and you’ll find row upon row of suggested movies and shows to watch. The flip side is that Amazon’s Fire TV interface is better at suggesting what to watch without making you jump in and out of different apps. The favorite and recent apps rows on Fire TV can lead to some redundancies.
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