Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss keeping connections going during the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple banning coronavirus-related games and apps, smartwatches and the virus, and more.

Steve in Lake Villa, Illinois listens to the Podcasts and is calling via the App and asked: “I have a Roku Ultra, I have some Roku Sticks, I’ve tried Google Chrome. I haven’t tried the Amazon Fire Stick. Which player do you prefer? Roku, Fire Stick, Chromecast, Apple TV? Just want my biggest bang for my buck. The Roku seemed to do that, but I’m not sure anymore. I like trying different things.”

Steve, the Roku still probably is the best bang for your buck. Roku are pretty inexpensive, they come with a great number of streaming sources, and they have some nice features like the headphone jack in the remotes.

Both the Amazon Fire sticks and Apple TV, the two options you haven’t tried, will both give you a relatively similar experience to the Roku in that they are more centered around apps that act as channels as opposed to Google’s casting model.

Since you like to try different things, a FireTV stick seems like the obvious next one to try, they’re cheap, they include some Alexa functionality, and they’re generally ok. You may find them clunkier than what you’re used to, but they’re not bad by any means. The FireTV Sticks are MY device of choice, and I have one on all the TVs in my house, but I’m also a Prime member, and being a native Amazon device, they work the best with Prime content in my opinion.

Apple TVs are great if you’re already invested in the Apple ecosystem, they play nice with all of Apple’s products, but they are very expensive compared to pretty much any other system and since what you’re paying for is an access point to external streaming services more than anything else, the price difference may be hard to justify unless it’s the system you specifically want to buy.

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