It was back in 2012 when the original Roku Stick was released, and four years on the company is still improving on its design and features, with the 2016 update now bringing with it even more to try to make the 1080p set-top boxes obsolete.
We learned at the start of the month about the new Roku Streaming Stick 2016 update, and now we are happy to say that the small, device is now available. We have already seen several hands-on reviews, although we will now start to see those that matter, and that’s from the consumer, as you will get a greater understanding of living with the new stick.
Before we do start to see the many 2016 Roku Streaming Stick video reviews on YouTube, we thought we would highlight two reviews from Engadget and Techradar. Both are extensive and look at the many new features and aspects of the update stick, although both come up with the same conclusion, and that is a remote that is not only cheap in terms of build quality, but also still lacks many of the functions that had been expected in this update.
In each review they both highlight the pros and cons, with the positives being improved performance thanks to the new quad-core CPU, easy to set up, a new Mobile app that packs in even more features and also a good amount of streaming options.
However, both reviews differ on the negatives, with Engadget not happy about the lack of 4K support and no headphone jack support in the remote. Whereas Techradar believes that the new Roku Stick needed to come with voice search on the remote, and also cost around the same or even less that Chromecast.
One thing we can take away from this though, we find it hard to see how Roku have done enough to resolve the issues that has led people to choose the Roku 3 over the Stick.
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