With the launch of the Google TV Streamer earlier this week, the wildly successful Chromecast was put to rest, with the company confirming the device won’t be made anymore. Google’s reason for doing so makes sense, but does it really align with reality?
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The appeal of the Chromecast back in 2013 was that it was a super-cheap, very simple way to get your TV connected to the internet to watch content. No remote needed, and no apps either. It was all done through your phone rather than the TV itself.
That idea was born out of a time when smart TVs were still uncommon, so a cheap HDMI dongle to upgrade a TV made a big impact. But that’s met with the law of diminishing returns over the past 11 years. Even four years ago when the Chromecast with Google TV first launched, smart TVs were pretty ubiquitous, so a cheap dongle that offered a different way to access streaming apps wasn’t really needed for all users.
At this point, Google sees the main purpose of an external streaming device to be to improve the experience over what your TV already offers, and to act as more of a hub for the smart home. For the most part, your smart TV is just going to be as good as what a cheap Chromecast can really deliver.
And, on paper, that makes total sense.
Even the best smart TVs aren’t going to perform as well as a “premium” streaming device. For instance, the Shield TV and Apple TV are generally going to blow any smart TV’s performance out of the water. And that’s where Google is focusing now. On a device that actually improves the experience of using your TV.
That’s something that the Chromecast with Google TV didn’t really do. While Google’s dongle was updated more often and was perhaps a little more stable than your average smart TV, it wasn’t really an upgrade in terms of providing a faster experience, and also lacked enough storage to even have room for more apps. Even a cheap TCL or Hisense set with Google TV would often has twice as much storage and run a little faster after waking up from sleep, as we’ve brought out in reviews.
Lately, I’ve been using a Hisense U7G in my living room, and it’s a great example of Google’s point. This TV has plenty of horsepower and storage, and runs really well. It’s significantly faster than even a brand new Chromecast, and not too far behind the Shield TV I was previously using.
But my concern with Google’s reasoning, and more so its decision to just kill the Chromecast altogether, is that not everyone is buying a high-end smart TV.
The low-end options, especially the ones under $300, tend to be slow and inconsistent. Sometimes they’re fast, sometimes they’re unusably slow. There are exceptions, of course, but these are on average a rough experience. That’s where a $30 or $50 dongle can really play a role in delivering a meaningful upgrade. If you spent $300 on a TV, $30 or $50 is unquestionably worthwhile. But a $100 set-top box? That’s a harder argument.
In a poll we ran with the 9to5Google audience this week, just shy of half of those answering said they did use the apps built into their TV, while around 25% said they used a Chromecast or Fire TV Stick. Just 20% said they used a high-end streamer like the Nvidia Shield TV or Apple TV.
I think it will be interesting to see how long the Chromecast sticks around as Google lets the remaining stock drain. I’m sure it’ll be at least a few months, but when it goes out of stock, there will be a bit of a gap for Google TV. There are other brands ready and waiting to step in, such as Walmart’s Onn brand, Mecool, and many others, but the Chromecast is a name that millions of people know as the option for upgrading a TV. Without it, I think Amazon’s Fire TV Stick will quickly step in and take advantage of that lost market.
What do you think about the death of the Chromecast? Does Google’s argument hold up?
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