As a user of Roku devices since the very first one on the market, there is nothing I love more than a new version coming out, but the Roku 4 took so long to get here that you almost had to wonder if it was ever coming and we would just live with tweaks to the Roku 3 for the rest of our lives. It now that it is here, you have to take a step back and wonder if it was worth the wait. Has the long road to the Roku 4 been worth the wait for existing users? Is it something that new users should see as their jumping on point to the Roku way of life? We're about to find out.

At long last, 4K – But at what cost? With a name such as Roku 4 it seemed inevitable that this is where 4K would finally catch up with this family of streaming devices, and we were right. 4K is indeed here, and there is content, some of it even free, for you to enjoy. Of course, this is going to depend whether your Internet connection is up to snuff. As is easy to understand, lower broadband connections will have difficulty streaming 4K due to the amount of data involved, but those with higher plans – usually 10 Mbps or so and above – should be fine. Even with free content, and services such as Amazon and Netflix offering up 4K versions of some movies, there is still a severe lack of content out there for this higher resolution. This is certainly not Roku's fault in the least, but it does bring into question the necessity of 4K TVs at this time, let alone a streaming device to connect to it. Roku seems to realize this and has made a special channel for the Roku 4 where you can find all of the currently available content. Even if you want to just show off the technology to a family member or friends, you are only a few clicks away from being able to do so. While 4K is a necessary addition, it does appear to have come at a cost: The size of the Roku 4. The Roku 3 and its brethren have received a lot of love over the years for not only their performance, but also their discrete size. It was easy to mount one to the back of your television and never have to see it again, but the Roku 4 looks as though someone stepped on a Roku 3 and tried to see just how large of a puddle they could make. It is not ugly, but it is definitely leaving a bigger footprint than we have seen before, and if you were someone custom mounting a previous generation device you're going to need to take this into consideration.