So we're getting closer to the end of the year or the beginning of the next year or maybe the Earth
is going to stop spinning anywhere these days I don't know the point is we're at that part of the
Year where we're not really expecting any major changes when it comes to streaming Hardware the
schedule is pretty much set that's good news it's less work for me easier choices for you
[Music]
so while we're all we're going to take a look at the of the best we're talking from Apple from
Google from Roku from Amazon and well that's pretty much it so I'm Phil Nickerson this is
Digital Trends there's a subscribe button and a little notification Bell here somewhere you
know to do those right just start clicking them keep clicking them because you want to make sure
you see every new video that we got coming out so before we get too far into this I actually want to
share a little bit of My Philosophy when it comes to Tech okay now whether we're talking streaming
devices or TVs or computers or phones or whatever I want to spend as much money as I possibly can
within my budget I know that seems a little counterintuitive but here's the thing if I'm
using it every single day I want to get the best I can for my money so I'm willing to spend a little
bit more your budget might well be different than mine and that's fine that's actually the point
of this whole thing and actually I'm gonna ignore all the super cheap streaming sticks here because
the simple fact is if you spend a little bit more you're going to get a much much better value out
of any of these products we're about to talk about if you don't like that you think I'm wrong fine
send complaints to Caleb digitaltrends.com take care of you all right you ready let's go these
are the best streaming devices that you can get right now so with that let's start with Roku now
Roku is actually the largest streaming platform in the United States it's number two in the rest
of the world and for good reason all right it's super simple to use and it's really affordable
and Roku also has been around forever that helps a lot as well so it was founded in 2008 really
as a way to watch Netflix on a non-smart TV it's grown up a lot since then but the hardware remains
super affordable you can actually almost always find something on sale for like 20 bucks it's
kind of nuts but for my money I'm sticking on the top shelf and that means Roku Ultra now it retails
for 100 if you're paying a hundred dollars for it you're probably paying too much it's almost
always on sale too so Roku Ultra isn't a stick it's actually a box it's about the size of two
decks of playing cards and while it's the best Roku device you can get it's also not top of the
line just when it comes to Tech in general and that's okay it's got HD HDMI 2.0 B and not the
better HDMI 2.1 it's got a full ethernet port but it's not gigabit Ethernet now I'll have a little
more to say about in that in a second just hang on it also has Wi-Fi 5 and not the newer Wi-Fi 6
or even Wi-Fi 6E it does however on the back of this thing have USB 3.0 which is nice if
you're going to be plugging in some sort of hard drive to watch movies then I'm sure you paid for
legally and it supports Dolby Vision HDR 10 and HDR 10 plus and Dolby Atmos for audio so that's
all good now some other things it has that you'll like it's got a really simple user interface that
hasn't changed much over the years that bugs me maybe it doesn't bug you point is it's really easy
for anybody to use and Roku makes it really easy to watch things apps are called channels here and
Roku even has its own channel which it calls the Roku channel it's got all kinds of free series and
movies and they're making it easier to watch live sports which is great and if you like talking to
your devices to tell them what to do who Roku has its own voice command system too now one thing I
personally don't really like about Roku these days is it's actually more advertising platform first
and hardware company second you're gonna see ads on the home screen and maybe there for other Roku
products or maybe they're for some other streaming service maybe they're for an individual show point
is you're going to see ads and you're going to kind of see a lot of them and where there are
ads there's data about you now I'm really not a tinfoil hat guy I'm just not but I am trying to
minimize the amount of data that me and my family are just putting out there okay by the way this is
all true if you're using a Roku TV as well the only difference is the underlying Hardware is
kind of stuck to that television right you can't upgrade it every year or two without swapping out
the whole TV but otherwise you're going to get the exact same experience and that includes the ads
all right next is Amazon Fire TV and as long as I'm ranting about Big Brother it doesn't get much
bigger than Amazon does it Amazon almost certainly knows more about you than you realize and Fire
TV has ads too so let's just do the math there in fact it maybe even has more ads than Roku or maybe
it's just that they're in different places you're going to see them on the home screen you're going
to see them tucked away into screensavers it gets a little nuts but just know that they're there now
that that's out of the way Amazon kind of plays the same game as Roku in so far as the hardware
is concerned you can get something cheap like 20 or 30 dollars cheap now I think you should go a
little more expensive how much more that depends so at the top of the Heap is Amazon Fire TV Cube
it got a refresh in late 2022 and is now on its third iteration so it's added support for Wi-Fi 6E
which is good because faster is better and that'll future proof it for a little while it still has
Dolby vision and Dolby Atmos but new is HDR 10 plus that's a spec that's really only important
if you have a Samsung TV but a lot of you do now this Cube also adds an HDMI in Port which
is interesting because it allows you to control other devices like cable or satellite boxes or
even a gaming console all that much better the big selling point for Fire TV Cube though is that
it's also an Amazon Echo device essentially that means any of the voice command stuff that you can
do in an echo you can also do here only now it's directly integrated into your television so you
can control all of that directly with your voice plus okay it's fast and it has all the apps that
you could possibly want on a device like this now the user interface maybe is a little busy for my
taste but on the other hand it gets you to all that Amazon Prime video content that much faster
same goes for all the other Amazon stuff too like say Amazon music that is a big deal especially now
that you can get it for free all in all what we've got here is a really good device that retails for
140 dollars so it's not inexpensive I get that and it's a shame that it doesn't include the best
Amazon remote that you can buy now that's this thing the Amazon voice remote Pro and it's going
to cost you an extra 35 dollars come on Amazon put this thing in the box now one alternate on this
front is the Amazon Fire TV stick 4K Max that's a lot of words for really is a 50 streaming stick
and if you don't need the integrated microphones and hands-free voice command Alexa stuff that's
probably what you want to get all right I promised a little more on ethernet and let's just do that
now this is going to get a little nerdy I warn you but it's kind of important select the Roku Ultra
Fire TV Cube has a dedicated ethernet port and those two have what's called 10 100 ethernet are
also known as fast ethernet now generally speaking it's a good idea to plug in whenever you can it's
just going to be a more stable connection and oftentimes it's going to be faster than your Wi-Fi
it just depends on what you have then but here's the thing this 10 100 ethernet standard is not the
fastest available and it hasn't been for a long time the fastest you can get right now is just a
normal human being is called gigabit Ethernet or 10 100 1000 that's the gigabit part so is that a
deal breaker that it's not in Roku Ultra or not in the Fire TV Cube I don't think so now look I want
the latest and greatest just like everybody else in fact I think they should probably go ahead and
put gigabit in these just because but the simple fact is that the theoretical 100 megabits of speed
that you're gonna get out of the ultra or out of the Fire TV Cube that's more than enough for
streaming video that's more than enough for streaming things in 4k and that's true even
if you're running multiple device is at once all right most of these streaming services Top out at
like 30 megabits per second for streaming 4K video and even then it's not going to be doing that the
entire time that you're watching now you might have some Edge case that's different all right
if you are streaming files locally from a hard drive or NOS server then yeah you might want to
go with gigabit Ethernet just because everything's going to be faster and that's better fine that's
an edge case that's not what we're talking about here all right that's the end of the nerd stuff
let's get back to the hardware now that brings us to Chromecast with Google TV now that's an
awkward name for Google streaming Hardware this is the latest that you can get as of the end of
2022. now Chromecast with Google TV is a full streaming platform it's got all the apps it's
got all the services it's got all the home control stuff that you'd want this sort of thing it's got
all the searching all the voice command it's got all of Google in one place all for fifty dollars
this is Google's TV solution and it's really good especially at that price it's what I keep
in my gear bag when I travel actually because it's small it's really easy to use it hooks up
the Wi-Fi without any problems and because it's so cheap if I lose it it's not really the end
of the world now like Amazon Fire TV Google TVs user interface can get a little busy at times
but it's got all the apps and features you need including Adobe Vision Dolby Atmos and HDR 10 plus
for you Samsung TV users out there now what's it missing well things like ethernet and expandable
storage it's Wi-Fi only for now and a quick word of warning there is a cheaper HD model out there
that you can save you know 20 bucks on don't do it it tops out at 1080P and the simple fact is you're
gonna have a 4K TV at some point just spend the extra money you get a couple other little bells
and whistles in there just it's worth it now while we're talking about Android based devices
what about Nvidia Shield TV it's still around and it's been around for years it's insane how well
the hardware has held up the hardware hasn't gotten a refresh since 2019. that's sort of an
eternity never mind how well it still works today it's also still ridiculously overpowered supports
Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision has gigabit Ethernet and a Micro SD card for more storage so it's still
a beast and it's really good for cloud gaming and videos got a leg up on that and it's still on the
more expensive side of things at 150 and finally we have Apple TV now speaking of overpowered this
thing is running an a15 Bionic processor those are just words it means nothing just know this it is
super overpowered for what you're generally going to be doing with this thing which is
streaming apps watching videos stuff like that or maybe it's meant for something a little more
think about gaming for a minute now there's a really good chance that by the time you finally
watch this gaming might be more of a thing on Apple TV 4K it's actually been around for a
while but Apple hasn't really done anything super serious with it but consider this when Apple sent
us a review unit of Apple TV 4K in late 2022 they sent it with a PlayStation 5 controller very very
interesting so be on the lookout for more when it comes to gaming and then there's smart home
so Apple TV 4K actually has done smart home stuff for a while now it's been a home kit hub for years
but Smart Home Tech is threatening to get a lot better in 2023 thanks to something called thread
and matter now if you haven't heard those two terms don't worry about it I hate talking about
smart home standards because there have been a lot of them the bottom line is this though
finally all the companies are settling on one thing that should theoretically make devices talk
to each other so much easier without necessarily needing something like a router getting in the way
how well is that going to work we don't know yet but the underlying Tech is here in the new Apple
TV 4K that's important so back to the hardware itself there actually are two models here and
you need to pay a little bit of attention so one has 64 gigabytes of storage and is Wi-Fi only the
other one this is the one I think you should get has double the storage at 128 gigabytes it has
gigabit Ethernet that's important we just talked about that and that is the one that has the thread
and matter standards built in the cheaper one does not now here's the thing the cheaper one it's only
twenty dollars less go ahead and spend that extra money and get get the better version just do it so
why Apple TV 4K well for me personally it's mostly because my entire family is all in on Apple now
that didn't always used to be the case I've been using Apple TV even back when I was the only one
on all things Android you will get more things out of it with things like AirPlay and excellent
excellent remote control integration with an iPhone or an iPad also and this is maybe my
favorite part and perhaps it's a little silly but the screensavers like you see right there they're
so good I could just sit there and watch them for hours and at risk of sounding like an apple
shill here and I absolutely am going to sound like one it just works it's simple it's not trying to
do too much it's not working too hard at it it's not throwing a million things at you on the user
interface and it doesn't have any ads on there either at least for now which is a really good
thing I enjoy that I just want to watch the videos I just want to watch TV and apple lets me do that
without all those other distractions please don't screw that up Apple and the hardware lasts forever
so my original 2017 Apple TV 4K finally died when it was struck by lightning otherwise it was still
exactly as good as the very first first day I used it so you know except for the lightning I
didn't need to upgrade it now it's not cheap at 150 dollars I get that but and this goes back to
what we talked about at the very beginning this is something I use every single day here in the
living room also in my bedroom and so I don't mind spending a little more on something that's just
that much better so out of all four things we've talked about that to me that's why Apple TV 4K is
the best streaming Hardware device you can buy at the end of 2022. so that's it thank you for
making it this far if you haven't already be sure to like the video subscribe to the channel hit
the notification Bell we will be back with more videos from Digital Trends see you later foreign