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The 4 Best Media Streaming Devices for Your TV
The easiest ways to add Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and more to any TV
We live in a golden age of streaming content with a near-endless supply of TV shows and movies available anytime. With services from Netflix and Disney+ to HBO Max and Hulu, there’s bound to be something on. The slow, buggy apps built into your TV probably aren’t the best way to watch all that content, though.
Thankfully, great stand-alone streaming devices are relatively inexpensive, and offer an easy way to make just about any TV with an HDMI port “smart.” Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K is the best option for most people thanks to its vast selection of services, fast menus, easy search and good remote. The Roku Ultra is a step up with slightly faster performance, while the Google Chromecast is the best at surfacing content you might not even know you want to watch, and the Apple TV 4K offers smooth navigation and strong integration with other Apple devices, at a higher price.
Scroll down for more details on how we came to our conclusions, including our criteria, testing and expert.
- Best overall streaming device
- Step-up streaming device for faster performance
- Best streaming device when you do not know what to watch
- Best streaming device for Apple fans
- Others you should know about
- How we picked
- What about privacy?
Best overall streaming device
Roku
Streaming Stick 4K
The tiny stick-style streamer is easy to use and service-agnositc, making it perfect for just about anyone.
Pros
- Streaming channel-agnostic
- Great voice search
- Good remote
Cons
- Slower than other options
- Roku interface is good, but others are arguably a little better
- More likely to sell your data
The Roku Streaming Stick 4K is all the media streamer most people will ever need. It has pretty much every streaming channel available, including the vast majority of mainstream offerings as well as a wide selection of more niche services. There are no restrictions on purchases like some streamers have, and there’s no proprietary lean toward one service or another. It’s easy to set up, easy to use and has an excellent rechargeable remote with a built-in headphone jack so you can watch TV without disturbing others. The Streaming Stick 4K is the device you’d want to give to parents or grandparents so they can start watching Netflix and Britbox with minimal tech support from you—I know because I’ve done exactly this—but it’s also powerful enough for heavy users.
Roku’s main menu has big friendly blocks with all your chosen streaming channels. You can move these blocks around so the ones you use the most are at the top. Even though Roku now offers its own content, you can bury or even delete their app just like any other. While the menu is easy to use, it’s not quite as slick and attractive as the Apple TV’s menus, or as content-forward as the Chromecast’s. The latter has an especially impressive, Google-esque ability to highlight movies or shows that it knows you’ll like. Roku’s own “What to Watch” sub menu just isn’t as good.
Roku doesn’t promote one streaming service over another, so you can always easily find what you want, and stream it from the service you prefer, with little hassle. If a movie or show is available on Amazon, Vudu and Netflix, the Streaming Stick 4K will show you all those options. Some other devices will show you their own company’s streaming platform first, and make you work to watch on other services. In some cases, they will only allow you to buy from that service. Roku has no such restrictions. Want to buy shows on Vudu instead of Amazon? No problem.
The included Voice Remote has big, soft, rubbery buttons that are well laid out. It’s easy to find the play/pause button by touch, and it’s just as easy to find the microphone button so you can search for a show by voice. This search works impressively well, showing you the show or movie and all the various places you can find it. For a more advanced remote with rechargeable batteries and a headphone jack so you can listen to your content privately, you can upgrade to the Voice Remote Pro.
While the Streaming Stick 4K is much faster and smoother than earlier versions, it’s not as fast or as smooth as Roku’s own Ultra and nowhere near as snappy as the Apple TV 4K. It’s not slow by any stretch, but having used them all back-to-back, we can say there’s a noticeable difference. Whether the slight improvement in speed for a 40% increase in cost is worth it is a decision you’ll have to make.
When you use media streaming devices, as when you use nearly all internet-connected electronics, your personal data will likely be gathered and sold so advertisers can target you with ads based on things like what shows you watch. Roku does more of this than others (as The Wall Street Journal newsroom reports, Roku “derives most of its revenue from advertising, not hardware sales”). You can opt out of a lot of this tracking, but not all of it. (See more in our section on privacy, below, or see Roku’s privacy policy.)
Step-up streaming device for faster performance
Roku
Ultra
This device combines all the benefits of a Roku with the fastest processor for the smoothest experience.
Pros
- Fast navigation and app launching
- Ethernet port, USB playback and Wi-Fi 6
Cons
- Minor improvement over the Stick 4K for a higher price
- Most of the additional features aren’t needed by most people
The Roku Ultra has everything we like about the Streaming Stick 4K, with a faster performance and a few additional features. It loads apps faster, movies and shows start more quickly and the overall experience just feels smoother. It’s not a huge difference, but if you value speed and are willing to pay a bit more to get it, you’ll be happy with the upgrade.
There are a few other features that are a step up over the Streaming Stick 4K, though they’re not crucial for most people. There’s an Ethernet port, in case your TV is far from your home’s Wi-Fi router or you otherwise just want a wired connection. The Ultra can play back content locally from a USB drive, such as a flash drive or external hard drive. It also has Wi-Fi 6, the newest and fastest standard, but most people likely don’t have a router that supports these speeds.
Unlike the “stick” style design of the Streaming Stick 4K that plugs directly into your TV, the Ultra is a small box that will most likely be set in or on an entertainment center. It comes with an HDMI cable for connecting to the TV. This design isn’t a major strike against it, but something to be aware of. The remote is identical.
Best streaming device when you do not know what to watch
Chromecast with Google TV (4K)
This lower-price dongle has an uncanny ability to recommend shows and movies and makes them easy to watch.
Pros
- Super-deft content recommendations
- Some Android/Google functionality not found on Roku
- Lower price
Cons
- Some restrictions on how you can rent/buy content
- Not as fast or smooth as the Roku Ultra or Apple TV 4K
- May collect a lot of your data
The Google Chromecast with Google TV (4K) is a dongle that runs the Google TV interface. Overall performance is about the same as the Roku Streaming Stick 4K; where it offers a potential benefit over Roku or even Apple is how content-forward the interface is. While the standard streaming channel icons are available, there are also specific tiles for TV shows and movies that Google thinks you might be interested in watching. It’s eerily accurate. Selecting a title shows you detailed info, and another button press seamlessly starts playback without the need to open an app. If you’re the type of person who is always wondering what to watch next, the Chromecast should be able to help by showing you what you might be interested in across multiple platforms, in contrast to the Roku, where you need to go to the specific app.
To describe it another way, Roku and Apple act more like a traditional TV experience: Choose a channel and go to it to watch something. The Chromecast knows your interests, so it shows you a variety of shows and movies it thinks you’ll like. If you already know what you want to watch and which service it’s on, it will take a few extra clicks to get there. It’s not much, but it’s an extra step, and basically the same process you’d go through to watch a show on a Roku or Apple TV.
There are some features that integrate well if you’re all-in with Google and Android. For instance, you can check your Nest security cameras on your TV through the Chromecast. You can easily display photos and videos from Google Photos from your phone on your TV with a single tap. If you’re a YouTube TV subscriber, content from channels you watch is integrated into the overall interface.
Search, as you might expect from Google, is good. You’ll be shown multiple places where you can stream or pay for the content you’re looking for. There are limitations on buying or renting content, however, which is the main issue with this device. For example, you have to use Google Pay to buy anything in the Vudu app, and you can’t purchase or rent any content from Amazon Prime Video (you can still stream from its library, though). If not being able to pay for content directly from the Prime Video app isn’t a big concern, and you often struggle finding something you’re interested in to watch, the Chromecast is a great alternative to Roku. There’s also an HD version of the Chromecast with Google TV for a lower price, but it’s worth spending a little more for the 4K version even if you don’t have a 4K TV. It will still work with your current TV and will work better with future TVs.
The reason Chromecast is so skilled at knowing what you want to watch is because Google collects data about you, and the more devices you interact with in the Google ecosystem, the more it knows. You can opt out of this on Chromecast, but you’ll likely lose the customized content recommendations or, at the very least, they’ll be less accurate. (See more in our privacy section, below. You can also read Google’s Chromecast privacy policy, and check what the company knows about you at myactivity.google.com.)
Best streaming device for Apple fans
Apple
Apple TV 4K (3rd Gen, Wi-Fi + Ethernet)
A slick and smooth streaming device that’s a delight to use and has extensive built-in Apple synergy.
Pros
- Extremely responsive
- Slick interface
- Lots of Apple-specific bonus features
- Collects less personal data
Cons
- Higher price
- Additional features not needed by most people
- Minimal benefit for non-Apple users
The Apple TV 4K takes the best and worst of Apple’s design decisions and puts them in a streaming device. It’s fast, the interface is great and it only gently leans toward Apple’s own Apple TV+ streaming service. But it’s priced higher than our other picks, and has several features only accessible to those with Apple devices such as iPhones, iPads and Macs. It also has features that go beyond being just a “media streamer,” which is fine, but beyond the focus of this guide.
The Apple TV’s main menu will look familiar to anyone who has used an Apple product in the last decade or so. Friendly, curved-corner icons balloon gently before you click on them. The relaxed colors of the menu all work together and feel like a single, cohesive product. It’s a stark contrast to the more simplistic, and very purple, Roku interface. Navigating around and launching apps is all exceptionally fast. It feels like a luxury product compared with the Roku Streaming Stick 4K.
And that’s because it is a luxury product. The Apple TV is three times the price of the Stick 4K, and 30% to 50% more than the Ultra. Beyond the more luxe look and feel, there’s not a lot that justifies the extra cost. There’s extensive built-in storage, but unless you’re downloading games from the App Store or Apple Arcade, most of that will go unused (this is a media streamer, after all; the point is you don’t have to store content).
There are two models available, one with 64 gigabytes of storage, and one with 128GB. While the extra storage isn’t necessary for most people, the more expensive model has several other features we think make it the better option. Like the Roku Ultra, it has a wired Ethernet connection. This helps if you want to keep it off your Wi-Fi network, or it’s too far from your Wi-Fi router. The 128GB model also has Thread networking support, a new standard that lets smart-home devices create their own mesh network so they can communicate separately from your home’s Wi-Fi. We see the $20 premium over the base model as a worthy upgrade to futureproof your streaming experience.
If you are an Apple user, there are several benefits to the Apple TV over the competition. Setup is easier, Siri is built-in, you can wirelessly stream content from your device to your TV and you can control Apple-compatible smart-home devices. In one particularly clever feature, you can use your iPhone’s camera and the Apple TV 4K to calibrate your TV. Unlike the Rokus, the Apple remote doesn’t let you physically connect headphones, but you can easily pair Apple headphones, including AirPods or many Beats products, for private listening. If you’re all-in on Apple, this is the logical pick as long as you don’t mind spending the money. If you’re on Android, or don’t care about the iOS features, the Roku Ultra is pretty close to the Apple TV 4K without the Apple tilt.
Apple reportedly collects far less data about you and your viewing habits compared with the other media streamers. Even better, you can choose on a per-app basis what the company collects. For more info, check out our section on privacy, below, or read Apple’s privacy policy.
Others you should know about
Roku has several other streaming devices, including the Express, which only supports 1080p video, and the Express 4K+, which lacks Dolby Vision HDR.
Amazon sells a number of streamers as part of its Fire TV line, and while they all support other streaming services, there’s a heavy focus on Prime Video content. If Prime isn’t your main streaming service, you’ll find yourself having to navigate around through the inferior interface, taking more steps to get to your shows and movies. Additionally, you can’t buy content from non-Amazon services such as Vudu. If Prime is your main streaming service, these devices slightly simplify the process by softly keeping you within the Amazon ecosystem. We didn’t test the Fire TV Stick or Fire TV Stick Lite because they support 1080p video and not 4K. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is, as its name suggests, a stick-style streamer that’s only a few dollars more than the Fire TV Stick 4K; if you’re big into Amazon, the Max is the model to get, but we think most people are better served by the more agnostic Roku Streaming Stick4K with its superior remote. There’s also the Amazon Fire TV Cube, a streaming device built into a smart speaker that makes it a sort of Amazon Alexa hub for your living room. Since it’s not primarily a streaming device, we didn’t consider it, but the streaming interface is largely the same as the 4K Max.
The NVIDIA Shield TV and Shield TV Pro offer features that go beyond the standard streaming device. Most notably, they’re a way to play console-quality games on your TV without a gaming console, via NVIDIA’s gaming streaming service GeForce Now. That goes beyond the scope of this article, but they’re worth considering if you use this service or want to. The Shields run on the older Android TV interface, which is passable and has all the main streaming services. Their only other streaming TV feature of note is the ability to upconvert, or increase the resolution of lower-quality content. However, all streaming devices and your TV do this automatically. So while the hardware in the Shield might do this process better, the difference will be minimal.
The TiVo Stream 4K is a streaming device that runs on the older Android TV interface. If you already use the TiVo service, this is a way to access your saved content on a TV that’s not connected to your main TiVo DVR. There isn’t, as of this writing, a TiVo app on the main media streamers that lets you do this. The Stream 4K also has streaming services like Netflix. If you’re a TiVo user, it’s worth checking out. Otherwise, one of the other options we recommend is a better choice.
The Sling AirTV Mini is another Android-based device that lets you access the Sling TV service. However, there’s a Sling app on Roku, Apple and Google that lets you do the same.
Both the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X/S and their immediate predecessors are perfectly acceptable streaming devices. Many people use them for this purpose. They’re not our top recommendations because they are, relative to dedicated streamers, slower to boot up and slower to navigate to your desired channels. However, if you already have one, or want to reduce gear clutter, these will work great.
How we picked
Trust us
I’ve been reviewing video products for two decades for many print publications and websites including CNET, Forbes and Sound & Vision magazine. I was the A/V editor of Wirecutter for five years, where I tested and reviewed countless TVs, projectors and other video products. I also spoke to Bill Budington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation about privacy concerns with the data collection done by media streaming devices.
We tested
There were some broad strokes that we considered essential for any media streamer:
- 4K resolution and HDR: Pretty much all TVs now have at least 4K, or Ultra HD, resolution. There’s no reason to get a 1080p HD streamer even if you have an older TV, since that 1080p will look far worse on any future set you buy and the price difference is negligible. Most new TVs have HDR, or high dynamic range, capability. This allows for an image with brighter highlights and greater colors. You need HDR content for it to work, which most streaming platforms provide. HDR compatibility was required.
- Access to all the major streaming services: For the most part, all brand name streaming devices give you access to the major services including Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and so on.
- No proprietary lean: Some devices are from companies that also have their own streaming platforms, including Amazon and Apple. Are these services prioritized over others? If those are your main services, that’s not an issue, but if you don’t use Amazon Prime Video, for example, having a device that always shows you Prime content first can be annoying.
- Speed: How easy is it to navigate around the interface? How quickly do apps launch? How quickly do shows and movies start when you select them? We considered all of these aspects in making our decisions.
With these factors in mind, we narrowed our search and began testing, first by connecting each finalist to our test TV and spending time (oh so much time) logging into services including Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix and Vudu. We navigated around the various apps and menus to get a feel for how the devices and their interfaces behaved. We also paid close attention to how easy the remote was to use, especially in the dark.
The video quality of brand name streaming devices will be almost entirely determined by the specific channel you’re watching. So, for instance, Netflix will look basically the same on a Roku as an Apple TV 4K. The usability of a streaming device is far more important than its theoretical picture quality differences.
One aspect we’ve mentioned throughout this piece is how certain devices have a “proprietary lean” while others are “platform-agnostic.” Take Amazon’s Fire TV lineup: Amazon has its own streaming service called Prime Video. If you search for something on a Fire TV device and it’s available on Prime, that’s what you’re going to see first. If you prefer watching on Prime, that’s fine. If you don’t, you’ll need to go through more steps to find that show or movie on the service you prefer. Other streaming devices, like Roku, show you all the places a title is available and you just choose the one you want. That’s one of the main reasons Roku is our overall pick.
What about privacy?
All these devices can collect and sell data about you and your specific viewing habits to advertisers. Your name and physical address aren’t being sold, but what you’re watching on your device and its general location may be. As reported in the Atlantic, this is one of the reasons why these devices, and smart TVs, are as inexpensive as they are. “The device can deliver information such as your viewing habits or the apps you install to its servers or third parties, and there’s little you can do about it,” says Bill Budington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital civil liberties group. “That’s why it is important to look at the privacy policies of the devices you buy.”
Of course, pretty much any interaction you have with the internet, be it via your phone, tablet or computer, has this issue. (If you’ve ever wondered why you see ads for the product or service you just searched for—or maybe even didn’t—this is why.)
How much data a streaming device tracks varies, and most devices let you opt out to some degree during setup or afterward. A 2019 study from Princeton University and University of Chicago that studied Roku and Amazon devices found that data tracking is “pervasive” on both platforms. Apple, meanwhile, lets you opt out of much of this personal data collection. Keep in mind that in most cases the service you’re using (see Netflix’s or Hulu’s privacy policies, for example) may also be tracking what you’re watching, too. For more info, CNET compiled a list of what each streaming device stores and sells (full disclosure, I’m a regular contributor at CNET, but I wasn’t involved with this story. Buy Side from WSJ also has a financial relationship with CNET’s parent company). You can check interpretations of the policies of individual products and services at this guide by the nonprofit Mozilla foundation, which owns the Firefox browser.
Our expert
- Bill Budington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil rights nonprofit, which is based in San Francisco