When the Roku 4 was released by the American tech company late last year, it was up against strong competition in the Amazon Fire Stick and the Apple TV. However, Roku was not actually overly concerned with its closest competitors but with how Roku 4 fares with the Roku 3.
The Roku 3 has been known over the last two years before the official roll out of the Roku 4 as the gold standard in streaming. The company has certainly come out with a perfect streaming product that its competition finds difficult to match.
True to the hype, however, the Roku 4 proved to be the hands down best video streaming system that money can buy, offering more options than any one competitor.
Most of all, it actually filled in the big shoes of the Roku 3 and has subsequently taken on the title as the gold standard in streaming, notes Tech Radar.
Quality and superb viewing come with a price so the Roku 4 came out as the most expensive in the lot when compared to its competitors and also the other roster of Roku streaming devices. However, its features and specifications far outweigh every streaming device in the market today so the rather small difference in cost is practically well worth it.
The era of 4K viewing
The 4K standard for televisions these days is also known as Ultra HD, which means that the resolution is 3840 x 2160 or sometimes shortly referred to as 2160p or 2160 pixels. That is actually double the 1080p for an HD TV set.
In short, 4K packs in four times as many pixels which allow for sharper details. While most cable and satellite providers are still hashing out their 4K plans, a number of online services including Netflix and Amazon have already started streaming videos in the higher-resolution format.
With the emergence of 4K streaming on the Fire TV, Amazon’s latest streaming device, and the Roku 4, it also came with new requirements. One of the most important of which is 4K TV and that it must have at least one HDMI input that supports HDCP 2.2 copy-protection standard, details the Tech Hive.
Comparing the Amazon Fire TV and the Roku 4 in terms of 4K viewing, users would certainly enjoy it using the latter. The Fire TV makes a cyclical video output from 2160p to 1080p, unlike the Roku 4 which always outputs at 2160p.
Roku also offers a handy ‘4K Spotlight’ app that brings some of its content to the surface. It may not be pretty but at least it provides a glance at what the box can do, which cannot be done with the Fire TV.
Surprise competition
Since Roku 4 officially made it to the retail market in October last year, it has set the bar in video streaming. The device also works best with a 4K TV, which is already considered as Ultra HD, and with its quad-core processor, it has an amazing OS that is capable of streaming 4K videos at 60 frames per second with hardly any problem at all.
For its price of $129, Roku 4 is faster, more well-rounded, and more open than any product that Roku has released in recent years. It borrowed from the great features of its predecessors and adding more to its legacy in equal measure.
The Roku 4 is also the most egalitarian streaming set-top box there is in the market today. It does not promote streaming services, it actually allows the consumers a freedom of choice. It does not care if the user picks Netflix over Amazon, or Vudu over Hulu.
With its closest competition being kept at bay, Roku actually did the almost unthinkable by coming up with a new Roku Streaming Stick, which the company announced recently. The new stick is thinner and longer compared to the first one.
The surprising thing is that the new streaming stick, which is an update from its first version released several years ago, came out as good as the other high-priced comparable products including the Roku 4.