Roku Streaming Stick+ | 4K/HDR/HD streaming player with 4x the wireless range & voice remote with TV power and volume

Fantastic streaming stick.
Six stars!
Compared with the Firestick at least on my telly the streaming quality is much higher in terms of resolution and user interface and I’ve come to realise (maybe sometime it’s the router over the streaming stick but dropouts/pixellation evens are very rare).
I also like the fact you can mirror your iPhone directly to the TV which is just great.
Really worth the extra cost to buy one.

Much better than the firestick
The bad, it comes with a USA charger.
The good, lots actually. I gave up trying to bypass HDCP on my firestick and bought a Roku. Easy to setup. (Remembered my installed apps from an old Roku). HDCP bypassed on prime video. Excellent surround sound.

It’s overall good, terrible remote
I got this in January 2022 as a gift. Here is my overall review:
Pros
1. Picture quality is good (though my tv is high end and has better picture quality than this).
2. Has the essential streaming apps that you need.
Cons:
1. The stick itself gets very warm if you keep it plugged into the tv.
2. Not a lot of good apps/not a lot of app reviews.
3. The remote is absolute rubbish. Both my flatmates have roku’s as well and all 3 of our remotes are terrible. Horrible battery life, terrible quality and the remotes become defective really quick. My remote scroll buttons stick a lot of the times. My flatmates completely broke and my other flatmate’s roku stick can’t keep a battery charge more than a month or so.
Overall I am eh about the roku stick when at this point every major app I have used I can get from my smart tv.

Very fast streaming.
Very fast streaming, easy access to channels.

Ok. This is going to be long…but maybe something through my experience will help you solve something faster than me.
I ended up with the Sony x800g 75” led 4k UHD HDR10 tv.
Lots of numbers there. And often times you will hear stuff used interchangeably.
• 4k isn’t all the same. So the term 4k related to the number of pixels on your screen.
o 1080p was previous HD (high definition) and was 1920×1080 pixels.
o 4k is generally 3840×2160
• UHD is ultra high definition which also refers to the resolution of 3840×2160, however there are two versions of this.
o One is 30hz. Normal movies and tv look “normal”
o 60hz is great for action movies and fast movement such as sports
• HDR/HDR10 also has two versions, but in simple terms, HDR is used to describe a certain grouping of picture settings to make your 4k look better. Higher contrast rates(darker black and whiter white). However there are 2 versions of this also
o 30hz for traditional movies and tv
o 60hz is great for those action movies and sports.
What happened for me. It was time for a new tv. I already had a Yamaha surround sound receiver that all my consoles, and fire/roku sticks, and blueray players plugged into, and one single cable going to my tv. So the setup of a new tv was going to be fairly painless. Find the tv, buy the tv, remove the old tv and replace it with the new one. I got home, got the new one in place and hooked up with one hdmi connection…and it didn’t do 4k. WTF! So I did some research and realized the roku stick that we use for amazon prime, hulu, and Netflix…wasn’t 4k compatible. So I went online, ordered a Roku Premier. I got it the next day, thanks amazon. Hooked it up, and it worked well…but the remote had to be line of site with the roku box. Unfortunately, my home theater setup made this a huge pain in the butt because the roku was hidden behind the Yamaha surround sound receiver. So, I returned this and ordered the Roku Streaming Stick +. Because these are meant to plug in behind the tv or to a surround sound receiver. This in place, and I ran the setup on the roku stick for display and it would do 4k uhd but only in 30hz. Fearing I had bought the wrong one. I took it upstairs to my lg 40” tv and plugged it in, turned on the tv. And the tv recognized the roku stick and I saw the screen go from normal black screen (kinda dark grey really) to true solid black with the HDR logo flashing on screen. When it showed the roku menu, I ran the same display setup and it clicked green check marks next to 4k uhd 30hz, 4k uhd 60hz, 4k hdr 30hz, and 4k hdr 60hz. And the movies (6 underground on Netflix) was just a freaking work of art. So now I knew that it was not the roku stick. So doing more research I found out that my Yamaha rx-v685 surround sound receiver would accept this beautiful signal and would pass through 4k but that the configuration had to be adjusted to do this. So I dug around in the menu, found the setting and clicked it into 4k. It looked okay on the new screen, but didn’t look amazing. So I went back to the google, and found out that my receiver would pass through only 4k uhd 30hz. So…it would look okay. But wouldn’t be jaw dropping. Did some research and found that I needed to buy the newer version of the receiver the RX-v683BL, that was $400 on ebay for a new in box one. It showed up a week later in a damaged box, but was fine cosmetically and functionally. I installed this new receiver with all the same connections and such. And ran the same roku display test, got it to do 4k uhd 30hz, and 4k uhd 60hz but it wouldn’t do 4k hdr 30 or 60. Annoyed at this point, I started scouring everything I could, and started seeing that folks said they solved this problem with better cables. I figured why not. So I found a set that had great reviews on amazon (info below) and those showed up two days later. I ran one of these from the new Yamaha receiver to the tv. Because the roku stick plugged in directly to a port on the back of the tv. Ran the test and got the 4k uhd’s working but only the 4k hdr 30hz working. I wanted the last step because I wanted the 4k resolution with the hdr picture quality with the 60 hz for high speed smooth movements. Annoyed again, I found that the tv instead of using HDMI port 1, needed to have me use HDMI port 2 or 3. I tried that, same. Then I went into the menu for the tv and found that there was a picture setting under settings>watch tv>external inputs>hdmi signal format>select the port 2 I was plugged into now and change it from standard to enhanced 4:4:4 or 4:2:2 mode. Tried again, the image was looking better but the roku still wouldn’t let me have the 4k hdr 60hz. So I checked the Yamaha receiver and the HDMI mode had to be in mode 1 as well as the roku stick had to be in ports 1-5. I ran the test again…still no luck. A final run at google and someone said there was a buried adjustment within the settings>advanced system settings>HDMI output and it also had to be set to the 4:4:4 or 4:2:2. Ran the settings and success! So when I boil it all down, when hooking something up to a 4k UHD HDR10(60hz) tv you need to have the correct device, the correct settings on the device, the right cable, the right port plugged in for the device, and also have the settings enabled for that device. I know that was long winded, but I figure I’ll use this story in the amazon review and maybe it helps someone sometime.

Ürün çok hızlı ve stabil. Menüler arası geçişler seri ve kolay. Youtube, netflix gibi uygulamaları kanal listenize ekleyip rahat bir şekilde kullanabilirsiniz. Bunun dışında birçok kanala da üye olup kullanabilirsiniz. Ancak IPTV için alıyorsanız maalesef desteklemiyor.

Il prodotto risulta molto carente quando attivato dall’Italia.
Alcune feature sono completamente assenti:
– il telecomando vocale non funziona (non nel senso che non funziona la lingua italiana, ma proprio che non funziona nemmeno in inglese: il pulsante sul telecomando attiva un’altra cosa)
– la ricerca dei canali non è supportata, e per un prodotto che si vanta di avere migliaia di canali non capisco proprio come possa mancare quando usato dall’Italia
– l’applicazione per Android non è installabile in Italia.
Tutte queste feature (a eccezione dell’applicazione) si attivano solamente se l’account Roku viene creato da una nazione che li supporta (ad esempio, gli Stati Uniti).
Se questo non bastasse, varie piattaforme di streaming italiane non sono disponibili: Amazon Prime Video non è disponibile tramite Roku in Italia (mentre è disponibile se l’account Roku viene creato dagli Stati Uniti). Altre piattaforme di streaming italiane come Infinity, Now TV, Sky Go, Chili TV, RaiPlay non sono disponibili del tutto.
I canali Roku offrono alcuni contenuti aggiuntivi gratuiti (con pubblicità) ma in inglese.
Varie recensioni online confrontano le caratteristiche tecniche del telecomando o dell’interfaccia grafica, ma ignorano completamente il grosso problema: a questa piattaforma MANCANO I CONTENUTI se vi registrate dall’Italia e cercate prodotti in italiano. Troverete Netflix, YouTube, AppleTV, CiaoTV e poco altro.
È un prodotto interessante per vari motivi, e se cercate contenuti esclusivamente in inglese è sicuramente valido, ma è molto deludente dal punto di vista del mercato italiano. Da un prodotto che costa quasi il doppio di un Amazon Fire Stick avevo aspettative più alte.