Roku Streaming Stick Plus Review: The Ultimate 4K Streaming Stick
Our Verdict
The Roku Streaming Stick Plus is just the most complete 4K HDR streaming device yous can go for the price.
For
- Cheap
- Full 4K HDR capabilities
- Huge app pick
- Customizable interface
Confronting
- Remote lacks an audio jack
- Search could be deeper
Tom's Guide Verdict
The Roku Streaming Stick Plus is merely the most complete 4K HDR streaming device you tin can become for the price.
Pros
- +
Inexpensive
- +
Full 4K HDR capabilities
- +
Huge app option
- +
Customizable interface
Cons
- -
Remote lacks an audio jack
- -
Search could be deeper
Finding the perfect streaming device for a 4K HDR Idiot box isn't easy. Up until recently, the options have been too big, too clunky or just too expensive. Enter the Roku Streaming Stick Plus: a 4K HDR streaming stick that boasts a staggering variety of channels, an enormous wireless range, a slick interface, a robust search feature, a comfortable remote and a handy mobile app — and retails for a absurd $70.
In spite of a few quibbles about the remote control and some dated navigational issues, the Roku Streaming Stick+ is merely the almost complete 4K HDR streaming device yous can get for the cost. Folks with 1080p TVs don't demand it; videophiles with huge content libraries may want something a petty more than robust. For everyone else, the Roku Streaming Stick+ is the all-time streaming device, as it's hard to imagine a ameliorate marriage of functionality and affordability.
Editor's note: In October 2021, Roku has replaced this device with two new options that offer Dolby Vision, and a better remote for $20 more. Check out our Roku Streaming Stick 4K review and Roku Streaming Stick 4K Plus review to learn more.
Roku Streaming Stick Plus review: Price and release date
The Roku Streaming Stick Plus starts at $49 on Amazon, where information technology'southward currently on sale for $45.
The Roku Streaming Stick Plus came out on October twenty, 2019.
Roku Streaming Stick Plus specs
Video:4K, HDR, HDR10
Sound: DTS Digital Surround, Dolby audio via HDMI laissez passer through
Processor: Quad-core CPU
Dimensions: 3.7 x 0.eight 10 0.five inches
In the box: Roku Streaming Stick Plus, Voice remote, USB power cable with long-range wireless receiver, 2x AAA batteries,
Smart assistant support:Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant
Roku Streaming Stick Plus review: Design
If yous're familiar with Roku's commencement garish regal stick, or its 2d squat blackness stick, you lot may exist surprised to learn that the Roku Streaming Stick+ doesn't resemble either 1 very much. The device is long, shiny and vaguely cylindrical, like a cigarette designed for a futuristic android. It'southward a bit longer than previous devices, though, which means it may stick out a fleck if your HDMI port is right nearly the border of your Tv.
The Roku Streaming Stick+ can also have some pretty long cables attached to it. The only port is for a mini USB connection, which powers the device. While any cord volition work, the included string comes with an attachment that amplifies wireless signals. Even with the addition of the amplifier, the Roku Streaming Stick+ can describe USB power straight from a Telly, but it includes an extension cord and a power adapter on the off take a chance that yours doesn't work. (My v-year-old 1080p Samsung worked merely fine; I imagine your country-of-the-fine art 4K behemoth will as well.)
My only complaint is an artful one. Due to the length of the cords, y'all may have to either tape them downward or suffer some unsightly tangles off to the side of your pristine Television receiver. It's hardly a deal billow, but Goggle box is an inherently visual medium; any asymmetry so close to the screen can indeed be distracting.
Roku Streaming Stick Plus review: Interface
Save for the Apple Goggle box, no other streaming player even comes close to Roku's make clean, elementary, streamlined interface. Your domicile screen shows you the apps you've downloaded. You click on an app and watch whatever yous came to watch. That'south it. If y'all're not watching a show or film xxx seconds subsequently booting up the device, it's probably because you're still deciding what to watch.
Roku also remains 1 of the few companies that allows users to organize apps whatsoever way they see fit — up to a signal. You tin can organize your apps whatsoever way yous like on the habitation screen, putting favorites front and center, and relegating less useful ones further down the list. Roku doesn't favor any channels, every bit the Apple Television receiver and Amazon Burn down Tv exercise, so whether your favorite app is Netflix or that channel that shows nothing only goats, you'll always have quick access to it.
Yet, at this phase of the game, the Roku interface is missing something large: the ability to sort apps into folders. There are more than 5,000 channels bachelor on Roku, and even if yous download only xx or and then, having them in convenient groups could salvage a lot of needless clicking.
In addition to whatsoever apps yous download, you lot can also scroll through a menu that shows you My Feed (where you can monitor TV shows and movies for price drops), the FandangoNow store (Roku's proprietary movie and Goggle box shop), curated news from AOL and the system settings. None of these is strictly necessary, and you tin hide some of them if they're taking up room.
- Check out our Roku Ultra LT review
Roku Streaming Stick Plus review: Search
Roku has connected to ameliorate and refine its search over the last few years, at present including hundreds of services in its queries. While the company does not provide an exact list of partners, information technology trawls Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Vudu, CBS All Access and Amazon Video, among others. If yous can't discover what you're looking for with the Roku search, there'south a good chance y'all can't stream it at all.
On the other manus, Roku'south voice-search parameters are still a little stodgy, compared to the elegant interpretations of Apple TV'due south Siri. While Siri can search for something every bit sophisticated as "the best 4K movies starring Hugh Jackman," the Roku Streaming Stick+ tin't quite parse sophisticated sentiments like those. You're best off sticking to the proper names of actors, directors, Telly shows or movies — although you can at least contain genres now. "Patrick Stewart science-fiction movies" would work; "I want to see '80s sci-fi movies with Patrick Stewart" would not requite y'all Dune.
Roku Streaming Stick Plus review: Remote
Roku'south remotes have gotten much better over the years, evolving from bulky, cheap-looking peripherals to slim, elegant accessories. The Roku Streaming Stick+'s remote boasts a comfy matte finish and a useful assortment of buttons.
Yous've got back, home, a D-pad, confirm, quick rewind, voice search, options, rewind, play/pause and fast-forrad. So far, and then good. Y'all've also got four dedicated buttons for Netflix, Hulu, Sling TV and PlayStation Vue. I don't think these buttons are a great idea, particularly since not everyone uses the same four apps, and services tend to fall in and out of favor over time. It'd be a much better thought to utilise those 4 buttons to let users plan their own favorite apps.
The new features in the remote are the volume and power buttons, which can command — attempt to incorporate your shock hither — the volume and ability on your Tv. Information technology's not very exciting, granted, but information technology's incredibly useful. The only real drawback is that the remote lacks a private listening jack, as the remote on the Roku Ultra has. You lot could buy the Ultra remote separately, or listen privately with the mobile app, simply it would have been a minor change with major, positive ramifications.
Roku Streaming Stick Plus review: Content and apps
The Roku platform boasts more than than 5,000 apps, ranging from TV and movies, to music, to fitness, to shopping, to games. (Simply don't bother with the games. Seriously. There's Tetris, and admittedly nothing else worth your time.)
While almost of the apps are, charitably speaking, likewise niche to be worth your time (and, uncharitably speaking, bottom-of-the-butt scrapings that barely qualify as "content"), the of import thing is that Roku has the widest diverseness of apps you'll actually desire to employ compared to any other streaming platform.
Having Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime number alone puts it ahead of some of its biggest competitors — to say cipher of having Sling Television set, DirecTV Now, PlayStation Vue, Spotify, Pandora and YouTube. Bated from iTunes (which volition never come to Roku) and YouTube TV (which may come to Roku), it's hard to think of anything that Roku doesn't offer.
It's as well worth pointing out that Roku'south mobile app works as both a handy remote-control replacement as well as a uncomplicated fashion to broadcast your own videos, music and photos to a TV screen. You don't have to use it — Roku'due south congenital-in media player will do the same affair if you know how to gear up a media server — but it'due south pretty convenient, peculiarly for the less tech-savvy users out there.
The simply major downside of the Roku Streaming Stick+ compared to, say, the Roku Ultra is that at that place are no extra ports for USB drives or microSD cards. As such, if you accept your own content, you'll have to stream information technology through Plex, PlayOn or Roku's ain media player. I consider this a fair merchandise-off for the smaller size and cheaper cost, but your mileage may vary.
Roku Streaming Stick Plus review: Performance
Gauging streaming performance is e'er difficult, considering how fast your content loads and buffers is dependent on about a one thousand factors — the service yous're using, your wireless connection, the quality and compression algorithms of whatever you're watching, the number of devices on your home network, how many other people are using the Internet in your area, and then along — that have zippo to do with the streaming device you're using.
Still, from Roku's ain claims, we can determine that the Streaming Stick+ is considerably more than powerful than the company's 1080p stick, but not quite as powerful every bit the Roku Ultra box. I was able to play 4K HDR content without issue on a diverseness of apps, including Amazon Video and YouTube. (Oddly plenty, I wasn't able to on Vudu — simply this appears to be an issue with the app, not with the Roku itself.)
Content stabilized at 1080p within 5 seconds or and so on a standard home Wi-Fi network, while reaching 4K resolutions on an function Wi-Fi network took about 10 or fifteen seconds. Again, this may or may not be representative of what the Roku could practise in your home, only if your connection is upward to the job of delivering 4K HDR content, so is the Streaming Stick+.
The wireless amplifier is also hard to exam, although Roku claims that it tin can enhance the constructive range of the device up to fourfold. In crowded NYC apartments and offices, it seemed to piece of work as well as any other streaming device, but if you live in a big house out in the boonies, in that location's a good chance that you tin set it up far away from your router and still go a potent signal.
Roku Streaming Stick Plus review: Bottom line
With the Streaming Stick+, Roku has taken the best features of its previous products, refined them to be equally user-friendly as possible and put them all together in an cheap package. That may not sound difficult, but given that other 4K HDR devices are either short on features (like the Google Chromecast Ultra) or too expensive for their own good (like the Apple Television set 4K), it's a surprisingly neat trick.
The Roku Streaming Stick+'due south remote could have used an sound port. Watching your own content requires a media server. The search could stand to expand its depth in addition to its breadth. Across that, I can't find many faults with the device. If you lot have a 4K HDR Television and want the widest variety of things to watch, without shelling out $100 or more, the Roku Streaming Stick+ is simply the best way to do information technology.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/roku-streaming-stick-plus,review-4751.html
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