Tested: Roku Ultra | Thoughtful little touches

The all-new Roku Ultra player is more powerful, but that’s not the point. Rechargeable remote control, voice commands, home channels, compatibility with Bluetooth headphones and projection of iOS and Android devices are some of the touches added to this device, for which you have to pay a little more.

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For 14 years now, a small company from San Jose, California, Roku, has been playing in the big leagues with its HDMI boxes and keys, in competition with Apple TVs, Chromecasts and other Fire TV Sticks. Its original selling point, making all TVs smart by giving access to thousands of internet channels, seemed to us to weaken over the years, with all new TVs now being connected.

The best argument that the company’s spokespersons have often given us has long been the Roku interface, those big colorful tiles in which it’s so easy to navigate to find your own selection of channels among the 5000 or so offered at the last count. It is always the same, hardly modified over time and always so clear. And the menu itself is 4K, which some TV makers don’t offer.

Let us specify it here, because we receive our share of questions on this subject each time: you still need a paid subscription for channels like Netflix or AppleTV+. There are also thousands of free apps and channels, of very uneven quality.

The Roku Ultra is touted as the manufacturer’s “fastest and most powerful player” and yes, its quad-core processor is nimble, jumping from menu to menu without delay and beating all our other TVs to launch Netflix or Disney+, skip forward or backward, or play 4K content at up to 60 frames per second without lag. An Ethernet port gives a more stable connection to the internet. A USB 3.0 port also allows local playback of videos or photos stored on a disc or USB key.

Roku devices were the first in 2020 to stream screen content from Apple devices with AirPlay; the function had been offered for a few years for Android.

The Roku Channel offers a TV guide of a hundred free live channels, from ICI Radio-Canada Télé to Reuter News, including obscure programs specializing in westerns, cooking or series from the 1960s.

Roku also offers free exclusive content, like the movie Weird about the life of Al Yankovic and series with Martha Stewart, but he is still a minor actor.

The new Roku Ultra player has a rechargeable remote that wired headphones can be plugged into. There is also a built-in microphone for voice commands. They work, nice surprise, in French and allow you to ask to launch a search with keywords. ‘Tom Cruise Movies’ will show all of the actor’s work, across all channels available on Roku.

Little thoughtful touch: you can ring the remote control to find it. Yes, but how do you access this menu if you don’t have the remote control handy? With his phone, quite simply, and the app Roku makes it a replacement remote.

Much appreciated novelty, and which overcomes a weakness at Roku: you can now pair Bluetooth headphones with the Roku Ultra, and no longer only the speakers provided by Roku.

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You can call out to the Roku Ultra without pressing the Microphone button on the remote, by saying “Hey Roku!” “. But the device is a little hard on the sheet, takes time to hear the command and understands very little of the instructions.

At $129.99, it’s not the lowest price in town for this type of device.

Internet channels that are not offered with Roku are rare. Unfortunately, and the fault lies with Radio-Canada, Tou.tv is one of those absent.

One buys ?

The Roku Ultra is very interesting for the owner of a TV that is still functional, but too old to have access to certain functions like AirPlay or obviously too slow. The Roku device gives it a welcome boost.

If you already have the latest Sony, Samsung, or LG TV, almost all of the features of the Roku Ultra are already built in, although they aren’t necessarily as efficient and user-friendly.