Chromecast, Roku, Amazon Fire TV — so many options
With the holiday season in full swing, many of us are spending a little more time at home. Gathering the family for a movie night is a tradition as old as time — well, as old as movies, anyway — and that goes double for when you have relatives over during this time of year. You probably have a pretty sweet home theater system set up in your home just for these occasions, but behind your Dolby Atmos speakers and 4K OLED display is something much simpler: a streaming device.
Between offerings from Amazon, Google, Roku, and Apple, there’s no shortage of ways to stream movies and TV shows to any television in your house. These platforms all have access to the same lineup of apps — Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, and so on — and yet, many of us think long and hard before we pick one up from a local retailer. For many, it’s the technical specs that make the difference. Maybe Dolby Vision support is a must-have, or expandable storage for local media playback is the way to go. Maybe you’re focused on which voice assistants work with your hardware, picking Assistant over Alexa every time. Or maybe it all comes down to a matter of price: which gadget fits into my budget before I place it behind my TV and never think about it again.
With most streaming devices priced below $50, it’s easy to experiment with various platforms until you find the one that’s right for you. I recently reviewed Amazon’s latest Fire TV Stick, a gadget I really liked despite a mediocre UI littered with advertisements. Before my review, I’d been using Google’s latest Chromecast for most of 2021, but I’ve found myself reluctant to go back — the 4K Max just feels so much faster when I’m browsing through apps. Still, I’ll probably switch back to Google’s latest offering at some point — its interface just feels so much more intuitive.
We’ll have more to say this week about AP’s picks for the best streaming devices you can use today, but for now, I’m curious what our readers are currently using. Have you become a die-hard Google TV fan? Dedicated to Roku devices for ten years running? Maybe you have a — gasp — Apple TV mounted under your television. For the sake of this poll, if you use more than one platform, vote for the one you consider your primary way of watching entertainment.
What streaming device do you primarily use to watch TV and movies?
Chromecast with Google TV
21%, 49 votes
Nvidia Shield TV
14%, 33 votes
Amazon Fire TV
8%, 19 votes
Onn Android TV 4K
2%, 4 votes
TiVo Stream 4K
0%, 1 votes
Game consoles (Xbox, PlayStation, etc.)
2%, 4 votes
Pre-installed smart TV apps
20%, 47 votes
Other (leave a comment)
4%, 10 votes
Total Votes: 233
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