![]() It boots you right into the home menu where you can see all the apps you have downloaded, and the app store is visible immediately. Now, obviously, ease-of-use is pretty subjective - some things that come easy to us won’t come easy to you necessarily - but, that caveat aside, we feel that Roku is the easier of the two platforms. Neither Amazon or Roku are particularly great at playing games - you’ll want an Nvidia Shield or Apple TV for that - however both can access Kodi by side-loading. In terms of Roku devices, you've got the high-end Roku Ultra, mid-range Roku Premiere and Roku Express alongside the Roku Streaming Stick+ that does 4K/ HDR streaming with a longer range than the Roku Premiere, but doesn't have Dolby Vision like the Roku Ultra. It also has a slightly better search function that scans more subscription services for content, and it has a built-in feature that tracks when shows and movies come to the streaming services you subscribe to - a great feature when you want to find something new to watch and don't want to check each service individually. That’s great for cord-cutters, and folks who want extra options when looking for something to watch. ![]() Roku doesn’t care which streaming service you use and makes almost all of them available on its hardware - and now has a free, ad-supported streaming service of its own called The Roku Channel that’s available right out of the box. The key selling points for Roku are that it’s platform-agnostic - i.e. Pictured: Amazon Fire TV Cube (Image Credit: Amazon) If it's the former, you should go for the aforementioned Amazon Fire TV Stick or Fire TV Stick Lite, while folks interested in the latter should check out the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and Amazon Fire TV Cube. If you're picking between the Amazon Fire TV devices, you just want to ask yourself if you want 1080p streaming or if you want 4K streaming. Add to that the ability to manage your calendar and keep track of your shopping lists, and it’s easy to see why having Alexa is a huge boon for Fire TV. It works almost exactly the same as a smart speaker, except you can ask Alexa to call up some videos for you, too. ![]() That said, however you slice it, having Alexa on a streaming video player is pretty cool. That’s great if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber… and maybe not so great if you don’t want to pony up for Amazon’s subscription service. Sure, Roku can also access Amazon Video, but the streaming service is brought front and center on Amazon streaming hardware. When you think about Amazon Fire TV, you should really be thinking about the Amazon Video streaming service and Alexa voice assistant, as those are its defining features. ![]()
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