Roku Express 4K Media Streamer with Remote

When playing H265 encoded media on Plex, the video colour is super saturated. It's definitely not a good buy if you plan at all to have your own personal media connected and have any HVEC encoded files. Google this and you will find a bunch of people have this problem with multiple versions of Roku. I will have to return this since there is little hope for a fix as it doesn't seem to have been fixed for those other people either who have had the problem for some time with other Rokus. There is some slightly noticeable frame dropping/lag in the UI when selecting different items. The unit is just not powerful enough.

The Express 4K fixes some limitations that the Premier has. - Much better WiFi than the Premier. - Support for USB network adapters (I've not tested yet, but online reviews have confirmed that it works). First of all, this device definitely has 802.11ac WiFi. I have it connected to my 5ghz network, and get a solid 46mbps. This is a huge improvement over the Premier, which I could never get to stream 4K properly, because it's 2.4ghz only WiFi was so poor (I tried the Premier last year, but returned it). So if you're not able to get the Express 4k to connect to 5ghz WiFi, then you need to contact support. (Note, this is the Canadian version. It has a button for Crave on the remote). I've tested it with 4K 60fps HDR10 material on Youtube, and it's not dropped a single frame. Very impressive. However, doing so revealed one problem: This little box gets hot, and pushing it hard caused it to overheat (a warning comes up on screen). I rarely watch 60fps content, so hopefully this will not prove to be a problem at lower frame rates. But as a precaution, I'm going to buy an 80mm USB powered fan (connected to the TV) to put behind it. Roku really needs to improve their device's heat dissipation. Plastic boxes with no vents is poor design. The device is easy to use, and very responsive. Picture quality is excellent. One thing to note: On my Sony Bravia 900F, the Roku would not recognize HDMI port 3 (on side of TV) as supporting 4K HDR. Even forcing the config did not work. I had to plug it into the passthrough connector on my sound bar, which is plugged into the ARC HDMI port on my TV. After doing this, the Roku automatically configured to 4K HDR. Strange.

Roku support tech (likely not up to date) had confirmed the Express 4K does NOT support 5G and there must be an error on the box and Roku's site :-/ --wrong information. After some tests it turns out Roku's 802.11AC can ONLY receives 5Ghz channels 1-46 and 149-161. Every other IoT, SmartTV, or Mobile Phone in Canada can receive 5Ghz in all allowed channels, even 5Ghz DFS channels, but Roku canNOT receive 5Ghz via DFS channels even indoors...hence major 5G Wi-Fi issues. on...I'm not sure what Roku was thinking...but that's a problem. If congested 2.4G and very limited 5G support is not going to cause your 4K issues, then you'll be OK. The limited 5G support was a SHOW-STOPPER for me.

So far, easy to use, fast, reliable. Bought it because Chromecast built into my TV is unreliable. My old Roku does not have 4K and is quite slow. Also, glad it's not an Apple, Google, or Amazon product.

We have a perfectly good TV and once we experience Roku on our daughter's TV, we considered buying a Roku TV. But then....we found out about the Roku Express Streamer and the rest is history. Kept the TV and watch Roku daily. Nice and easy to set up and haven't had any problems with the unit so far. Love it!