Roku Streaming Stick 4K 2021 | Streaming Device 4K/HDR/Dolby Vision with Roku Voice Remote and TV Controls

I ordered this for my mom, and she loves it. She uses it for Prime, and amazon music, and no problems so far. I highly recommend.

So I’ve been using Roku devices since their very first one, and one of the main uses these days is to stream my own media on Plex. I’ve been pretty slavish about using the devices from Roku that supported wired ethernet instead of relying on WiFi because I don’t want to deal with buffering or lag, and just didn’t have confidence in WiFi (despite having WiFi-6). Other streaming devices (which shall remain nameless) with WiFi-only connection have disappointed me.

My previous Roku died over the holidays and so I took a chance (and a gift card) to try out this Roku 4k stick. I’m glad I did.

First off, I needn’t have worried about the WiFi not being up to streaming 4k video from my server. It handles it just fine. It’s a good experience as long as you have a newer router that supports WiFi-6.

Second, setup was amazingly easy. They’ve streamlined the whole process, and any apps you were already using on another Roku device are instantly logged in and ready to go. New big-name apps are almost as easy, just requiring a QR code scan and a quick login to the app on your phone.

My biggest complaint is that something about this Roku really pumps up the saturation in some of my own home-edited videos. I can’t figure out which setting is making that a thing, but it’s clearly something to do with the way my video editing app saves the video. Roku just isn’t playing nice with it, but that’s not on Roku; that’s in the editor. Everything else, however, looks incredibly good.

The interface is snappy, and honestly I was shocked that this stick is faster to load and navigate than my previous Roku Ultra LT.

I can think of only one negative point to the stick, and that is that it only works with the special remote it comes with, which I believe is a sort of WiFi direct connection. It won’t support an IR remote nor a Bluetooth one, rendering my universal remote useless for the Roku streaming stick 4k. It also won’t work with most of the stack of previous model Roku remotes I own. And of course, as with every Roku remote, the four quick-launch buttons are a pain in the neck. I only subscribe to one of the services in them, and will likely never subscribe to the others, which means accidentally pressing them is a bit of an obnoxious experience. I understand they’re sponsored and Roku makes money putting them on their remotes and making them permanent, but they could •at least• add two more buttons in there that are fully programmable to access the favorites we actually do subscribe to.

The voice search function is handy, but sometimes the screen will prompt you to use the voice search when the normal manual actions are easier and more direct. I don’t really need to press the voice button and say “launch YouTube” when I can just press the OK button on the first app in my list (YouTube) and it launches. However, for searching for a specific movie or show, it’s a great feature. It’s also nice for people who hate typing on screen using directional buttons, as you can speak letter-by-letter to enter email addresses and passwords if need be.

Bottom line: I’m impressed. Except for a few minor caveats, it’s a great streaming device that is responsive, intuitive, and provides fantastic video and audio quality, even up to Dolby Atmos in a 4k stream.

Five stars.

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