Google just released a brand new Chromecast called Chromecast with Google TV and it
represents a fundamental shift with the Chromecast experience thanks to its new software and remote,
so there's just a lot to cover with this device, so let's dive right in. So what's new with the new
Chromecast? Well for one it comes with a remote a major departure from previous versions. Having
a remote is just more convenient than having to use your phone every time you want to watch
something. The other big fundamental change with this device is the newly branded Google TV which
is the operating system that runs this Chromecast. It acts in a very similar way to how other
streaming boxes work like the Apple TV except Google was somehow able to strike a deal with
all of the major streaming players to actually pull content from individual apps to show them in
an aggregated view so you don't have to go digging through each app to find what to watch. This saves
a lot of time and overall i think it looks really good. The Google Assistant also plays a major role
with this Chromecast and it has its own dedicated button on the remote. Now we'll dive into more of
the features of the UI in a second but first let's take a look at the setup experience and
the hardware. When you open the box everything is nicely packaged and the dongle and remote come
wrapped protecting their finish. The design of the dongle is a nice upgrade it reminds me of that
same river stone design inspiration that Google used for their 2020 pixel buds case. Both the
dongle and the remote feel really nice with their matte finishes and the remote in particular feels
great in your hand. You can get the Chromecast with Google TV in several colors now too including
chalk, sand, and sky, following similar color palettes Google uses for its other Nest devices.
Even the two included AAA batteries for the remote match the color of the remote. The dongle
is powered by a USB-A to USB-C cable and adapter and there's an optional internet adapter that you
can get for it to hardwire in your Chromecast. I also appreciate that the power adapter Google
used was small in its form and easy to plug into a surge protector. Google also added some great
cable clips to the cord as well which i always appreciate. Alright now lets talk about the setup
process. You use the Google Home app to perform the setup and the steps are similar to other Nest
devices with a few differences. There are more security steps that i ran into with this process.
At one point i was asked to confirm my identity with my face on my pixel 4 xl as well as signing
in again to verify my Google account. Another interesting thing is that this Chromecast does
include voice match with the Google Assistant, so when you use the Google Assistant the results you
get will be your own personal results. One of the last steps in the setup process is selecting the
different apps that you would like to add to your Chromecast. If you've signed into services before
on your Android device, Chromecast will use smart lock to automatically sign you into the app when
you click on it in the UI. Pretty much all the apps were there that you'd expect here in the us
except for Apple TV+. Since Google TV will be the operating system for a lot of TVs out there from
different manufacturers my hunch is that Apple TV+ will show up at some point on this platform but
until then it is the only glaring omission in terms of streaming services. Now after
you've gotten everything set up on the Google Home app there are a couple of steps you will
need to complete on the TV itself and one of the more interesting steps involves programming the
ir blaster in the remote to be able to not only turn on and off your TV and sound system if you
have one but also the ability to switch inputs and turn up or down the volume if you have a receiver
like i do for my 5.1 surround sound system or you have a sound bar separate from your TV. You can go
into settings and select if you want the volume controls on the remote to control the volume on
your TV or your sound system. One interesting thing about this setup was that when you set up
the device with your Google account the Chromecast doesn't automatically create user profiles
for the other Google accounts connected to your home. Right now you can add other Google accounts
in Google TV but you'll only be able to switch between Google accounts within apps like youtube,
you can't create multiple user profiles for the device itself yet which is something that i'm
hoping Google will bring at some point. Alright well those were some of the interesting things
about the setup process, now i'd like to take you through my first impressions of the device as well
as some standout features. The most striking thing about it when you set it up is seeing
all of the media being pulled from various apps into one view. It'll even pull in movies and TV
shows that you own from your library as well as videos from youtube this is very similar to
what apple has been trying to do on the Apple TV, but Google has taken it further by being able to
parse out Netflix videos and pull them into this view which is a huge deal. I absolutely love that
when you select a movie for example by hitting the center button on the remote it'll show you a
description of the movie, its rating the rotten tomatoes score ,when the movie was released,
run time, an either play/rent/buy button, add to your watchlist, show the different apps you
can play the movie on, and give you the option to mark the movie as watched and rate whether
you liked it or not which will help improve your Google TV recommendations. You can also scroll
down to see more information like cast and crew as well as other movies or TV shows like this one. If
you want to just quickly rate a movie or TV show or add it to your watch list you can just click
and hold to get a pop-up menu where you can do some of these quick actions. The watchlist feature
that I mentioned is a really neat feature and it spans across the entire Google TV experience,
you can pretty much add anything you see to your watchlist for multiple different services and
it'll display your watchlist in different parts of the UI. The watchlist permanently lives at the top
of your library section you can also add to the watchlist from the Google TV app on your phone
or from Google.com on the web. You can even add an upcoming movie or TV show to your watch list and
Google will notify you when the movie is available or a new episode from the show comes out. Google
TV will also show upcoming dates for a new season of a show that you may want to watch for example
it'll show when season 2 of the Mandalorian premieres on Disney+ or when the new season of
The Crown drops on Netflix. Now let's quickly go back to the movie view that we had before
one of the best things about this view is while you're viewing the information youtube will start
playing the trailer to that movie or a scene from the movie or TV show in the background and if you
don't do anything it'll just fade in the trailer so you can watch the whole thing. This is very
similar to the auto plane trailers in the Netflix app if you click back out of the trailer on Google
TV the volume will lower and show you the info for the movie/TV show again. When you're actually
watching something to play or pause the content you use the center button on the remote. To bring
up the playhead to see how much longer you have to you finish hit either the top or bottom button of
the wheel and to skip back and forth in the media and use the left and right buttons on the remote.
If you hold down one of these buttons in some apps you'll rapidly move through the content.
Another tidbit i've got for you is that if you want to make your content recommendations
even better scroll down to the very bottom of the for use section and adjust the services selected
that Google will use to recommend content to you . Alright, now one thing that's quite striking
about the Google TV experience is everything you can do in settings, we don't have time to cover
every single thing in settings but i do want to mention a couple of interesting ones that we ran
into. The first one is when looking at the remote there's actually software that runs on it that you
can update also this Chromecast has ambient mode so you can turn your TV into a giant nest hub
display. You can choose to show Google Photos on your display and you can select which albums you
want displayed on the Chromecast in the Google Home app you can also of course toggle on and
off location data, weather, and the time from appearing over the photos when they display,
and you can use the left and right buttons on the remote to advance or move back the previous photo
being displayed on the screen. Another thing to make sure you check out in settings is what
resolution your Chromecast is set to. We changed ours to 4k 30 hertz from 1080p at 60hz note though
most apps i've tested so far seem to only have their content in hd and that does include Netflix.
Now the last main thing about the device that i want to mention is the Google Assistant you
trigger it by using the dedicated assistant button on the remote you can use the Google assistant
on this device just like you would with any other Google Assistant device, asking it for things like
the weather or setting a reminder playing some music etc. However it can do some specific things
with TV shows and movies on the Chromecast. If you want to know what it can do on the Chromecast all
you have to do is ask it and it'll start to play a short video showing all the things it can do.
Also if you hold down the assistant button for a few seconds, it'll give you some suggestions for
what you can ask it. When typing in passwords or other search queries you can hold down the
assistant button to dictate text. Depending on the app you're watching content on you can also press
and hold the assistant button to ask who's in this and it'll bring up the cast of the movie you're
watching. Alright next let's talk about some of the bugs and issues we ran into while using the
device and there were a few. One thing we ran into was that in the library section movies are
displayed in one row but if you have a lot of them it can be a slight pain to scroll through a grid
view after clicking a see all button would have likely been a better UI/UX choice here. YouTube
Music oddly doesn't have its own dedicated app on Google TV. Now if you search for YouTube Music
as an app to download you will find it you'll download it and then when you try to open it,
it brings you into a tab of the youtube app for youtube music, however when you try to play music
from that tab it'll show the song that you played in your youtube history, which is annoying. The
last bug we ran into is with the recommendations you see across the screen sometimes they can be
inconsistent with the locks shown on content i'll often see a locked icon on content from apps that
i'm subscribed to like Disney plus or Hulu. Also you can't seem to turn off Tubi TV suggestions
on the Google TV home screen. Alright now over the course of the next six months we're going
to continue testing out and using the Chromecast with Google TV and then i'll ultimately give you
my final verdict on whether or not you should get this device in our full six months later review
of it. Until then i hope you found this video helpful and informative and if you like this
video make sure you hit that thumbs up button below and subscribe to the channel to see more
Google videos and tech videos like this one. For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.