Buy Roku. The reason is the remote and the home screen
If you are buying a streaming device for an elderly parent, buy a Roku. Not because Roku’s picture is better — on a given television you will not be able to tell the two apart — but because of two things that decide whether an older viewer can use the thing without you on the phone.
The first is the home screen.Roku’s is a grid of app tiles, in the order you arrange them, and it stays in that order. The tile that was third from the left last Tuesday is third from the left today. Fire TV’s home screen is a wall of video recommendations and promoted titles that reshuffles as Amazon’s merchandising changes, and the app someone wants is frequently not where it was. For a viewer who has learned the position of an icon rather than the look of it, that difference is the whole ballgame.
The second is the remote.Roku’s remote has roughly half the buttons of a cable remote, a clear direction pad, and named app buttons printed on it. A Fire TV remote adds navigation layers and an Alexa button that, when pressed by accident, makes something unexpected happen. Fewer buttons is not a minor convenience here — it is the difference between a device that gets used and one that sits unplugged behind the television.
There is one case where Fire TV genuinely wins, and it is worth being fair about: if the person already has Alexa speakers in the house and talks to them, Fire TV’s voice control slots into a habit they already have. That is a real advantage for a real household, and it is the only reason we would send you the other way.
What actually to look for, in the order it matters
1. Will it reach the Wi-Fi?
This is the number one reason a streaming stick bought for a parent ends up in a drawer, and it has nothing to do with the device’s interface. A parent’s television is often in the back room, the furthest point in the house from a router that was installed wherever the phone line came in. The stick either refuses to complete setup or buffers every few minutes, and the conclusion drawn is “this thing does not work.”
Two defenses. First, buy the Roku model whose listing publishes a long-range wireless receiver — that is the Streaming Stick 4K, and it is the main reason we pick it over the cheaper Streaming Stick Plus. Second, know the floor you need: against the FCC’s published broadband guidance, standard-definition streaming wants a few megabits and HD wants more, so a connection that is fine for email can still be marginal for video. If the room is genuinely bad, fix the coverage with a Wi-Fi extenderor wire the television and use a Roku Ultra — do not expect any stick to out-radio the problem.
2. Fewer buttons, and buttons you can see
Count the buttons on the remote before you buy. Then think about the room: older eyes in a dimly lit living room cannot read unlit black-on-black lettering. Roku’s Voice Remote Pro (2nd Ed.) publishes backlit buttons and a rechargeable battery, which solves both the dark-room problem and the battery-drawer problem in one purchase. It is the single best accessory on this page, and for some households it matters more than which stick is underneath.
3. Is anything going to ask for a password?
Every app sign-in is a future phone call. Do all of them yourself during setup, on the device, before it leaves your hands. Then delete the apps nobody will use. A home screen with four tiles on it is a usable home screen; one with twenty is a maze.
4. Does it need to survive a power cut?
Streaming does not. A television antenna does, and this is where we will contradict the premise of the page slightly in the interest of being useful: if the person you are buying for mainly watches the local news, the weather and the network channels, the thing that serves them best is an indoor TV antenna, which is free forever, needs no account, no password and no internet, and keeps working when the broadband drops. Check what is receivable at their address first with the FCC’s reception map. Many households want both, and the antenna is the one they will thank you for.
The ten-minute setup that prevents the phone calls
Do this before you leave, not over the phone afterwards. It is the difference between a gift that works and a gift that becomes a monthly support contract.
Sign in to everything. Every service, on the device, with your own hands. Write the account details down somewhere you will still have them in two years.
Prune and sort the home grid. Remove every app they will not use. Move the three or four that remain to the top-left corner, in the order they watch them. On Roku this takes about ninety seconds and it is the most valuable ninety seconds of the whole install.
Turn captions on system-wide.Not per app — in the Roku settings, so they apply everywhere by default. Set the text size up one notch while you are there.
Label the input.Tape a card to the side of the television that says which HDMI input the stick is on and which button on the television remote gets there. “The TV has no picture” is almost always the wrong input, and this card solves it without a call.
Reduce the remote count.If the television and the streaming stick now need two remotes, see whether the Roku remote can be set to control the television’s power and volume — it usually can, which lets you put the television’s own remote in a drawer and leave exactly one remote on the arm of the chair.
When not to buy anything at all
If the television is already a Roku TV, the interface in this entire article is built into it and a streaming stick adds nothing but a second remote and a wrong-input problem. Check the back of the television and the home screen before you spend money. In that situation the useful purchase is a replacement or upgraded Roku remote— ideally the backlit one — and nothing else.
And if the complaint you are actually solving is “the channels I used to watch are gone since the cable was canceled,” read how to cut the cord in the right order first. A streaming stick is the easy half of that job. Getting the local channels back is the half people forget, and it is the half that an older viewer notices immediately.
One related purchase worth thinking about at the same time. If you are setting this up for someone and will be supporting it from a distance, the router matters as much as the remote: the easiest router to set up is chosen for the things that generate phone calls — firmware that updates itself, recovery after a power cut, and an app you can be added to so you can check the network from another city.