Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2020
I truly have mixed feelings about this device...
These new notebooks and tablets, are made with such a thin bezel design, that they engineer themselves out from having any HDMI ports! We live in a new age of wireless, I guess everybody hates cords now days. This forces us to buy products like this one, so that we can screencast. Again, tell me whats so wrong with an HDMI cable? My old tablet had one, worked fine, is wireless casting really that much better? Lets find out!
So I got a new Dragon Touch Max 10 tablet, naturally it don't come with an HDMI port, figures. So I hooked up this Google Chromecast device to my 1080P IPS 24" monitor. The device tells you on screen to download the Google Home app on your device and to follow the instructions to set it up. While it was technically easy to setup, following the instructions, the process took way longer then I expected.
If you took one look at that little device, you would think its not a computer, but you would be wrong. There is a little computer in there, and what is a common thing that all computers like to do? Thats right, install updates. So guess why the process took twice as long as it should? Yep, cause it needed updated. So once that was all done, took me a little bit to learn how to screencast this thing.
I was able to screencast Youtube, and Netflix with much success, it loads up to full resolution on screen, looks awesome on my IPS display! Occasionally however, I would notice a slight framerate issue from time to time. More on that later. And then I went into the Google Home app in order to mirror cast my tablet so that everything casts. Well, there is first real bit where I am disappointed.
When mirror casting, it does not fill up my 1080P monitor. Its more then likely serving the tablet display's resolution, which is a 1920 *1200 16/10 ratio. Using Droid Info, I discovered the tablet is operating at a refresh rate of 48-herts frequency for display, instead of the typical 60-herts that is used in the US. Since there is no display options to change for screen casting resolutions and refresh rate, I am not able to fix that issue.
When playing games, I noticed that the occasional framerate issue I talked about, became total lag, and the bitrate dropped terribly, but this was not the Chromcast devices fault. Turns out, this was my tablets fault! I was connected to my WIFI using the 2.4GHZ frequency, the best signal performance I was getting about 8 feet from my router in direct line of sight, was -30DB. Turns out, that is not enough performance to screencast properly!
The good news however, is my tablet is also capable of connecting to my routers 5GHZ protocal. What a game changer that was, switching over to 5GHZ! All the sudden my tablets WIFI performance increased exponentially, and my WIFI performance went off the scale. As soon as I switched over to 5GHZ, all the sudden the Chromecast device was operating better with smooth as glass framerate in video casting, and smoother framerate in gaming as well.
The amount of horse power in your device matters too. The more better your mobile device can perform, the better the Chromecast will perform. My new tablet runs a 1.6GHZ Octa core CPU with 3GB RAM, so its no slouch. However, higher end Samsung models and Apple model devices, will more then likely perform better with the Chromecast device, due to more horse power in performance, and in higher resolution and refresh rates.
When your not screen casting to the Chromecast, then the Chromecast goes into slideshow mode, where it rotates to images from Google, at a time interval that you can set. And without a doubt, I have seen some of the most incredible images displayed, over the Google Chromecast, as a standbye screensaver solution! However, another bad thing about this device, is it will restart without warning, by its own choosing, for reasons unknown.
I figured that I would spend less money and get the 3rd generation model, as the monitor is only 1080P to begin with. But, I can't help but to think, that I would have probably gotten a better experience with screencasting, if I had bought the Ultra model, even though my screen is not 4K. If your on a budget, this 3rd generation model is most certainly an option. However, if you can afford to spend more, go for the Ultra.
The Chromecast device also gets very warm, even when not actively screencasting. If your not interested in the slideshow standbye mode when not in use, I would just disconnect the power to the device, to save on your power bill. Also, if your device has less then my devices SPECS for performance, you can forget about wireless screencasting. But you will be better off with a device that exceeds mines SPECS. 4 out of 5 stars!
