Google Chromecast Ultra

7owners with an opinion

67%of verdicts positive

1/1positive/negative since 2024

0happy after 3+ years

Praised for portability and reliability; criticized for software and ease of use.

What people wrote

Likes it

It's like comparing the PSP's un-included HDMI cable setup to the Switch's slick integration of an HDMI dock and saying "well actually Sony did the portable to TV tech first". You plugged it in once to what used to be dumb TV's and in 2-3 presses I can have whatever was on my phone on my TV, with no fanagling with a USB to HDMI dongle into an HDMI cable, which may phone may or may not even support. And once it was playing you didn't really have to manage the connection for Youtube; Your phone could die and it'll still play since it's ultimately not actually extracting the content from your phone's network. > I thought it was beyond useless with its buggy and slow interface. The older Chromecasts' didn't really have an interface once you set it up. I just casted from phone, waited 5 seconds and it was done. Honestly prefer my Ultra to the newer Google TV dongles precisely because there's no unnecesary middleman interface. My phone should and did manage all of that.

Doesn’t like it

How much of this is an "end" to Chromecast and a rebranding of Chromecast to "Google TV Streamer"? It seems like the bare-bones experience of a Chromecast being tied to a phone (or browser) is getting replaced with an Apple TV like experience. If this is the case, it might be a (rare) example of a good branding shift from Google. I have had two Chromecasts (the original and an Ultra) and I feel like both were hampered by the phone requirement. Part of this is my house having kids without phone who would have liked to have access to Netflix, and part is due to my Apple TV use, which I use far more often. I'm sure there will be some loss of functionality here, but hopefully it's with the benefit of a much better user experience.

Likes it

I bought the founder's edition Stadia hardware and I'm thrilled with what I got out of it, personally. I got a free game system for years since they are giving everyone refunds. Played several AAA games I had no access to otherwise. Still going to have the, now free, Chromecast Ultra 4k with ethernet cable power adapter afterward too. It works fine even if I don't pair Stadia controllers with it. This Ubisoft initiative to transfer licenses to PC is actually worthless to me since my PC doesn't have a GPU capable of playing games anyway and I have no intention to buy one.

Likes it

I got one of the free promotional Controller + Chrome Cast Ultra "Premier Edition" bundles they were seeding to YouTube Premium customers out of sheer curiosity. I tried it for the free month, and hadn't taken the controller out of its box since (I do get a fair amount of use out of the Chromecast). The whole system is a _staggering_ technological achievement of (unnecessary) complexity getting a pile of devices closely synchronized over the network with ... absolutely no realistic use case. I just dug the controller out, it does work wired as a USB-C HID1.1 Gamepad device (18D1:9400). 2 analog sticks, 2 analog triggers, 15 buttons (including pressed/not pressed for the analog triggers), and an analog alias for the D-Pad (just returns min/max when pressed). Doesn't look like the 3.5mm headphone jack does anything when connected via USB, I'm not seeing a bonus audio device or anything. It doesn't look like it presents as a normal Bluetooth controller (by testing or by the docs https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9338851?hl=en ), I think the weird hybrid WiFi for comms/Bluetooth for pairing thing they did would require some hacking and/or published specs to use it wirelessly with anything other than a Stadia setup - or for Google to politely release a firmware update to enable normal BT controller behavior since they imply it's possible. They are apparently pretty nasty to get apart ( https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Google_Stadia_Controller ) for physical tampering…

Neutral

I just measured my Chromecast Ultra (earlier 4K model) at a wall power idle of 3.2 to 3.8 watts. Explains why it's always toasty. The Switch while charging two controllers, the TV, and the speaker bar idle at a total of 6.2 watts. I wish the Switch would turn off rather than use its battery when I kill power to the cradle. At that point I could probably develop the habit of hitting the power strip switch.

Doesn’t like it

Also, Chromecast (Ultra) now shows a YouTube app when casting to it. This app puts recommendations on the screen. Even with premium, ads will show when I select one to watch. There's an option to sign in, but if I select it, it just says I can't sign in. Also, with chromecast, it's really annoying that they allow multiple users to put videos in the queue, but only have my videos be ad free. It effectively removes the multiphone feature because I have to look up and play (and ruin my recommendations) on my phone anyways. One premium users being connected should be enough to kill all of the ads. I've also had ads rarely and randomly show up. If I had to guess, some "is this user premium" server was down, and it decided to default to "no", despite that being the explicitly frustrating experience for paying users.

Likes it

I built a good PC last summer to get more perfs and it's a joy to use: really silent compared to my laptop and so much faster. Work computers running on Manjaro: - Desktop AMD 5800X with 32GB RAM, bought in 2021 - Laptop Dell Precision 5520 with 32GB RAM, bought in 2017 Little homelab: - Ubiquiti Dream Machine - Synology NAS (DS918+) - 4x RaspberryPi 4 on Raspbian, forming a Kubernetes cluster with K3S - Ubiquiti UniFi Flex to power the Pis with PoE Otherwise: - A reMarkable - A Chromecast Ultra used for streaming games from my computer to the TV with Steam Remote Play, also works when at a hotel (!) - A RaspberryPi 3 connected to speakers, running a simple PulseAudio server that I can remotely connect to to stream audio (very little latency compared to the misc AirPlay implementations I tested)