Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Let’s talk about how the streaming TV revolution kind of sucks.

At this point it has become clear that entrenched content providers have won this fight. No single streaming service can win the rights to everything, so consumers have to subscribe to multiple services to access everything they want to watch (and pay for a whole bunch of stuff they don’t want and will never watch in the process). It’s frustrating, and it looks a lot more like the old cable TV system than a new a la carte TV utopia.

So it’s important for these boxes to be able to stream as much stuff as possible. The Apple TV, Google’s Android TV and Chromecast, and Amazon’s Fire TV boxes and sticks can all stream content from big names like Netflix and Hulu and HBO, but they all inevitably end up prioritizing media that comes from their companies’ respective stores.

And that’s one reason why Roku boxes are so often recommended. It’s a platform-agnostic media streamer in a market where all the other major players have obvious agendas. It can grab media from Amazon and Google Play, will let you stream your own local media via Plex, and has a huge selection of third-party “channels” and a handful of games (Roku’s game selection is pretty thin, though, so we recommend sticking to streaming). Apple’s stuff is missing, but otherwise they’re the most versatile streaming boxes you can find.

The Roku 4 is the latest version of the box and the first to support 4K video. It also comes with an update to Roku OS, one that’s rolling out to the Roku 3 and Roku Stick, too.

The box, the internals, and 4K support

The Roku 4 looks quite a bit different from the three Roku boxes that preceded it. It’s thinner but has a much larger footprint—this makes room for the new optical audio-out on the back, but it could also be for purposes of heat dissipation. The new Roku won’t fit everywhere that the old one did.

The styling of the box is broadly similar to the older ones, though. It has a flat top with a textured matte finish, a remote button, and the number 4 (so you know for sure which Roku you have). The sides are glossy and curved, and because it’s black it’s going to fit right in among most game consoles, cable boxes, routers, receivers, Blu-Ray players, and whatever else you’ve got blinking away in your entertainment center.

The biggest change to this box, and the only real reason to buy it, is its support for 4K TVs and content. Thanks to HDMI 2.0 support, it can display all of this at 60FPS, too—even the new Apple TV sticks with 1080p video, so this will remain an advantage for the Roku 4 until the next time Apple refreshes its box. This doesn’t come without strings, though. If you want to stream 4K content or even render Roku’s UI at 4K, your TV, receiver, and any other hardware you connect the Roku to will need to support HDCP 2.2, something that not all 4K-capable TV hardware has. If you buy a new TV or receiver today, chances are good that it will include at least one HDMI 2.0 port with HDCP 2.2 support. But HDMI 2.0 ports don’t automatically support HDCP 2.2, and no HDMI 1.4a ports support it at all.

If you don’t meet the HDCP requirements, you’re stuck with 1080p, in which case you might as well keep your Roku 3. The replacement cycles on TV equipment are pretty long, so for most of you this is just something to be aware of as you slowly replace your 720p or 1080p gear with 4K hardware. Early adopters, as usual, are often going to get burnt.

Along with support for 4K output is a new quad-core processor of indeterminate origin. Past Roku boxes use commodity processors that you won't usually find in most phones or tablets, the sorts of basic chips that more often end up in home networking equipment (the Roku 3 uses a dual-core SoC from Broadcom, for instance). Regardless of whoever is providing the quad-core chip for this new Roku, it does improve the smoothness of UI navigation. However, it doesn't seem to make that big of a difference when actually playing video. Netflix videos are perhaps marginally faster to load on the Roku 4, whether you're in them for the first time or rewinding or fast-forwarding, but not drastically faster than the Roku 3. There's nothing wrong with the Roku 4's speed, but it's not a huge change from the last one.

The other significant hardware upgrade is support for 802.11ac Wi-Fi, an upgrade from the dual-band 802.11n in the Roku 3. It may help improve your streaming quality, particularly if you’re streaming 4K content, but otherwise the distance between the Roku and your router and the speed of your Internet service will probably affect quality more.

Power consumption

It can be a bit difficult to compare the power consumption among set-top boxes because Roku, Apple, and even game console makers like Sony and Microsoft often change up the internal hardware without changing their branding or the way the boxes look. There have been two Roku 3 boxes and two third-generation Apple TVs, and game console hardware gets tweaked and changed all the time as manufacturing processes improve and components get tweaked.

Here, we’re comparing the numbers from a launch PS4 and Xbox One to the latest Roku 3, the second revision of the third-gen Apple TV, and the launch Roku 4. These will change if Roku tweaks the Roku 4’s guts in the next year or two, but, if you went out to buy something today, they’d be roughly representative of what you could expect.

Activity Roku 4 Roku 3 (4230X) Apple TV (3rd gen, Rev A) Xbox One PlayStation 4 Sleep mode (default settings) 1.1W N/A 0.3W 12.9W 10W Idle at menu 8.0W 3.3W 1.2W 69W 89-91W Streaming Netflix (1080p) ~8.5W 3.5W 1.3W 73W 93W

The Roku 4 is nowhere near as power-hungry as an actual PC or game console, though it uses quite a bit more than the Roku 3 it replaces. The third-generation Apple TV absolutely sips power, though the much-improved hardware in the new model is probably going to bump that up a bit (we’ll revisit in our review).

One place the Roku 4 could end up saving a bit of power compared to the Roku 3 is in sleep mode, a new option added in the Settings menu (it’s not available on a Roku 3 even after updating to Roku OS 7). If you turn it on, the box goes to sleep after half an hour of idle time rather than just sitting around with the power on. This is a welcome improvement, and I’m frankly not sure why it isn’t included in older Roku boxes or enabled by default.

The remote

Roku’s “Enhanced Remote” is essentially the same one that ships with the Roku 3, though it has learned one new trick: press the small remote-shaped button on the top of the Roku 4, and the speaker on the back of the remote will ping to let you know where it is. No more lost remotes (unless the AA batteries run out)!

Otherwise this is the same remote you’re used to. The dedicated Hulu button has been replaced with a Sling TV button, which could reflect a shift in how Roku’s users are consuming their TV or could just be the result of a deal between Roku and Sling.

Functionally the Roku remote exists somewhere in between the spare-to-a-fault aluminum remote for the third-generation Apple TV and the trackpad-equipped version that will ship with the fourth-generation Apple TV. The enhanced version connects via Wi-Fi and doesn’t require line-of-sight, which is nice (IR remotes are supported, though, if you have one). And its shortcut buttons, voice search, and headphone jack (used when you want to use your TV screen but don’t want to bother someone else with your sound) are genuinely handy additions.

The remote still has that classic set-top box problem, though: most navigation and all text input is done with lots of tapping, something that you might not run into much in your day-to-day usage of the product but is especially painful during setup or troubleshooting (pity those with long Wi-Fi passwords). Some channels skirt the problem by making you use your phone or computer to enter confirmation codes, and voice search helps a bit, but the annoyance hasn’t been conquered completely.

Roku also provides remote apps for iOS and Android that can serve as replacements for the remotes, handy external keyboards, and inputs for voice searches. Sign in with your Roku account and you can also view and edit your feed and browse through and add new channels to your box. It won’t help with initial setup, but it can help with everything else.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham