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- High-quality 4K streaming with Dolby Vision and Atmos support
- Useful smart home features
- Google TV UI makes your content more accessible
- No Wi-Fi 6
- Voice search could still be improved
- Expensive
It’s nearly five years since Google shifted away from the smartphone-based streaming of the old Google Chromecast puck, and finally delivered a device to compete with Apple TV and Amazon’s Fire TV range.
But time has not been kind to Chromecast with Google TV. Even at launch it was overpriced and lacking in key streaming apps. While the software has matured since, it now feels a little slow and clunky. It’s time for a replacement in the shape of the Google TV Streamer (4K).
Google TV Streamer (4K) review: What you need to know
Given that there’s no TV Streamer (HD), I’m a little lost as to why the (4K) needs to be sheltered by parentheses, but it represents another step on from the original Chromecast vision. Where the Chromecast with Google TV was still a compact puck that plugged directly into an HDMI socket, the Google TV Streamer (4K) is a completely separate unit that needs to be hooked up to your TV with a cable.
The internal hardware has been improved with a new MediaTek quad-core processor and double the old model’s 2GB of RAM, which Google claims makes it overall 22% faster. With 32GB rather than 8GB of storage, there’s also more space to install apps. Disappointingly, Wi-Fi is stuck at Wi-Fi 5 rather than Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E.
The TV Streamer (4K) supports Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and HLG, along with Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Atmos. You can pair it with a pair of Pixel Buds Pro earphones for spatial audio.
It’s also a Matter Hub for smart home connectivity, and supports Thread to help compatible gadgets connect smoothly. You can control your Google Home setup using a built-in panel within the Google TV interface.
Price and competition
The most obvious competitors for Google TV Streamer (4K) are Amazon’s Fire TV devices, particularly the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd Gen) at £70 and the Amazon Fire TV Cube (3rd Gen) at £140.
The TV Streamer (4K) comes in at £99, putting it in between the two, a tricky spot when the Fire TV Stick 4K Max also supports 4K Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos and has Wi-Fi 6E onboard, though it doesn’t have the Google box’s smart home capabilities.
Otherwise, you have Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K (£50), which also supports Dolby Vision, and the 2022 Apple TV (£150). The latter has evolved into something that’s as much an apps and gaming platform as a TV streaming box, although the high price means it only really makes sense if you’ve invested in Apple’s whole phone, tablet and entertainment ecosystem.
Design
The new unit’s pill shape and sloping profile does a great job of minimising its 162 x 76 x 25mm size, and it looks good shoved into your TV cabinet or lurking under the screen. There’s no visible logo except on the rubber non-slip base, and the only features on the rear are a reset button, the USB-C port used to power the unit via the supplied adapter, a Gigabit Ethernet port and an HDMI 2.0 output. Note that you’ll need to provide your own video cable, which is a bit of a pain.
Meanwhile, the remote has evolved from the previous version, with a circular D-pad with central select button at the top, back and home buttons underneath, then microphone, volume and mute controls, plus shortcut buttons for YouTube, Netflix and a customisable shortcut button, which you can allocate to another app. The power button in the bottom left corner will turn on both the TV Streamer (4K) and your TV, so you don’t need to keep your TV remote handy all the time, unless you’re switching to another input.
There’s a sense that Google has made the hardware smooth and minimalist so you can focus on the software, which is by far the most interesting part of this particularly product. Google TV has matured quite nicely. You can set it up quickly through the Google Home app on your phone, and in many cases it will sign in automatically to your chosen streaming apps if you’ve used them on previous Android or Google TV devices. Where that doesn’t happen, you can usually sign in quickly through your phone, either using QR codes or existing apps.
Once you have everything installed, the Home screen throws up a wide range of content from across your TV services, including programmes, movies and the odd YouTube video. You’ll see recommendations, which actually (shock! horror!) bear some relation to shows and films that you’ve been watching, along with trending shows to let you know what everyone else is viewing.
There are separate pages for Movies, Shows and Apps, and you can search through everything via voice control. The experience isn’t perfect. There’s still that weird disconnect where, say, your Amazon Prime Video or Disney+ profile isn’t tied into your Google profile, so you still have to select it each time you select a show to watch, but it is now one of the best, most consistent smart TV experiences around.
It’s also worth mentioning that the UI has a separate page for your Google movies and TV library, making finding content there a whole lot easier than going through the YouTube app.
Performance
TV streaming interfaces have changed in the last two years to make more use of slick transitions and video previews while you’re selecting what to watch. This has had the unfortunate side effect of making some older or less capable hardware look painfully slow. It’s no problem with the TV Streamer (4K). Everything moves fast, there’s little delay when loading apps or content, and everything feels smooth.
I ran some tests comparing the TV Streamer (4K) with the Amazon Fire TV 4K Max, and Google’s new streamer does a decent job of keeping up. It took longer to load and play John Wick 3 from Amazon Prime Video, at 6.91 seconds rather than 3.59 on the 4K Max, but there was little difference when streaming Squid Game from Netflix. The TV Streamer (4K) also had Andor up and running faster on Disney+, taking 3.98 seconds to the 4K Max’s 7.47 seconds.
As for picture and audio quality, the TV Streamer (4K) does an excellent job. 4K movies supporting Dolby Vision and Dolby Digital audio look and sound every bit as good on Google’s box as on the Fire TV Max and, if anything, slightly crisper and more vibrant than when watched through my LG OLED TV’s built-in apps.
We had some complaints with the first Chromecast with Google TV when it came to software, particularly the lack of certain key apps and a tendency to push you towards Google content purchases when the content you were looking for was freely available elsewhere.
Google TV now supports the full range of major UK streaming services, including NowTV, BBC iPlayer and the Channel 4 app, and there are even shortcuts to stream different channels live, although it has no electronic programme guide (EPG) or live info on what’s showing right now.
Meanwhile, search results will now prioritise services you subscribe to when you’re looking for a specific show or movie. If I ask to watch Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, I get the Disney+ movie rather than the store page on YouTube or Amazon Prime Video.
I still think the search could do better. It’s great that you can search for content produced by a certain director or with a specific actor involved, and it’ll give you results across your streaming services. However, more complex searches such as “Find me films directed by Kevin Costner and starring Kevin Costner” gave me a mass of irrelevant results, while “Find me films directed by the director of Guardians of the Galaxy” gave me a page on James Gunn, but no results in terms of actual movies.
The smart home stuff is interesting. If you have lighting or audio set up with Google Home, you can now control it from a panel on your TV screen, which is handy when you want to quickly pause a movie and dim the lights in your living room, or turn off a light that you’ve left on upstairs. I’m not sure it’s a huge selling point when you can do the same thing from your smartphone, but it’s useful if you don’t have it sitting nearby.
Finally, Google’s Chromecast capabilities remain a big point in the TV Streamer (4K)’s favour. Being able to stream video and audio content from your smartphone is always a plus, especially with apps that might not be available on your TV. The TV Streamer (4K) might have left the Chromecast branding behind, but it still makes casting seamless, so wins a few extra brownie points for that.
Google TV Streamer (4K) review: Verdict
Google hasn’t quite perfected the TV streamer, but it’s getting a lot closer. The hardware is discreet, stylish and speedy, and the software now works a whole lot better than it did when the Chromecast with Google TV first launched. If you’re already deep into Google’s ecosystem – and especially Google Home – the TV Streamer (4K) is an excellent buy.
The only problem is that Amazon’s hardware is cheaper, and while I personally prefer Google’s interface, which isn’t constantly pushing Amazon stuff at you, it does almost all of the same stuff. With new hardware from Roku just appearing, there’s a risk that Google’s device still looks slightly overpriced, but on balance I think it just about justifies the money. This is easily Google’s strongest TV streamer yet.
