Roku Streaming Stick Plus gets a price cut: It's now just $60
The best Roku gets even better.
- Self-taught tinkerer, informal IT and gadget consultant to friends and family (with several self-built gaming PCs under his belt)
The Roku Streaming Stick Plus just got a permanent $10 price cut. It's now officially $60, down from the $70 price it debuted at a year ago.
Even at its original price, the Streaming Stick Plus was enthusiastically given the CNET Editors' Choice Award, offering 4K HDR video, zippy performance, a remote that controls your TV's power and volume, and easy access to nearly any streaming app or channel on the market from Netflix on down, with the notable exception of iTunes and anything else in the Appleverse. Roku representatives have confirmed to CNET that the price cut is permanent.
A year later, though, is the Streaming Stick Plus still the best deal out there? It firmly beats the new $35 Chromecast (no 4K video, no Amazon Prime video). The forthcoming 2018 version of the Amazon Fire TV Stick for $50, meanwhile, will be a more daunting matchup when it arrives later this month -- though all the current Roku streamers are adding compatibility for Google Assistant in the near future, making them more formidable Alexa competitors.
Still, the biggest competition for the Streaming Stick Plus comes from Roku itself: For $10 less, the company's Roku Premiere Plus (review coming soon) is nearly identical to the Stick Plus, except for that its Wi-Fi is a bit less robust (no support for 5GHz bands and no 802.11ac/Wi-Fi 5 compatibility) and it's only available from Walmart. And if you don't need the fancier remote, the new, non-Plus Roku Premiere still handles 4K HDR video for a mere $40.
Call it a game of inches, with the Stick Plus winning by a nose.
Roku Streaming Stick Plus review (Editors' Choice): All of the 4K HDR streaming goodness, none of the fluff.
Roku Premiere doles out 4K HDR streaming for just $40: There's also a new $50 Premiere Plus.