Why buy a Roku rather than anything else
One reason above all others, and it is the reason we rank Roku first across the site: the home screen is a neutral grid of your apps.You arrange the tiles, they stay where you put them, and no single service owns the top row. Fire TV leads with Amazon’s own video; Google TV leads with a recommendation engine. Neither is dishonest, but the grid is the one you can hand to someone who does not want to learn an interface, and that is usually who is holding the remote when you are not in the room.
The practical consequences for a household that has just canceled cable: every mainstream service is present, there is no platform fee on any model, Roku’s own free ad-supported channel is included at no cost, and the search function tells you which of your installed apps actually carries a title. That last feature does more to replace the cable channel guide than anything else on the device.
How to choose between the three Rokus
1. Can you wire the TV?
This is the only question with a decisive answer. If yes, and if the TV in question is the one the household actually watches, the Ultra earns its price — a wired connection cannot be congested by a neighbor’s channel, slowed by a wall, or halved by an extender. If no, ignore the Ultra. Its remaining advantages over the Streaming Stick 4K are not worth the gap for most viewers.
2. Does your TV do Dolby Vision?
If it does not, the Streaming Stick Plus and the Streaming Stick 4K are functionally the same device and you should buy the cheaper one. If it does, the Streaming Stick 4K is the cheapest Roku that can feed it, and Dolby Vision is the one picture feature in this price range that is genuinely visible on content mastered for it.
Check the TV’s own specification rather than assuming. A great many 4K sets support HDR10 or HDR10+ and not Dolby Vision, in which case the Plus loses you nothing.
3. How far is the TV from the router?
Roku advertises a long-range wireless receiver on the Streaming Stick 4K and does not advertise one on the Plus. Roku publishes no throughput figure for either, so we cannot quantify the difference and we will not pretend to — but it is the right reason to pay the small step up for a TV at the back of the house. The alternative, if the room is genuinely bad, is to fix the Wi-Fi rather than the streamer: see our extender picks.
4. How many TVs?
Stay inside one platform. Roku’s remote, interface and account are consistent across every model, so a house with a Streaming Stick 4K in the living room and Streaming Stick Pluses in two bedrooms behaves like one system. Mixing a Roku and a Fire TV in the same house is the setup most likely to produce the question “which remote is this?” every evening.
What a Roku will not do
Three honest limits, because a page recommending something should state them.
No stick has an Ethernet port. Only the Ultra does. If your dead-zone problem is the TV room, no Roku stick solves it and you are fixing the network, not the streamer.
It does not receive broadcast television.A Roku streams over the internet. Your free local ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and PBS channels come from an antenna, and that is a separate and very cheap purchase — see best indoor TV antennas and how to get local channels without cable. A great many people buy a streaming device expecting locals and are disappointed.
It cannot record anything. If you want a DVR with no monthly fee, that is an over-the-air DVR connected to an antenna, not a streaming stick. Our OTA DVR picks cover it.
How much internet you need for a Roku
Less than most people assume, and the FCC publishes the figures rather than us estimating them: 3 to 4 Mbps for standard definition, 5 to 8 Mbps for HD, and 25 Mbps for Ultra HD 4K — per simultaneous stream. A household watching two HD streams and browsing is inside 20 Mbps.
Which means that when a Roku buffers, the cause is almost never the plan and almost always the last thirty feet: the signal between the router and the stick. That is worth knowing before you upgrade your internet package to fix a problem a $25 extender would have solved. Our free Wi-Fi fixes page runs the test that tells you which one you have.
One question we get asked more than any specification: no, Roku charges no monthly fee, and no subscription is required to use any of these three. The complete list of what does and does not cost money is on is Roku free.
Two neighboring questions
If you are not certain Roku is the platform you want at all, the Roku alternatives compare it against Fire TV, Google TV and Apple TV by the reason people switch. And if the player is fine but the remote is not, the best Roku remote costs a fraction of a new device and fixes the part your hand actually touches.
Two more Roku questions we answer in full. How long Roku sticks last covers what actually ends a player’s life — power, heat, app support, or the remote — and how to tell which one you have. And if your viewing is mostly your own media library, the best device for Plex explains why the Ultra is the only Roku in that conversation: it is the only one you can wire.
Buying a Roku for somebody else
If this is a present for a parent or grandparent, the decision changes shape: the remote and the home screen matter far more than the HDR format, and the ten minutes you spend signing in and pruning the app grid before you hand it over decide whether it gets used. We wrote that version of this page separately — the easiest streaming device for seniors compares Roku against Fire TV on exactly those grounds. And if you are still weighing whether to buy at all, is Roku worth it sets out the five tests and the one case where it is a waste of money.
