- Hey there, streaming junkies!
Welcome to today's video,
where we are going to be testing
which premium streamer is the fastest.
Now, this is gonna be part of a new series that I'll do
that will ultimately determine
who's got the best premium streamer out there.
We're not gonna try to answer that question
in its entirety today, just which one is fastest.
So, between the Roku Ultra, the Fire TV Cube,
the Nvidia Shield Pro, and the Apple TV 4K,
which one is the fastest?
I'll be testing it in four different areas:
a full restart, opening an app,
and playing content with voice,
and playing content without voice control.
Now, for each of these categories,
I performed the function three times
and took the average from each,
just to do my part to rule out any anomalies here.
There are some other areas that I'm thinking of
that I'll be testing in future videos,
but I would like to hear
what you would like to have me test.
Hit the comments below.
What I'm looking for are things that would be quantifiable.
So, who's got the best interface?
Well, it kinda depends on who you ask.
But if you have anything
that would actually fit on a spreadsheet,
that I can actually test and know once and for all
which one is the best and which area,
if you've got an idea of what that area should be,
let me know in the comments.
But for today, speed.
Who's the fastest? Let's dive in.
(upbeat music)
All right, guys.
As we get started,
don't forget to like and subscribe if this video is fun,
et cetera, et cetera.
Let's get right into it, though.
The first area that I tested was a full system restart.
So, for each device I went into the Settings menu,
clicked restart, clicked my timer,
and saw how long it would take.
As I expected,
this was the area that kind of had the most spread
between the devices.
The Roku Ultra and the Fire TV Cube were almost identical,
coming in at 33 1/2 seconds each, roughly.
The Apple TV 4K was surprisingly fast,
shockingly fast at 21 seconds, just over 21 seconds.
And also shockingly,
was just how long it took the Nvidia Shield Pro
to do a restart.
I would think that would be the beefiest machine
on the list, right?
But it took a full 45.3 seconds
to get through a full restart, again, on average.
Next up was opening an app with voice control.
So in each case, I had it open up Netflix.
So what I would do
is I would click the little microphone button,
give it my command,
and as soon as I released the button
that tells the device to execute that command,
I would start the timer.
And on this one, the results,
honestly, we're kind of all over the place.
The Roku Ultra came in at 7.5 seconds.
That is definitely the slowest out of all these devices
just to open up Netflix.
The Fire TV Cube was the fastest at 2.8 seconds.
The Nvidia Shield Pro at 3.8, not far behind.
And the Apple TV 4K at 5.3 seconds.
So, a pretty decent spread there,
but, yeah, it's pretty remarkable
how quick the Fire TV Cube was able to execute
that particular command.
Moving on to our next category,
and that's starting some content.
So not an app but actual content.
So I had my device open up "Squid Game" on Netflix
to see, well, what would happen.
Again, on this one,
the Fire TV Cube takes first place with 6.1 seconds.
The Nvidia Shield Pro, not far behind with 6.4 seconds.
So, really that's kind of a statistical dead heat, right?
The Roku Ultra was a little bit slower
at 8 1/2 seconds.
And the Apple TV 4K was an interesting case
because in this one,
it wouldn't immediately start my content,
but instead wanted to give me options
for how to view that content.
I chose "Squid Game" specifically
because it's only available on Netflix.
So I was hoping the voice assistant
would be smart enough to know that (chuckles)
and to just start the content.
But in the Apple TV 4K circumstance,
it kept asking me how I wanted to play the content.
So it took a little while,
and that one clocked in at 12 seconds.
The last category on here
is starting the same kind of content without using my voice.
So I would go into Netflix,
click the Play button on a title, turn off auto-play, right?
(chuckles) And then click the Play button on a title
and see how long it would take for that to start.
Now, I struggled adding this category.
I thought about not adding it at all
because this is so dependent on an internet connection
and how good an internet connection is.
But I decided I could go ahead and include this one
because all four of these devices
are the same distance from my router,
they're all hooked up via Wi-Fi,
so none of them is using ethernet for this test.
And so, yeah, I figured it would work out pretty well,
especially if I did them right in a row
so that the internet connection was roughly similar.
And indeed, the results that I saw were roughly similar.
The fastest one in this case
was the Nvidia Shield Pro at 1.8 seconds,
followed by the Roku Ultra at 2.1,
Fire TV Cube at 2.3, and Apple TV 4K at 2.4 seconds.
So, yeah, not a lot of variation
between the devices in this particular category.
Again, probably because it's largely dependent
on your internet connection.
So, what conclusion can we come to
with all of these numbers here?
Now, the Apple TV 4K one in the restart category,
but I don't know how often
you're gonna be restarting your device.
But it was a good stand in
for how quickly the hardware could get up and running.
Where I was really impressed was the Fire TV Cube.
I was not expecting it to perform as well as it did,
partly because it's an older device
compared to some of the other ones.
Like the Apple TV 4K has been updated more recently,
whereas the Fire TV Cube latest model
is just over two years old now.
So, I wasn't sure it was gonna be able to keep up.
But when it came time to do the voice commands,
it actually performed better than all the other devices.
That's probably due to the fact
that it has a dual processor setup,
so it's got a processor dedicated
to just those voice commands
and then a second processor dedicated
to executing those commands
when it comes to streaming anyway.
So, if you're somebody who prefers to point and click
to access your content,
then there may not be a huge difference
between all of these devices.
However, if you are somebody
who uses a lot of voice commands
to start content or to open up different apps or whatever,
then the Fire TV Cube is the winner on this one.
So, let me know what you think.
Was this unexpected at all?
The Fire TV Cube really came out swinging.
So let me know what you think in the comments below.
And again, let me know if you have ideas
for what you would like me to test.
I've got my own, but I'd like to hear yours as well.
So, hit those comments.
Don't forget to like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video
or others that we do.
Thank you so much for watching, everybody.
I will see you Fridays at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time
for the live streams that we do here on this channel.
We do Q and As.
We do giveaways.
We do fun stuff.
I'd love to have you there.
Thanks for watching.