Google has had a patchy history with video streaming hardware. The company’s earliest Chromecast devices were a hit at a time when streaming video from the cloud to our TVs was still a novel concept. But 2020’s Chromecast with Google TV, after initially sunny reviews (including one from AP), eventually let a lot of users down with specs that turned out to be insufficient over the long haul. The new Google TV Streamer is the company’s latest attempt at streaming hardware. A $100 set-top box rather than a budget-priced dongle, the Streamer offers better performance and more features than the Chromecast with Google TV, and overall, I like it — but I’m worried that yet another release with just-good-enough hardware might be setting us up for disappointment down the road again.
The Google TV Streamer offers decent performance and great streaming quality, but the Google TV experience here isn’t much different than what you’ll get anywhere else.
