After Google introduced the first Chromecast two years ago, HDMI dongles quickly became one of the best cheap ways to stream the internet to your TV. Now, the competition is hotter than ever. We compared the Roku stick, Fire TV stick, and the latest version of the Chromecast to find out which one belongs in your living room.


The Contenders

Streaming dongles are appealing because they’re cheap, take up virtually no space on your entertainment unit, and, in some cases, allow you to cast videos from your phone or tablet to your TV. Here are the sticks we’ve chosen to look at:

Chromecast ($35): The original streaming stick, Google’s Chromecast, uses your phone or tablet as the interface and remote, instead of a menu on the TV. It does, however, support a wide array of apps and services directly from your phone.

The original streaming stick, Google’s Chromecast, uses your phone or tablet as the interface and remote, instead of a menu on the TV. It does, however, support a wide array of apps and services directly from your phone. Roku Streaming Stick ($50): Roku’s stick comes with a remote and a TV interface, so it works a lot more like its set-top counterpart. You can’t cast from as many apps natively as you can with a Chromecast, but Roku makes up for this with its remote app for your phone.

Roku’s stick comes with a remote and a TV interface, so it works a lot more like its set-top counterpart. You can’t cast from as many apps natively as you can with a Chromecast, but Roku makes up for this with its remote app for your phone. Amazon Fire TV Stick ($40): Like the Roku, the Fire TV Stick uses a physical remote and a TV menu interface. Amazon also has a remote app, but it’s not as fully featured as the Roku.


We’re only comparing streaming sticks today, not their set-top box counterparts (like the Apple TV or Roku). Streaming set-top boxes are great, and usually aim to offer a more robust feature set, but they’re also more expensive. If you just want to get video from the internet to your TV, these streaming sticks are the cheapest ways, and we wanted to see how they compared to one another.

Setting Them Up

Setting up a streaming stick can be harder than it sounds. Just entering your Wi-Fi password can be a pain. Then you need to log in to several online services in order to get anything on your TV. While it might sound simple, the three streaming sticks handle this problem in pretty different ways.

Chromecast

The Chromecast is probably the easiest to set up. You download the Chromecast app on your phone, then use that to connect to the Chromecast itself. From there, you enter your Wi-Fi password using your phone’s keyboard so the Chromecast can connect to the internet. This invisible feature is a huge help. On other devices, you’re limited in how you can login before your device is connected to the internet. Since the Chromecast doesn’t come with its own remote, this pairing is the only way to connect to Wi-Fi, but it’s also easier than some of the alternatives.


Once you’re connected to the internet, you’re done. Since you use the apps on your phone as your remote, all of your accounts are already logged in. There’s no need to log in to Netflix or Hulu separately, like with other streaming sticks. Just start watching something on your phone, hit the Cast button that pops up, and you’re good to go.

Roku Streaming Stick

The Roku Streaming Stick is only slightly more difficult to set up, but still pretty streamlined. When you first set up your Roku Stick, you’ll need to enter your Wi-Fi password using the physical remote, which has no keyboard. This is, predictably, a pain in the ass. Especially if you have a long Wi-Fi password. Fortunately, the remote control is pretty snappy, so it’s only frustrating in that you’re using a directional pad to type each letter.


Once you’re connected to the internet (and likely install a system update), the Roku Stick will direct you to a web site where you can connect all of your streaming accounts. You’ll need to create or log in to a Roku account, and then enter your passwords for things like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, but this should be much easier on a laptop or phone. If you use a password manager, you can log in like normal, rather than having to manually enter your passwords with the Roku Stick’s remote.

Fire TV Stick

When it comes to setup, the Fire TV Stick is easily the worst of the bunch. Like the Roku, you first need to enter your password via an on-screen keyboard using the included remote. In my initial tests, the remote suffered from some pretty severe lag (which I’ll talk more about later) that made this particularly painful. After that, you’ll be prompted to enter your Amazon account information. At this point, you can switch to the Fire TV remote app on your phone, but the Fire doesn’t tell you this. I highly recommend pairing the app as soon as possible, though, as inputting text with your phone’s keyboard is immeasurably easier than with the tiny physical remote.


Once you’re connected, Amazon hits you with a four-minute video introduction. Fortunately you can fast forward through this, so it’s only a brief annoyance. From there, you’ll need to log in to your various accounts. Amazon doesn’t have a mechanism for doing this from the computer, which means you’re stuck with the remote app on your phone. Worse yet, you’ll need to download most major apps like Netflix or Hulu to the Fire TV Stick before you can even run them. While this makes sense for some smaller apps, preloading some more popular ones—like Netflix—probably would’ve been a safe bet. Instead it’s one extra step on an already complicated setup process.

Winner: Chromecast

The Chromecast easily wins by a landslide here. There’s virtually no setup past connecting your device to the internet, since everything else happens in your phone’s apps. The Roku Stick is a close second, but you’ll still need to fiddle with the remote for a bit. The Fire TV Stick may be nice once you use it, but it’s an unnecessary pain to set up.


Using the Interface


Only two of the three devices we use have any native interface to begin with. While the Roku Stick and Fire TV Stick still function mostly like a set-top box, nearly the entire Chromecast interface exists on your phone. Here’s how the various interface types compare.

Chromecast

Most of the time, you don’t really interact with the Chromecast. You press the Cast button on your computer or phone to send something to your TV, and you’ll use the in-app controls on your computer or phone to play, pause, and otherwise interact with the video. Given this, and the fact that the Chromecast does so well with its initial setup, you’d think that daily usage would be pretty smooth.


Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Since your apps are your remote control, that means that controlling your TV depends on your phone. If you have an Android phone without a ton of RAM, for example, the system might kill Netflix in the background while you’re watching a movie. An hour in, when you want to pause, you’ll have to reload the app, reconnect to your Chromecast, hope there are no glitches, and pause the video. This is a lot harder than simply pressing pause on a remote.

In my experience, glitches were uncomfortably common. Occasionally while using Plex, if I lost the connection and needed to reconnect to get my controls back, the movie would stop playing. I also found that the Chromecast was picky about what devices can keep casting even after they’re turned off. If I start a Netflix movie from my phone and turn off the display, it will keep playing. If I try the same thing on my laptop and close the lid, the movie will stop.


These problems aren’t universal, of course. Some people have had much more reliable experiences than I (I have been using a Chromecast since 2013, after all). However, it’s worth knowing that how well your Chromecast performs may be affected by things like your phone’s RAM.

Roku Streaming Stick

Unlike the Chromecast, the Roku Streaming Stick has a full menu interface on your TV, so you can find stuff to watch without your phone. On the main screen, you’ll find a collection of apps (or “channels”) like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video that you can browse. You can also get a feed of custom video suggestions, and browse Roku’s selection of additional channels. The interface is pretty fast, with only some slight, occasional lag when opening an app.


The physical remote that comes with the Roku Stick pairs wirelessly, so you don’t need line of sight to use it. In addition to the usual stuff like play, pause, and a directional pad, the Roku Stick remote also has dedicated buttons for Netflix, Amazon, Google Play, and Rdio, so you can jump directly to those apps without having to navigate through the menu.

Of course, you can also use the Roku remote app on your phone. You can use this app to launch more apps quickly like Sling, Vudu, and Plex, or browse the Roku Channel Store. It has voice input, as well as a virtual keyboard, which makes searching for shows much easier than slowly typing out the name of a show with a directional pad.


Fire TV Stick

Amazon’s interface is very similar to the Roku Stick’s, just with a few missing features. You’re presented with a menu of apps and channels you can use to watch content. In addition to the apps, you’ll also see a Movies and TV section. These are naturally populated with offerings from Amazon’s store. If you’re big into the Amazon content ecosystem, this will be great for you. If you’d rather rent or buy digital movies from somewhere else, it’s a whole lot of wasted space. (Of course, it’s safe to assume that if you bought the Fire TV Stick, you want to use Amazon.)


In my experience, the menu on the Fire TV Stick was especially slow. This was a mild annoyance while navigating the menu, but it became insufferable when trying to input text (like the Wi-Fi password during setup). Most of the time, you can avoid typing text directly by using the Fire TV remote app, but when I had to use the physical remote to enter text, I often got double letters, missed letters, or just a painfully slow cursor. The included physical remote only includes basic navigation, but you can buy a separate $30 remote that adds that admittedly cool voice search button Amazon likes to advertise. Frankly, it seems like a cash grab that this one button isn’t included on the basic remote, but maybe voice control buttons are just really expensive.

However, if you don’t want to buy the remote, the free Fire TV remote app includes the feature as well. There’s a voice icon at the top of the app that you can drag down to perform a voice search. Unless you really like pressing a button for voice commands, you’re probably better off downloading this app, instead of shelling out nearly the cost of the stick itself just to add a single button.


The rest of the Fire TV app is pretty barebones, compared to the Roku. There’s a virtual directional pad that performs the same functions as the physical remote (ironic, since the D-pad is likely the part you want to avoid the most). You can also tap an icon to pull up a virtual keyboard, which makes entering text easier. That’s about it, however. There’s no menu to quickly launch apps like Netflix, or any other useful features.

Winner: Roku Streaming Stick

Between the physical remote, snappy interface, and robust mobile app, the Roku Streaming Stick takes the crown here. While the Chromecast’s attempt to make its interface as invisible as possible works most of the time, the fact that you can’t pause a video without connecting to your Chromecast is a huge drawback, and will probably confuse some users who are used to a simple point-and-click remote. A simple, cheap remote might fix this, but Google doesn’t offer one. Meanwhile, Amazon’s interface style is the same as the Roku Stick’s, but it’s not executed nearly as well. The app lacks basic features like launching channels, and the physical remote lacks the useful voice command unless you spend extra money.


Finding Stuff to Watch


Finding something to watch is a pretty subjective experience. Some people already know what they want to watch when they sit down, others like to browse a library. Apparently some people even like to just watch whatever’s on? (I know, it’s weird to me, too.) Each streaming stick has its own unique approach that may appeal more to different types of people.

Chromecast

This week, the Chromecast app got a major update that puts content front and center. If you have any Chromecast-enabled apps on your phone, it will show you a selection of videos, shows, or movies you can watch from those apps. You can also search for a particular show or movie and the app will show you all of the places you can stream, rent, or buy it from, even if you don’t have those apps installed.


Of course, this is only one way to find content. Since the Chromecast is mostly a receiver for apps that support it, finding something to watch is as easy (or as hard) as finding it in that service’s app itself. This can be a double-edged sword. If you can’t find something interesting to watch on Netflix, you’ll need to jump to another app to keep looking. The Chromecast app only gives you a few suggestions per service, so you still might spend a lot of time bouncing between apps looking for something to watch.

Roku Streaming Stick

Like the Chromecast, the Roku Streaming Stick has a universal search, so you can enter the name of a show or movie and find out which services offer it. However, with the Roku Stick, you can search on your TV as well as on your phone (though you’re still better off using the phone remote app to enter text, so it’s a bit of a wash).


Roku also has a huge list of channels you can explore to find more stuff if Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, and Sling somehow can’t satisfy your need for entertainment. You can browse for new channels like Comedy Central, Crunchyroll, Starz, and tons more on your phone or the TV itself. You can even install private channels. The Roku Feed lets you follow a list of upcoming movies, and will notify you when they’re available to stream via your services.

Fire TV Stick

If you’re really into the Amazon ecosystem, then the Fire TV Stick will be the best option for you. The main interface has sections for movies and TV shows, but they’re entirely populated by Prime content. You can open up, say, the Netflix app to search for movies on that service, but Amazon won’t show you any suggestion on the main screen for anything but its own library.


The search box on the Fire TV Stick works in a similar way. If you search for the name of a show or movie, Amazon will show you all the ways you can watch it through Prime Video (that is, included with a subscription, renting, or buying from Amazon). A slightly misleading “More ways to watch” button seems to indicate that it might show you how to watch a show on Netflix or Hulu, but it only leads to more Amazon options.

Frankly, this makes finding new content pretty awful, unless you’re heavily invested in the Amazon world. You can’t search any other services through Amazon’s remote app, or through the main TV interface. Even searching Netflix on the TV is harder than just opening up the app on your phone and finding a show to watch.


Winner: Roku Streaming Stick

Both the Roku Streaming Stick and Chromecast offer helpful universal search features so you can see which services have a particular show or movie. However, the Roku Stick just barely ekes out a win for also having a huge library of channels you can browse from your phone or TV. Technically, tons of content supports the Chromecast—you can even cast from many web sites!—but the Chromecast doesn’t help you discover as much of it. The Fire TV’s focus on just Amazon’s Prime content makes browsing for content from anyone else a pretty miserable affair.


Available Content Selection

You shouldn’t have to choose which streaming stick you use based on how you want to watch your movies, but that’s apparently the stupid world we live in. Fortunately, dumb rivalries like this make it super easy to figure out which device is the best.


Winner: Roku Streaming Stick

This one is so simple, we don’t need to do a breakdown. Amazon refuses to support the Chromecast in its Prime Video app. There’s also no Google Play app on the Fire TV Stick (it’s unclear if Google hasn’t attempted to make one, or Amazon hasn’t approved it, or some combination of the two). The Roku Streaming Stick has both of these services. There are even dedicated Amazon and Google Play hardware buttons on its remote.


For virtually all of the other big names—like Netflix, Hulu, Sling—all three sticks have nearly identical support. The Fire TV Stick was missing a few key players like Vudu or even an official YouTube app. Regardless of who’s to blame, it’s pretty clear that the petty squabbles between the giants aren’t doing customers any favors here. Better to side with the independent that’s friendly with both teams.

The Showdown Champion: Roku Streaming Stick


As a longtime Chromecast user, I have to admit, I expected it to win. While the Chromecast is an excellent device that kicked off the streaming stick trend, the Roku Streaming Stick has added a ton of extra functionality that makes it stand out from the crowd. The physical remote is nice for when you need to pause a movie, while the remote app still lets you use your phone to control most of the action, if you don’t like clunky TV interfaces. Add this to the huge library of channels and the universal app support that comes from not bickering with other companies, and it’s clear the Roku offers the most flexibility and content in a single device.

The Chromecast still came close, though, and it’s a pretty competent device. If you can live without Amazon Prime Video, and you don’t mind having to use your phone as a remote control, it’s hard to go wrong with the Chromecast. While browsing several apps on your phone can be a hassle, you’re probably already doing that anyway. In that case, being able to cast a video from your phone to the TV is way nicer than searching through an on-TV menu. While the Roku Stick makes a ton of great content available natively, you can only cast from a few services to it. Meanwhile, Chromecast support can even be added to random websites, and it’s still the most popular device, which means you’ll likely find lots of support for the Chromecast.


The Fire TV Stick occupies a weird space that’s only really useful for Amazon Prime fans. The Roku Stick can play Amazon Prime videos just fine, but the Fire TV Stick does it better. The problem is, the Fire TV Stick does everything else worse. The remote (either the physical or the mobile app) isn’t as fully featured, the app interface is clunkier, and it’s missing basic apps like YouTube. Some of this might be resolved if Amazon and Google learn to make peace, but until pigs fly that day, we’re still stuck with an inferior product for everyone but Amazon Prime aficionados.