So I’ve been using Roku devices since their very first one, and one of the main uses these days is to stream my own media on Plex. I’ve been pretty slavish about using the devices from Roku that supported wired ethernet instead of relying on WiFi because I don’t want to deal with buffering or lag, and just didn’t have confidence in WiFi (despite having WiFi-6). Other streaming devices (which shall remain nameless) with WiFi-only connection have disappointed me.

My previous Roku died over the holidays and so I took a chance (and a gift card) to try out this Roku 4k stick. I’m glad I did.

First off, I needn’t have worried about the WiFi not being up to streaming 4k video from my server. It handles it just fine. It’s a good experience as long as you have a newer router that supports WiFi-6.

Second, setup was amazingly easy. They’ve streamlined the whole process, and any apps you were already using on another Roku device are instantly logged in and ready to go. New big-name apps are almost as easy, just requiring a QR code scan and a quick login to the app on your phone.

My biggest complaint is that something about this Roku really pumps up the saturation in some of my own home-edited videos. I can’t figure out which setting is making that a thing, but it’s clearly something to do with the way my video editing app saves the video. Roku just isn’t playing nice with it, but that’s not on Roku; that’s in the editor. Everything else, however, looks incredibly good.

The interface is snappy, and honestly I was shocked that this stick is faster to load and navigate than my previous Roku Ultra LT.

I can think of only one negative point to the stick, and that is that it only works with the special remote it comes with, which I believe is a sort of WiFi direct connection. It won’t support an IR remote nor a Bluetooth one, rendering my universal remote useless for the Roku streaming stick 4k. It also won’t work with most of the stack of previous model Roku remotes I own. And of course, as with every Roku remote, the four quick-launch buttons are a pain in the neck. I only subscribe to one of the services in them, and will likely never subscribe to the others, which means accidentally pressing them is a bit of an obnoxious experience. I understand they’re sponsored and Roku makes money putting them on their remotes and making them permanent, but they could •at least• add two more buttons in there that are fully programmable to access the favorites we actually do subscribe to.

The voice search function is handy, but sometimes the screen will prompt you to use the voice search when the normal manual actions are easier and more direct. I don’t really need to press the voice button and say “launch YouTube” when I can just press the OK button on the first app in my list (YouTube) and it launches. However, for searching for a specific movie or show, it’s a great feature. It’s also nice for people who hate typing on screen using directional buttons, as you can speak letter-by-letter to enter email addresses and passwords if need be.

Bottom line: I’m impressed. Except for a few minor caveats, it’s a great streaming device that is responsive, intuitive, and provides fantastic video and audio quality, even up to Dolby Atmos in a 4k stream.

Five stars.

I’ve had experience with a number of devices, and this one is my favorite.

My priorities:
Fast streaming/minimal lag
Easy to navigate
Access to shows of interest
Ability to preview as i fast forward or rewind

Apple TV:
Expensive
Can’t preview or issues with some of the apps that was frustrating. it wanted to rewind or fast foward instead of clicking to the screen section you wanted with a preview. This really killed the device for me.
Easy to overshoot if you used the finger swipe option to quickly move fast-forward or rewind.
User interface, for the most part is decent and fast except for how navigates while playing.

Fire TV
Built to sell products instead of show shows, laggy, and for whatever reason I hated interacting with this device. Not being able to easily access the content I wanted due to poor organization really rubbed me the wrong way.
Pro – ability to bootleg shows, but not something I’m into and I only checked this out during the first weeks of covid.
I want to emphasize the lag issues. This is built as cheap as possible to minimally meet requirements to function and it shows.

Roku
So, now that I have the other devices out of the way, and ignore my LG streaming which is my favorite, I’ll speak to this device and why it has my vote.

This device is surprisingly fast. I didn’t expect a device that was almost as responsive as my apple TV and LG TV. This is slightly slower but barely and no lag which is the most critical thing for me.
We got this for the British Bake-off access which led to an unexpected cool thing. The discovery of the free shows, if you don’t absolutely hate commercials. For the complete British Bake-off experience, we mute the commercials. So, the additional channels that Roku provides has made it continue to be useful.
Roku allows a preview of channels as I fast forward through it.
Roku does have an issues with some apps where I need to log out and go back in so the remote works correctly. I’m not sure if that’s a bad app issue or the device but a quick back and in fixes. The apple device has never crashed or become buggy on me. The Firestick has, but it’s cheap.
The price is significantly cheaper than apple making the Roku a no brainer.
Unlike the apple TV, which requires counter space, this plugs into the back of the TV and is hidden away.

Now, an issue I had when I first turned on is that my remote was not communicating with the device. I was extremely annoyed as this was an early Christmas present for my wife, and I wanted it to function within a certain time window so a return and replace would have ruined it. The device showed the remotes power but didn’t communicate. After resetting the device, the remote works fine now. If you run into an issue, try resetting the device.

4k streaming? It’s okay. I didn’t do a side by side. It has 4k.

Navigation? It’s simple enough but could be made better. I thought the last version of the Fire TV was worse. The apple TV does shine in this area on most apps I played with. My biggest gripe with navigation in Roku is that marking something as favorite and then LOCATING the favorites from Roku’s channels and free shows, was not intuitive. I did eventually find my favorites, but that was frustrating. Additionally, the channel/app/inventory searching involves clicking to the right instead of down.

So, speed is slightly less than Apple, but barely. Navigation is slightly less easy based on the layout vs apple, and i think it’s better than the Fire the last time I used that thing. The Roku has a nice access to misc. free channels. Its price is a quarter of Apple. The fire TV? I don’t consider these two in the same league.

So, if you’re picking up a streaming device, I’d recommend the Roku over the other devices (except the LG TV native streaming app which is the best I’ve used). Performance and price are good. The only reason to avoid is if it doesn’t have access to what you want to watch. For me, it filled in the gaps and provided baking shows that we otherwise didn’t have access to.