Which one is better Google chromecast or Amazon Fire Stick?

Before we pit the Chromecast with Google TV against the Amazon Fire TV Stick, let’s be honest. The choice of media streaming devices hungry for your TV’s HDMI ports is positively intimidating. In fact, maybe don’t tell your TV as it might make it feel awkward. It’s important to remember though that while streaming sticks come in all shapes and sizes, their main goal is to make your life easier when it comes to watching your favourite services. 

As smart as today's TVs are, your model might be missing a key streaming service or feature you really want, or you might find that a budget TV is more sluggish than you like, especially if it's not brand new. A streaming stick or one of the best Chromecast devices could be just what you need to solve the problem. There’s even Alexa or Google Voice Assistant for when you can’t be bothered scrolling that definitely makes it worth adding to your remote control collection. 

Chromecast with Google TV doesn't exactly have a catchy name but it was important for Google to specify exactly what this device does differently. Where previously a Chromecast was a dongle used exclusively to stream from your Android devices, the Chromecast with Google TV adds a suite of apps where you can access movies and TV directly. This is a big upgrade. 

On the other hand, the  2021 Amazon Fire TV Stick is the not-so-awkward middle child of Amazon’s streaming family. It has full Alexa control, unlike the Lite version, but doesn’t support 4K like the more expensive, imaginatively titled Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K. So let’s compare the Chromecast with Google TV with the Amazon Fire TV Stick to find out which one is right for you.

(Image credit: Google)

Chromecast with Google TV vs Amazon Fire TV Stick: Features  

First off, the all-important features of both streaming sticks. Both devices consist of two main separate parts. A dongle that disappears behind your TV into an HDMI slot and a battery-powered remote control. Both will need to draw power in addition, from a USB port or from the wall. 

While the Amazon Fire TV Stick comes in a standard black, you can pick up Google’s offering in three different colours. What that choice of white, blue or pink – sorry, snow, sky, or sunrise – means is that at least your remote will stand out on a coffee table of predominantly black tech. As tempting as it is though, let’s not decide who wins based purely on the colours on offer. 

A potential dealbreaker here is the lack of 4K in the Amazon Fire TV Stick. If you have a 4K TV and want to make the most of it, the Chromecast with Google TV would be an easy choice as it deals spectacularly well with 4K imagery. As we say in our Chromecast with Google TV review: “Given the best 4K HDR stuff to work with, the Chromecast with Google TV turns in an authentically impressive performance. Dolby Vision-assisted images are crisp and detailed, with plenty of dark-tone information available and contrasts handled well. Lighting is convincing, the colour palette is extensive and there’s decent three-dimensionality to images too.” You’d have to go up to the slightly more expensive Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K for Ultra HD visuals from Amazon's products.

(Image credit: Amazon)

A big sell for both here is the fact that they work with their respective digital assistants. The Chromecast with Google TV lets you ask Google Assistant for funny films or certain apps while Alexa is ready and waiting to help on the Amazon Fire TV Stick. Handily, as we note in our Amazon Fire TV stick review, Alexa has her full functionality here so if you use the Amazon ecosystem, she’ll be equally happy fast forwarding through ads as turning on and off your smart bulbs or ordering takeaway. Not to be outdone, Google Assistant also has full functionality for your Google Home so if you’re set up that way, you can control all of your connected products. 

In terms of mirroring content from your phone, Android owners will find it much easier to connect to both the Chromecast with Google TV and the Fire TV Stick. This is more challenging from iPhones depending on the app you’re using (many do support Casting, but it's not built into the system). If streaming from iPhone to TV is your main goal, we’d suggest the (more expensive) Apple TV 4K.   

(Image credit: Google)

Chromecast with Google TV vs Amazon Fire TV Stick: App support 

If you spend all of your time watching one particular streaming service, you’re going to want to make sure that your streaming stick can support that app. It’s always vital to check as there have been some inexplicable exclusions over the years. 

For instance, on release, the Chromecast with Google TV didn’t have the Apple TV app, which has now been remedied. All you need to do is ask Google Assistant to open Apple TV and you can get back to watching Ted Lasso as planned. The Amazon Fire TV Stick has always had Apple TV ready to go, so don’t panic. 

Other than the UK's Now TV which is missing from the Chromecast with Google TV, both devices have the majority of the heavy hitters and aim to make it as easy as possible to give you a personalised collection of media. The Amazon Fire TV Stick has Prime, Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Music as direct buttons on its remote, and the Chromecast with Google TV has quick shortcuts for just YouTube and Netflix. 

Chromecast with Google TV vs Amazon Fire TV Stick: Price and conclusion 

At £59.99/$50.99, the Chromecast with Google TV is a brilliant value 4K streaming stick. Especially so if you’re a part of the Google ecosystem and can make the most of Google Home and Android connectivity. 

The Amazon Fire TV Stick on the other hand is significantly cheaper at £39.99/$39.99 and is a tremendous all round package. Again, this also makes perfect sense if your house is full of Alexa-based tech and you don’t mind plugging in the device itself. You could also always upgrade to the 4K version for an extra £10/$10 if you’ve got a 4K TV to make the most of. 

The choice then is very much dependent on where you’ve invested most but both offer an excellent suite of features to give you easy access to your favourite streaming services.  

We've overhauled our guide to the best streaming sticks to account for the new devices and OS updates launched by Amazon, Roku, and Google since our initial comparison in January 2021. We've also added a section covering the hardware differences between the major players in the category.

Most of us have a short list of requirements for a video streaming device. We just want something that easily delivers content worth watching and works with all the other devices in our living rooms without friction.

In most cases, a good streaming stick will do the trick. There are some reasons why someone would want to pay for a pricier set-top box: the Apple TV 4K doesn't stuff ads on its home screen, for instance, while a device like Nvidia's Shield TV Pro gives you more ports for local media streaming and enough power for gaming. Most people, though, don't need to spend more than about $50 on a streaming device to get an enjoyable, and oftentimes superior, experience. Google, Amazon, and Roku, three of the biggest names in the space, all offer useful and competitive options around this price point.

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Google's Chromecast hardware hasn't changed since its September 2020 release. In our 2021 comparison, it handily beat both Roku's and Amazon's offerings when it came to search and serving up useful content suggestions. Google's interface looked better, too, and the stick was easier to operate in just about every way. In other words, Roku and Amazon had a lot of ground to make up for in their latest OS updates. Below, we've taken a new look at how each of the major players' main streaming sticks now compare.

Table of Contents

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The short version

• Google's Chromecast with Google TV is still the best streaming stick you can get for $50. It has wide-ranging compatibility across apps, platforms, and devices, speedy performance, a simple and sensibly laid-out remote, and both Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos support. With a price tag that's a third of the cost of an Apple TV, it even gives Apple's streaming box a run for its money. It beats Roku and Fire TV devices with a more polished and effective user interface that expertly serves up content you'll enjoy watching.
• Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K Max isn't hard to use, but compared to the Chromecast, it makes finding quality content more of a chore. It can still come off as a device designed to get you watching Prime Video. You can hop over to Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, and others to find a specific program, but if you're just browsing through the UI looking for something to watch, you'll usually get nudged toward Amazon's video-streaming service. Prime Video does have a large library of movies, but this setup can leave you with limited, subpar options for finding new content. That said, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max is still fast, has all the major apps, and supports useful features like Dolby Vision HDR.
• The Roku Streaming Stick 4K doesn't suffer as much from a biased user interface as the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, but that's mostly because its UI is lackluster. It's not built to browse—or at least not very well. A Roku device gives you a basic grid of apps on its home screen, and that's about it, so it's most useful if you know exactly what you want to watch before turning it on. Some may prefer this no-nonsense approach, and the Streaming Stick 4K still has all the major streaming services and useful tricks like AirPlay 2 support, Dolby Vision HDR, and screen mirroring across Windows and Android. But if you suffer from the ever-threatening existential crisis of what to watch next, Roku's OS can fall flat.

Enlarge / The Chromecast with Google TV. It comes in colors.

Hardware

We're looking at three plug-in streaming sticks with remote controls that are nearly the same size as the sticks themselves. As mentioned, Roku and Amazon have both tweaked their hardware a bit from last year. Amazon has promoted the Fire TV Stick 4K Max's upgraded GPU as a way to provide a better experience with the company's Luna cloud gaming platform, but even beyond that, it keeps things zipping along quickly while you navigate the UI and look for something to watch. The $55 Fire TV 4K Max also has an updated remote that adds four shortcut buttons for Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu. It looks similar to what Roku remotes have had for years.

Speaking of Roku's remote, the $50 Streaming Stick 4K has Roku's more basic remote that lacks hands-free voice controls, a remote-finding siren, two programmable shortcut buttons, a rechargeable battery, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack for private listening. It still has voice controls you activate via a button press. The "plus" version of the Streaming Stick 4K costs nearly double the price at $70, and it simply swaps the remote for a Voice Remote Pro, bringing back all those features.

Roku also offers the Express 4K+ for an MSRP of $40. This device comes with the same remote as the Streaming Stick 4K and performs about as well, but its mini-dongle design doesn't plug directly into a TV and lacks Dolby Vision HDR. Roku also says it doesn't offer the same longer-range MIMO Wi-Fi. (It can work with an optional Ethernet adapter if needed, though.) If you must buy a Roku, we think more people will be happier paying a little bit extra for the Streaming Stick 4K—both devices are frequently on sale anyway. But if you have strong Wi-Fi at home and just want to pay as little as possible, the Express 4K+ is an option.

The Chromecast remains the same since its launch in late 2020. Rumors recently started to circulate about a possible update or lower-tier Chromecast device, but if you need a streamer today, the current hardware has largely held up fine. A small bump in speed couldn't hurt, but it's not slow, and the remote remains intuitive and stocked with the essential controls. Sadly, though, we've noticed that the buttons on the baby-blue remote have started to yellow after a year of use. Unlike the Fire TV Stick 4K and Roku Streaming Stick 4K, the Chromecast can't run off your TV's USB port; it must be connected to a wall outlet. That's not always the ideal way to power streaming devices like these, though. And while this won't be a big deal to most, it's also worth noting that the Chromecast's puck-like design is a little less compact than the Fire TV Stick 4K or Streaming Stick 4K, which have more traditional "stick" shapes that don't hang as far out from the TV.

The Chromecast and Fire TV Stick 4K Max both have 8GB of storage, while Roku comes with 4GB. This isn't a massive concern for devices meant to stream content rather than store it, but it could present an issue down the road if you're downloading a large amount of apps or games. For the casual streaming that this class of device is built for, though, most people shouldn't have any problems.

In terms of real-world performance, apps on each stick generally took about the same amount of time to fully launch, typically in the 10-second range. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max did launch into Amazon's own Prime Video service much quicker than other apps, though, at around six seconds. On the whole, performance doesn't vary significantly between the Chromecast, Fire TV Stick 4K Max and Streaming Stick 4K: each isn't quite as brawny as higher-end boxes like the Nvidia Shield TV or Apple TV 4K, but they should all be plenty snappy for most people most of the time. The main differences here lie in each player's interface and software experience, so that's where the bulk of our comparison is focused.

Enlarge / The Google Chromecast's home screen is well-spaced and aesthetically pleasing, a theme that continues throughout the UI.

Corey Gaskin

Setup

All three of these streaming sticks have a similar setup process. Each walks you through downloading and/or discovering your preferred services and linking up the streaming sticks to control your TV. There’s no fuss when it comes to the latter; all our contenders easily synced up with my TV’s volume and power controls. The Chromecast, however, is the only one that can control its volume separately from your speakers. That's a game-changer for me, as I use an older, wired external speaker that can't be paired to these remotes.

As for setting up your services on the Fire TV Stick and Roku Streaming Stick 4K, it’s the same rigmarole you’d expect: typing in emails and passwords with a directional pad, an onerous task that the Chromecast circumvents. With the help of the Google Home app and Face ID on my iPhone, I was logged in to my accounts quickly on the Chromecast, and I didn’t have to type a thing on my phone—Wi-Fi passwords, account logins, or otherwise. The Google Home app pulled all of my relevant information, a feature we missed sorely while Ouija-boarding our passwords with the Roku and Amazon remotes.

Roku attempts to emulate a similar in-app setup process to Google’s (after you’ve already typed in at least two logins) by emailing you a link to a setup webpage. Amazon's process is done solely through the Fire TV Stick. This step is where you choose the apps and services to be downloaded, though the Roku process throws a ton more garbage at you in the form of numerous free trials compared to Amazon and Google.

With both the Roku and Fire TV Stick, this initial setup is just step one. After all the apps are downloaded, you have to open them and log in all over again—another cumbersome task the Chromecast largely avoids with its use of the Google Home app and passwords saved to your Google account (assuming you have those there in the first place). Some logins will still be required after the fact with Chromecast, but not nearly as many.

Google and Amazon both give the option to set up child profiles, a feature missing on Roku devices. Roku users can only enable parental controls in apps that support the feature natively or on the Roku channel. There's currently no support for multiple profiles of any kind on Roku devices.

User interface

Amazon and Roku both released updates to their streaming-stick operating systems in mid to late 2021. Amazon's is more of a full refresh, as it is largely focused on navigational and aesthetic streamlining. Roku focused on improving the mobile companion app and expanding voice-search capabilities. That said, both OSes still fall well short of Google Chromecast's effortless ability to serve up what you're looking for, give you the best pricing options, and help you find relevant recommendations for new content.

Despite a revamped home screen that looks, at least at first, to be a bit less overwhelming than it previously was, Amazon's Fire TV OS is still a mess of ads and irrelevant content suggestions. The home page has 43(!) rows of content, and, as it was pre-update, it's mostly ads. Even the few rows dedicated to apps other than Prime Video content are mostly ads. Apple TV+ gets a sponsored row recommending whatever Apple TV+ is pushing right now, not what either Amazon or Apple actually think you'll like. HBO Max's row, although not listed as sponsored, suffers from the same inane, baseless content recommendations. With 43 rows of this, you could potentially spend a long time sorting through paid content pushes thinly veiled as recommendations.

It doesn't get any better when you go to the user interface's "Find" tab, where you're meant to discover movies, shows, and other content. Why is a reel of "Classic TV Bloopers," released in 2013, the first title at the beginning of the "Movies" page? Why is the next one The Grand Budapest Hotel from 2014? You have to scroll seven rows down to see movie options released from the past year in the "Rent - New Release Movies" row. There's nothing wrong with surfacing older content, but it's clear that most of these rows (which, again, largely consist of Prime Video movies and shows) aren't being shown to me based on my watch habits or really any reason at all other than that Amazon owns it. There's not much rhyme or reason to what you see here otherwise.

And there's still no way to stop trailers from automatically starting and yelling for your attention while you try to read the show or movie description.

Roku's UI is much simpler—to a fault. It's basic to the point of looking dated and rather clunky overall. It's reminiscent of a smart TV's app interface, in that it mostly just displays apps you can use. There are some unique UI components, like a live TV guide, but otherwise, Roku's OS is little more than an app store and a TV/movie rental shop. The live TV guide has over 500 channels, but without a way to jump between them, you're left only with the ability to scroll (rather slowly, at that) to browse. There is some interesting content—channels dedicated to movies or print media publications like Vogue and Complex, for instance—but it's certainly not compelling enough to scroll through regularly.

By contrast, both the Fire TV and Chromecast aggregate and present new and recommended content for you to explore. And in that regard, Google’s Chromecast is still far and away the most effective. The Chromecast UI is well-spaced, well-stocked, and well-sorted. It's not overwhelming to browse through thanks to a sensible design and even better content selection. The top row of the home page offers picks selected for you, and they are relevant more often than not. Below that is your most-used apps, then a "continue watching" row to pick up where you left off in unfinished movies or episodes. Below this is a row for popular movies and shows, followed by a user-created watchlist and a few rows of selected content based on recent events, trends, and your watching habits.

Enlarge / Timely, useful, well-curated suggestions are exactly what Chromecast is about. Rows of content remembering Betty White and Sidney Poitier delivered delightful content I didn't even know existed.

Corey Gaskin

To give an example, it's both heartening and convenient to find separate rows dedicated to content featuring Betty White and Sidney Poitier after their passing. Even better is the curation. Betty's row, for instance, featured her host appearance on Saturday Night Live and an episode of Community she guest-starred in, along with her well-known works like Golden Girls and Hot in Cleveland. There were even Simpsons and Family Guy episodes I didn't know she was in. It's also easy to add titles to your watch list by simply long-clicking, a feature missing from Roku entirely.

You'll find similarly well-curated picks and a user-friendly presentation on each page, whether you're looking for movies, shows, or apps. There's also a live TV tab that you can populate with whatever subscriptions you have along those lines, such as YouTube TV or Pluto TV.

The caveat here is that Google's savvy curation comes from its more robust data gathering and processing algorithms. It's unlikely that Amazon gathers less data on your viewing habits, but it's clear the company isn't as good at using it for your benefit here. It's a similar case with Roku, though its data footprint is likely smaller given Roku's lesser overall presence as a company and the relative lack of personalized suggestions in its UI (for better or worse). Google provides an option to hide personalized recommendations, but in general, sharing your browsing info in some fashion is part of the trade-off with devices like these, at least if you want to get the most out of them. You can see the privacy policies from Google, Roku, and Amazon here.

Finding what you’re looking for

All three of these streaming sticks have a voice-control button on their remotes that can be used for searching for content and opening apps. Though none of these implementations is perfect, voice is the best way to search on each device in most cases. Much like we saw in navigating each UI, Google’s Chromecast search, run by Google Assistant, is more accurate and more useful with its results than the other two.

Say you’re in the mood to watch a good documentary. If you say “documentaries” to the respective voice controls, Amazon’s Alexa will bring back about five rows of various categories, mostly composed of what’s available on Amazon’s Prime Video service. Categories include a selection from your subscriptions, "free with ads," "trending," "latest," and "movies and TV." The combination of some random, off-base recommendations and the fact that the majority of the results come from Amazon Prime makes it feel like these aren't the highest-quality or most-relevant options.

This isn't nearly as bad as Roku’s handling, though. The same search here brought up a handful of documentaries but also a ton of reality TV shows—and a good amount of neither—within the results.

Google Assistant, on the other hand, pulled up a rather comprehensive, thoughtfully organized, and wholly on-target set of lists in the same type of carousel seen on the Fire TV. Unlike Amazon, Google was good at producing picks we liked. Categories included "popular," "Oscar-winning," "war documentaries," "religious docs," and "politics," among others. Generally, Chromecast returns a mélange of results from different platforms; it comes off like Google prioritizes offering quality picks over forcing you onto Google’s services like YouTube, in contrast to Amazon’s reverse approach.

Beyond this, the way Chromecast presents content makes it dead simple to watch a particular title, regardless of what streaming service it's on, at the lowest price possible. Roku isn't terribly far behind in this regard, as it offers multiple options at different prices as well, but only if you find the title through search. If you find something by looking through Roku's Movie Store or TV Store sections, you'll only get the option to buy or rent from VUDU.

The same tendencies between these three streaming sticks surface when searching for a specific performer. When searching for actor and musician Donald Glover, for instance, Google spits back a Wikipedia-sourced bio and two carousels of results—one from YouTube (which is technically promoting a Google service, to be fair, but it's still useful to most people) and another comprising various shows, movies, and shorts featuring Donald Glover. Most anything that he may have starred in or written is listed here. Not everything is available to watch, as is often the case with streaming devices, especially as it relates to works that weren't widely distributed through mainstream networks. But Google at least reveals the existence of just about any work related to your search subject.

Amazon’s Fire TV produced much less-relevant results. Three lonely titles featuring Glover populated the top picks. Below that were two rows of "similar results," one free and the other paid. Both had only a couple more instances of his work sprinkled throughout a trove of content that didn't involve him at all. Some of what surfaced could be interesting to a fan of Glover's, but most of it was way off base. Some of his titles were also missing compared to Google's results.

Roku's handling was only slightly better. After giving a first row of Spotify results, a new feature for Roku, the row for movies and shows had pretty much anything you'd be looking for. Under that were nine more rows of results that were essentially useless, largely repeating any relevant results from the first row. YouTube results are another new feature to Roku, and they appear at the bottom.

Of the three, voice searches for specific movies or shows work as well as intended. Press the button, say the words, and in a second, you’re ready to click "play." The only slip-ups come from the Roku, which had a tough time recognizing some words, especially those with alternate spellings. “Inglourious Basterds,” for instance, is a movie you have to type out to find on Roku. A 1978 film with the non-stylized spelling of the popular Quentin Tarantino film comes up, but that's the only result. That isn’t the case for Amazon and Google.

Roku, again feeling more like a virtual Redbox than anything else, doesn’t offer much in the content descriptions when it pulls up search results, either. The plot summary is usually one sentence, the star ratings don’t tell you where they’re coming from, and you can’t watch trailers.

The same screen on the Chromecast has all of these missing items from the Roku, and it even lets you explore the Rotten Tomatoes ratings and reviews in a little pop-up browser. Plus, once you’ve watched something, you can give a title a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to help fine-tune your recommendations. The Fire TV Stick doesn’t go quite as far, but it still offers trailers and more in-depth descriptions than Roku. The low-quality, sometimes useless related content recommendations below the search result, however, keep Amazon lagging a good bit behind Google and its more relevant content suggestions.

In short, whether you know exactly what you want to watch or are not sure and want to do some perusing, watch some trailers, and check some ratings before you decide, the Chromecast is the most effective, most capable, and most fun to browse on.

Finding new things to watch

The same key differences between the three streaming platforms also make the Chromecast the most adept at quickly helping you discover new things to watch that you’re likely to enjoy. As mentioned earlier, browsing for quality content on the main screens of the Chromecast is usually a more fruitful endeavor, and the same is also true when you’ve just finished a movie or show you loved but don’t know where to go from there.

For instance, let's say you just finished Kill Bill and are now on a Kung Fu kick, feeling über Uma Thurman, or particularly enjoying quirky Quentin Tarantino movies. With the Chromecast, on the movie's main page, you can simply scroll down and either click on one of the cast or crew to see more of their work (as well as a little biographical blurb) or scroll down one more row to find recommendations based on various aspects of the movie, genre, or the creators and stars themselves. Among the options for this film were action movies, Oscar-winning titles, and an “if you like X” option that actually seems accurate. Different movies will bring up different categories based on their own unique aspects.

Amazon's experience has improved a lot over the past year compared to the previous Fire TV OS versions. A “customers also watched” row used to offer completely unrelated and often wildly off-target suggestions largely from—you guessed it—Amazon Prime. Thankfully, it now delivers relevant suggestions along the same theme or by the same creators. Below that, you have as many as 50 rows of content, each one based exclusively on each of the starring actors—no matter how big or small their role. It’s a lot, but if you're really into one of the stars, the list might be helpful.

Roku, on the other hand, simply doesn’t offer such a feature for finding related content.

One last thing to note here is the implementation of watchlists, another feature Roku's OS lacks. Both the Fire TV and Chromecast offer them, but for some reason, Amazon’s isn’t available for some content. We’d say about seven out of 10 times it is available, but we couldn’t find a rhyme or reason for the occasions it was absent. Google's watchlist inexplicably can't save Netflix content, which can be annoying as well.

Google does have the advantage of integrating watchlist functionality into your Google searches, though. If you Google a show or movie, you can easily add it to your watchlist right from the top of the results when you’re logged in to your Google account. The content will show up on your Chromecast watchlist immediately—a feature I’m fond of now and will likely love even more when we can all leave the house without reservations again.

Enlarge / Both Chromecast (pictured above) and Roku can stream music from your phone. Google uses its widely supported Cast feature, and Roku has built-in Apple AirPlay functionality.

Corey Gaskin

Extra features

For the most part, each of these streaming sticks does the same basic things. As we just discussed, though, some do certain things better. But there are a couple of features that set these devices apart, and they could potentially define the streamers' usefulness to you.

Fortunately, since our last streaming-stick battle from last year, we've been able to remove the "missing services" section from the comparison. There are no longer any glaring omissions in each device's streaming library, like HBO Max missing from Roku or Google Chromecast lacking Apple TV+.

Google Chromecast extra features

Aside from its superior interface, the standout feature for Google’s Chromecast is its ability to stream content from a phone, tablet, or computer through a myriad of compatible apps, directly to your TV. In fact, it used to be the only feature of the Chromecast and, after more than seven years of development, it has amassed a formidable list of compatible apps. Essentially, almost any app you use to listen to music or watch videos can stream from your phone to the Chromecast. And on computers, Google’s Chrome browser can handle any such duties. This is a feature neither the Fire TV Stick nor the Roku Streaming Stick 4K can emulate in terms of seamlessness and wide-ranging compatibility, though Roku does come close with its Apple AirPlay functionality.

You can also use a Nest or Google Home device to turn on your TV and control basic functions with your voice (though Alexa can do the same on the Fire TV Stick).

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max extra features

The Fire TV Stick doesn’t have much of anything that the other two don’t. As mentioned, you can use an Echo device to turn the TV on and off, but otherwise, there are no other built-in standout features.

It is worth noting, though, that jailbreaking these devices or otherwise finding ways to install free media services, like Kodi, is a popular pastime among Fire Stick owners. Such tweaks can and often do affect the reliability of Fire Sticks and, although generally easy enough to fix (by resetting it to stock), it’s a bit of a pain having a boot-looping Fire Stick if problems do arise.

Roku Streaming Stick 4K extra features

Roku’s trick up its sleeve, like the Chromecast’s, has to do with streaming from mobile devices. It is AirPlay-enabled, so you can stream music and video to it or use it as a secondary display for an Apple device. Furthermore, you can mirror an Android or Windows computer through Roku, emulating in large part what the Chromecast can do with your devices. In essence, it has all the same bases covered as the Chromecast, just in a slightly less streamlined way.

With the Roku OS 10.5 update, the company introduced a feature that uses your smartphone camera to help adjust audio sync issues on Bluetooth soundbars and speakers. This isn't an issue I've run into personally, as I use only wired speakers, but it may be a game-changer for those who have experienced this issue.

Corey Gaskin

Our pick: Google Chromecast with Google TV

In the end, a competition between similar devices with nearly identical features and price tags wasn’t all that close. In almost every aspect of use, the Chromecast with Google TV continues to be more effective and easier to use than either the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max or Roku Streaming Stick 4K, and its interface looks better to boot.

Google does an excellent job of surfacing quality content that may actually interest you. Its algorithms seem to account for quality and relation, picking up on more nuanced themes and ultimately offering better results. “Dysfunctional family comedies,” for instance, is a category Google offers that zeroes in on a narrower aspect than “comedies” alone could. Again and again, Google’s related recommendations carry a high success rate, no matter the genre. We're glad to see Amazon improve slightly in this area, but it still has a long way to go. Roku could do well to add this feature at all.

Coupled with nearly universal device compatibility, the Chromecast is hard to beat. For $50, it comfortably beats the Fire TV and Roku devices available at the same price point. In fact, the new Chromecast seems to be offering one of the best streaming experiences at any price. It certainly has me wondering why I still need my Apple TV.