Review: Roku Streambar 4K Streaming Media Player and Soundbar

Hello everybody, and welcome back to ReadySitGeek. Today guys, we have the Roku Streambar, which retails for around £100, and as always, the link is in the description here.

If you get yourself a brand new 4K TV, probably one of the first things you'll say to yourself is that the speakers just aren't good enough. If you have a smart TV, you'll also notice that they always have one or two apps missing. That's normally Amazon Prime or Netflix. That's where the Roku Streambar comes in to save the day. UNCLEAR, and it's almost perfect.

The Roku Streambar is compact in size. I love the sort of dark gray fabric on the front and sides, and the black rubber top, which does attract the odd fingerprint, but they quickly fade away. On the front, there is also a little LED indicator, which is just about bright enough to see and not so bright so that it doesn't affect your viewing experience, especially when viewing in a dark room. On the back of the device, you have an HDMI 2.0 port with support for ARC, an optical audio input, a reset button, USB 2.0, which you can use to access video or music files stored on the device, depending on the age of your TV, of course, and the brand, but most people's TVs will have a USB already, but better to have it than not.

Also, on the back, there are two threaded mounting holes, which you can use to hang the Streambar on a wall, which I think is an absolutely brilliant idea. Sound-wise, you get four 1.9-inch drivers, two of which face forward, and the other two are on each side. Despite their small size, the Roku Streambar still produces an impressive and powerful sound, which is more than ample for filling an average sized room.

While testing out the Roku Streambar, I found music to be very interesting. The vocals were extremely good. The instruments, especially the guitars, were crisp, but the bass seemed to lack clarity and distinction. It was a similar story with movies and TVs. The vocals were fine, but the bass needs to be more refined. This is even with the bass boost mode selected. The low frequencies were just a bit muffled. With all this being said, I hope it goes without saying that the Streambar, even on its own, will vastly improve your viewing experience. For such a small speaker to be so powerful, it's a real surprise. Wait till you hear it yourself.

If you're in the US, you can actually buy extra units to accompany your Roku Streambar, but Roku don't seem to care about the UK because here, you can only buy the Streambar on its own, which is a real shame and disappointment.

In terms of the Roku Streambar's remote control, it's almost perfect. You have good space in between the buttons, a nice ergonomic and modern design, and voice commands that actually work, but you are stuck with the four preset buttons. I don't know who's in charge of deciding what goes here, but they need to get in their head that no one watches Rakuten TV.

The user interface on the Roku Streambar comes into its element. This is probably my favorite user interface. It's so simple, and the quad core processor makes it super-fast, which is of course perfect. It's so annoying when you're searching for something and it takes 5 minutes to spell it out, and then you realize you've misspelled it, and you have to go back, and it takes forever. This is perfect. I have no complaints whatsoever. You have pretty much all the apps you need, and they are always adding more, so you can download almost all of your favorites. I would say, if you're in the UK, there's no Sky Go, only NOW TV, which I think is probably Sky's fault and not Roku's.

Overall, I would highly recommend the Roku Streambar for your setup. I hate using this word because it sounds like I'm from the 50s, but it really is nifty. It's compact, powerful, and easy to use and install. It's an absolute delight to test. I would have liked to see some physical buttons on the top of the device just in case your phone is dead and you have no batteries or you can't find the remote. Otherwise, it's pretty much my favorite among all the products that I've featured on ReadySitGeek. If you want to make the purchase, the link is in the video description here. Other than that, thank you for watching ReadySitGeek, and I will see you on the next video.