While today's televisions come preloaded with a smart interface, many are not or do not offer the latest streaming services.
The solution?
sticks and special devices for streaming.
These tools can enhance even the smartest TV and provide up-to-date access to the services you are looking for.
To help you find the best ones, we've spent countless hours testing different Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, and Google Chromecast.
Best overall streaming device: Roku Ultra
The 2020 version is the winner and most attractive.
From the moment you turn it on, the Roku Ultra presents one of the most seamless experiences of any streaming device we tested.
It was easier and faster to locate the preferred applications and services, move the most used ones to a quick access menu compared to other devices we tested.
That speed is thanks to its quad-core processor and improved Wi-Fi.
Comparatively, the Roku Premiere takes a few seconds longer to open an app and start a stream.
The Ultra version automatically scales content to the highest resolution your TV can handle, up to 4K, and calibrates it to make sure it's optimized for your screen.
So if you're streaming 720p content on a 1080p TV, it will scale to that resolution, or if you have a 4K TV, it will deliver it at full 4K resolution.
This is Govee, the lighting system for your television that takes color off the screen
The content looks great, and with the addition of Dolby Vision HDR, the Ultra 2020 makes it look even better.
In action titles, like
Fast & Furious
and
Star Wars
, we didn't experience any jumps in fast-paced scenes, and the colors were vibrant but not overexposed.
Roku has access to some of the most popular streaming services: Netflix, YouTube, Disney +, Apple TV +, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime Video.
If you're looking for a streaming box that's fast, responsive, and future-proof, the latest Roku Ultra is priced reasonably at MX $ 2,170 and you can buy it here.
Best update: Apple TV 4K
The Apple TV 4K added games and countless additional apps to the menu.
It is ideal for anyone in the Apple ecosystem who subscribes to the company's various services.
Although the 2021 model looks identical to its predecessor, the big change is a faster chip;
inside is the A12 Bionic.
It proved to be faster during most daily tasks in our tests, providing a smooth experience with almost instantaneous responsiveness - tvOS and the respective apps fly.
You can have multiple streaming services open at once and quickly switch between them without experiencing any slowdowns.
Sometimes other devices we tested experienced delays when returning to the home screen, but this happens instantly.
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Apple TV 4K works perfectly for anyone within the Apple ecosystem.
For example, when you need to fill out a text field (such as a password or a search box), you will receive a notification on your iPhone that allows you to use that keyboard to type on your TV screen.
Like the Roku Ultra, Apple TV 4K will automatically scale content up to 4K Ultra High Definition.
It has a price of MX $ 4,999 and the possibility of paying 24 months without interest here.
Best budget buy: Google Chromecast 4K
It offers a lot for MX $ 1,699, like the ability to cast content directly from your phone.
The software that runs on Chromecast is pretty clean and puts content first.
The interface has six main categories: For You, Live, Movies, Shows, Applications, and Library.
Many of these are self explanatory, but the best thing is that this serves to give recommendations from a large number of services in one place to find the content you want within different applications.
In the Applications section is where you can find their streaming services and download the respective applications although the only big service missing here would be AppleTV +.
Complementing the Chromecast is the Google Assistant to which you can ask any questions or request a specific program.
How we test
While some of these are sticks and some are boxes, the main use case is streaming content to your TV.
And we elaborated the categories that best reflected that central premise.
We evaluated the ease of setup, where we focused on what came in the box and the process to get the device to work.
In some cases, it was as simple as plugging it in and connecting to Wi-Fi;
for others, we kept a device nearby for quick pairing.
The performance addressed more areas: in particular the ecosystem, the quality through the observation of the content and the applications and services available.
From a quality perspective, we calibrate each streaming device for the TV and then review the magnification.
Most importantly, we made sure it reached 4K UHD or 4K ultra high definition, as well as supported standards.
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Note: The above prices reflect the price at the time of publication of the article.
