Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsNot perfect but we find them to be the best budget choice
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2021
I have really one complaint, put more than one adhesive strip in the box! For those unfamiliar the adhesive strip is the item in the center of my included picture. It attaches the unit to the TV since these do not use Bluetooth for the remotes. There should be at least two of these included. You can get 3M Command adhesive strips to use, they have black ones now, but this should have an extra for a variety of reasons. In my case the first of these we bought we found that it would be preferable it if were positioned differently.
We have a lot of experience with streaming boxes/sticks, we've tried Roku, FireTV, Tivo Stream 4k (returned due to HDR issues and I really wanted to love this one but that problem killed it for me) and AppleTV units. The AppleTV (2011) was a second gen version and I liked it fine but it's outdated now although still functional and used for playing music with Airplay. The newer ones are not budget friendly, like everything Apple they overvalue their products. I thought I'd try out a FireTV stick and that was underpowered/slow, a lot of irritations and the remote devours batteries far faster than any remote I've ever had. As a comparison, the original button battery on the AppleTV only just died but two AAAs in the FireTV remote will last about 6 months. No excuse for that, it soured me on the FireTV products along with there is very little customization you can do. A Roku 2 XS (2011) was actually the first stream box we had and while in some ways not as slick as the AppleTV or even the FireTV stick it didn't really disappoint so I went back to Roku to replace the outdated 2 XS. Since the TV it was for is only 1080p I took a chance on a Roku Express. Same old Roku UI but this budget version was far faster than the old 2 XS it replaced. Only dislike was the remote was now infrared (line of sight) instead of Bluetooth. It works great with our aging 1080p TV. That's where my gripe about the adhesive strips comes in, just don't be so cheap and include at least 2.
Now we needed one for a 4k TV we have that is a couple years old but does not have apps available for some services we want to use. Being quite happy with the least expensive Roku I decided to give this a shot as the least expensive 4k and HDR capable Roku. The only real drawback again is the infrared remote which requires the unit be in the line of sight for use. I'm not crazy about mounting these to the bezel of the TV but it's not that big of a deal, until you want to move it. So far this one is not attached to a TV, it's floating between two depending on need. The interface is fast and intuitive (so are customizations) and I have no streaming issues. Very little to complain about but I'd like to see the UI brought up to 2021, it looks just about like it did 10 years ago on our first Roku.
