Quick, what's the best streaming device?
Yeah, that's nice, but what if I only want to spend 20 bucks and I don't want anything locked down?
Yeah, but it's not all bad.
I know we did that video recently, warning about the dangers of cheap infected Android TV boxes,
but there are some valid options for streaming your content, even on a super tight budget.
The problem is that it can be really confusing.
While many of these boxes are, at least on paper, largely the same,
same SoC, same RAM, same storage, same remotes,
that doesn't necessarily mean that they all feel or function the same.
Some of them are 4K, others are only 1080p.
Some have Dolby Vision and Atmos, while others only have HDR10.
Some run a stock software experience, while others are customized.
So to separate the wheat from the chaff, we bought a bucket load of devices,
ranging from about $100, down to one really amazing option that is just 20 bucks.
We've got the usual suspects, like Google and Amazon,
and we've got the less usual suspects, like Xiaomi, Walmart, and TiVo.
TiVo is still around?
As it turns out, yeah, sort of.
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While some folks took issue with our last video on this subject,
I stand behind our complaints.
If you search for Android TV box on Amazon and buy a random result from the first page,
there is a solid 80% chance that you're gonna end up with something of questionable quality
and possibly loaded with malware.
But these commenters did raise some valid points,
telling folks what not to buy is only half a video.
So here's the rest of it, starting with the most mainstream option.
Out of the box, the Chromecast with Google TV is easy to set up and easy to use,
and also surely devoid of any nefarious spyware.
That is, other than the usual.
The HD version's Amlogic S805X2 processor and one and a half gigs of LPDDR4 RAM
seem to be mostly sufficient for it to function as well as a $30 device should.
And 1080p video playback is smooth,
with lag and stutters being a rare occurrence, at least out of the box.
It can play back AV1, has Dolby Atmos pass-through, and Dolby Digital Plus.
And again, can't stress this enough, it only costs $30.
It's even powerful enough to play Donkey Kong 64 on Mupen
with the correct accessories.
If it could play back 4K video, it would probably be our winner.
But it can't, so let's move on to the slightly older,
slightly more expensive, and slightly more powerful Chromecast 4K.
Unlike its younger HD sibling, it doesn't support AV1,
but what it does support is Dolby Vision,
in addition to Dolby Digital Plus,
and as advertised, it plays back 4K video without much issue.
Both of them use identical remotes, offering HDMI CEC connection,
if you want to use it to control your other devices,
or if you want to use your other device's remotes
to control the Chromecast, along with reasonable IR integration
with TVs and soundbars to fill in the gaps.
Voice commands through the built-in mic are picked up decently,
and it integrates with the Google Assistant and Home Assistant.
Power is provided through the included Type-A 7.5-watt charger.
That's gotta be there,
because it's more than your TV's built-in USB port can probably provide.
And if you want Ethernet,
Google sells a replacement for the wall wart
with an integrated 1,100 Ethernet jack for 20 bucks,
though I wouldn't recommend buying that.
If you want to get the most out of these things,
a C2C charger capable of at least 30 watts
is totally the way to go.
Why?
Because when combined with a Type-C dongle with PD passthrough,
you can add external storage, peripherals,
and faster gigabit Ethernet
for those legit Blu-ray rips on your Plex
or your Jellyfin server,
though it should be noted there are some caveats.
You see, long before Apple made it cool,
Google only wired up this Type-C port for USB 2.0.
That means a hard transfer rate limit
of 480 megabits per second.
So if you were to, say for example,
download a file to an external hard drive,
you might find yourself running into a bit of a bottleneck,
and that won't even be the least of your troubles.
Both the HD and the 4K versions
ship with only 4.4 gigabytes of available eMMC storage.
So if you're into plundering or tinkering,
that will get full at some point,
and that will slow your Chromecast to a crawl.
It's pretty easy to transfer apps over to external storage,
so that's good,
but that storage must be formatted
as an encrypted Android partition for apps
or FAT32 for standard external storage,
which limits you to, that's right,
four gigabyte file sizes or smaller.
Yarr.
Overall though,
if you like the Google TV interface over top of Android,
the Chromecast is still great,
even if it's a little warty.
But great is not enough to get our recommendation today.
Google certifies plenty of third-party devices
running Android TV or Google TV,
and not all of them are sketchy.
The hard part is just finding them.
You see, an official list is available,
but it requires you to be part
of the Google Play Developer Program,
a process that requires Google
to manually approve your account,
which they will only do after you have paid them $25.
Thankfully, sites like androidtvguide.com do exist,
and they frequently scrape the list from the developer API
and post their findings,
often in a much more readable and searchable format,
which is what led us to this little nugget
from Walmart house brand ONN, of all people.
It's manufactured by SDMC,
a common OEM of Google-certified devices,
and Walmart is somehow selling this thing for $20.
That's not on sale, just an everyday low price.
Now, is it missing some features
compared to Google's $50 4K Chromecast?
Sure, but it supports 4K video,
has Dolby Audio and HDR10,
which, if you think about it,
are kind of like the $20 versions
of Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision,
and, oh, right, it also has AV1 support.
Now, performance-wise, it is noticeably less smooth
than the Chromecast 4K,
but it's a slight enough difference
that if you weren't using them side-by-side,
you probably wouldn't be able to tell,
which makes sense, since internally,
it has the same amount of RAM and storage
and a very similar class of processor.
I could say a lot more about this thing.
So I will, because we actually really like it.
It offers up the same Google TV experience
that we've come to know and mostly love,
and it ships with the same generic Streambox remote
that we've come to tolerate or even kind of like.
The mic works okay,
and it comes with a handful more buttons
than the first-party Google variant.
I personally don't subscribe to Paramount+,
but, hey, these can be easily remapped
using third-party software from the Google Play Store.
Speaking of which, we talked before
about wanting a device for our money that's not locked down.
As we discussed in our sketchy Streaming Box video,
one of the major draws of those devices
is the ease with which users can engage in content piracy.
And while the ONN unit doesn't come rooted
or anything like that,
which can be good for installing whatever you want on it,
but definitely has downsides,
unlike an Apple TV,
it does allow unofficial apps to be side-loaded onto it,
meaning that you can load up all kinds of software,
everything from Sinclair,
which is a handy tool
for consolidating online content libraries,
to SmartTube, which is an alternative to the YouTube app.
Now, to be clear,
I'm not advocating for the use of any of these things.
I think I've been clear enough in my position
that I consider circumvention of ads
for ad-supported content to be circumvention of payment
for the said content and the people who created it.
But I'm also not naive enough to think
that you guys aren't doing it,
and I would much rather you do it with a certified device
that doesn't spy on you any more than Google would.
So overall, ONN is our value king,
but we're actually not done yet.
What do you get for 3.75 times the price?
Why, the Mecool, oops, KD3.
It looks totally different from the ONN,
but inside it is actually the exact same hardware,
and it even ships with the same remote.
Wait, how is this $75?
Look at this.
If we look it up on Android TV Guide,
we can see this model, originally made by Skyworth,
is being sold as Cozmedia in Turkey,
Regza in Japan, and Skyworth in Shein.
What, you've never heard of Shein?
Small textile nation.
Their primary export is clothing
that lasts only three washes, anyway, sorry.
If you see this thing for more than what you would pay
for the Walmart version, I probably wouldn't bother
unless you live outside of the US,
which, oh, crap, that's me.
Well, okay, you can pay a little bit more
than the Walmart version, but I'd say anything over 40 bucks
is not gonna be a very good deal,
and even at $40, the competition heats up significantly
in that price range.
Take, for example, the $40 TiVo Stream 4K
made by SEI Robotics.
This is a little different from the others,
not only because it's running Android TV
without Google TV, but also because TiVo opted
for their own UI, their own remote design,
and the inclusion of a USB-C port that is separate
from the micro USB port that they're using for power.
That's something that even identical devices
with the same manufacturer and part number don't do.
The UI is TiVo's own aggregator
for different streaming services and live TV replacements,
running as an app over top of stock Android TV.
It's a pretty interesting concept, actually,
but between being limited to the major US streaming services
and generally being a tad bit unstable,
it's not that great in practice.
And TiVo seems to agree, as Xperia CEO John Kirshner
said in an earnings call two years ago
that TiVo was not gonna make
another Android TV streaming devices.
Since then, they've lost integration with Sling TV,
experienced a day where new users lost the ability
to set up devices due to server maintenance issues,
and they've announced a new smart TV OS
in partnership with European TV manufacturer Vestal,
all of which is fine, I guess,
since no one's forcing you to use their crappy overlay
or the integrations anyway.
Spec-wise, it's nothing to write home about.
The lack of AV1 decoding is a bit of a bummer,
at least it will be in the future,
but it does include support for Dolby Atmos and Vision,
something that the MeCool lacks,
and it has a super cool remote.
One benefit of their attempt to emulate cable TV
is that it's full of number buttons,
all of which are completely remappable
with button mapper apps,
meaning that you can have quick launches
for every questionable thing you could ever consider
sideloading onto this device.
The only real downside is it's stuck on Android 10,
is what I would say.
But as it turns out,
if you're looking to run certain things,
like emulators, for example,
that could be a good thing.
Starting with Android TV 11,
Google removed the included File Explorer
and began forcing scoped storage,
a system that compartmentalizes files by type
and what application put them there.
This can create some big issues
if you do things incorrectly.
Like for example,
if you install PPSSPP from the Play Store
and then use something like send file to TV
to transfer a ROM to the internal storage,
you could find yourself unable to access your ISO
from the emulator,
and more troublingly,
unable to delete the ISO at all
because it doesn't fit into Google's predefined list
of file types that apps are allowed to delete.
So if that ROM is 1.1 gigs,
which would be a perfectly reasonable size for a PSP game,
that's a quarter of your 4.4 gigs gone forever,
unless you use a third-party app to go manually reclaim it.
With that said,
if up-to-date software is important to you,
but only sort of,
and you're a big fan of non-functional custom UIs,
this is not your only option.
Xiaomi offers the TV Stick 4K for just $65.
It comes with the Xiaomi's Patchwall
and Patchwall Plus apps pre-installed.
What does that mean?
We don't know.
Apparently it has something to do with free live TV,
similar to Pluto,
but Xiaomi seemingly offers no comprehensive list
of what regions Patchwall works in.
We assume China,
and it apparently works in India,
but we're hard-pressed to find anywhere else,
and hard-pressed to test it,
which wouldn't be that big of a deal,
except that the button to launch Patchwall
is in the same place that every other Android
and Google TV device puts the back button.
Button remapping, you guys,
is supposed to be a fun little additional feature,
not a mandatory exercise.
Specs-wise, it's yet another Y4
with two gigs of RAM and eight gigs of storage,
just like the MeCool and the Walmart devices,
and it functions about the same as those options,
but with the addition of both Dolby Atmos and Vision.
So it has that going for it, which is nice,
but I still can't really recommend it
in a world where the TiVo and the Chromecast 4K exist.
And I'd probably say the same
about the newest Xiaomi TV box.
The TV box S second gen.
This one's on a slightly more powerful X4 processor,
so that's a good thing.
It supports Atmos and Dolby Vision, 4K 60,
all the usual stuff,
but it costs a little more than the rest of the crowd
at around 70 US dollars.
To be clear, it could be kind of worth it
if you just don't want the hassle
of using a dongle to get a USB port.
It's got those on board.
Ooh, and a three and a half millimeter audio jack.
But just like the TV stick,
they put their Xiaomi TV Plus button
right where the back button is.
So just about every time you're gonna try to do anything,
you're gonna accidentally hit it, or at least I would.
Thankfully, the interface is stock Google TV.
Though custom UIs on Android aren't always terrible.
Just look at Amazon's Fire TV devices,
like the Fire TV Stick 4K Max or Fire TV Stick Lite.
These ones, not Google certified.
They don't use the Google store,
and Amazon has even reportedly been working
on their own standalone Fire OS
to completely divorce themselves with Google.
But for now, they're still Android devices.
Unlike everything else we've looked at so far,
these are the first to not use Amlogic chips,
instead opting for MediaTek's MT8690 line of processors
for all of the options cheaper than the Fire TV Cube.
What does that mean for the end user?
Very little.
The Amazon Fire TV Lite is designed to do 1080p video,
not 4K.
It has a single gig of RAM, eight gigs of storage,
pass-through Atmos support for HDR10+,
but no Dolby Vision, Wi-Fi AC, yada, yada.
It runs Fire OS 7, which is actually Android 9.
Okay, that's a yikes.
Then the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, now in its second revision
as of September, 2023, has two gigs of RAM,
16 gigs of internal storage, finally.
And it's also the only offering we've looked at
to support Wi-Fi 6E.
On top of that, it supports Atmos, Vision, HDR10+,
all the usual things that you'd think it might.
And it's on Fire OS 8,
which is built on top of the much more current Android 11.
Prices on these two are $30 and $60 respectively,
which is totally reasonable.
But ultimately, the biggest selling feature
of the Fire TV lineup is integration with Alexa.
So if you're an Alexa household, you go with this.
You just take all those ads that Amazon's gonna feed you.
Do you want Prime with that?
And if you're not an Alexa household,
you go with something else.
Now, you probably noticed,
we kind of glossed over performance benchmarks here.
That's because most people shopping for these things
are doing so based on feature set.
But that doesn't mean we didn't test them.
And the new Fire TV Stick 4K Max
ended up leading the pack
with the Xiaomi TV Box S Gen 2
and the Chromecast 4K trailing behind
in both single and multi-core Geekbench performance.
A more meaningful test from my point of view though,
was our navigation latency test.
To be clear, we're still working on methodologies
for this kind of stuff,
but pressing the right direction button
10 times in Netflix between noon and 2 p.m. on a weekday
gave us some rather interesting results.
Surprisingly, the TiVo came out on top
with the Chromecast HD, Fire Stick 4K Max,
and Chromecast 4K coming in behind.
Meanwhile, on all of our tests,
the ONN was very middle of the pack.
So what's the major takeaway then?
Well, first of all,
there is no perfect answer under 100 bucks.
But second of all,
the best bang for your buck is the ONN every single time. I mean,
For $20, I say take the gamble with it
and then give it away if it doesn't fit your use case
or return it with Walmart's generous return policy.
Then if that happens
and you want something a little more powerful,
I'd say the Chromecast 4K or the Fire TV Stick 4K Max
are gonna be your best options.
We're gonna have links to all of these devices down below.
Finally, if you want something experimental
but potentially very responsive,
the TiVo Stream 4K can execute some interesting ideas,
even if they might be a little flawed.
Now I'm sure through all of this,
some of you are wondering,
why don't you just use what's built into your TV?
That's a valid question.
That's what I do in my family room actually,
but there are arguments against it.
First of all, not every TV interface is usable.
Sometimes they're full of ads and extremely laggy.
And some folks also feel that connecting their TV
to the internet could make it more susceptible
to planned obsolescence in the longterm.
You see, software updates
can bring additional functionality,
but they can also roll out in ways
that affect your ability to stream content
or even affect performance
when the manufacturer rolls out additional bloat.
With a dongle though, that's not the case,
and you can easily replace it once it begins to slow down
or once its functionality no longer suits your needs.
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If you liked this video,
check out the time we found potential viruses
on sketchy Android TV boxes.
These ones, okay to buy.
Those ones, no.