I like discovering offers on gadgets that pull double responsibility, because it feels prefer it’s stretching my greenback even additional. That’s why Google’s discounted TV Streamer (4K) caught my consideration this week. It’s not only a highly effective streaming machine but in addition a fantastic good residence hub — one you’ll be able to at the moment seize from Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and Google for round $84 ($16 off), which is simply $5 shy of its lowest worth thus far.
Google’s riches set-top field is a transparent improve over the corporate’s prior streaming dongle, the Chromecast with Google TV. It continues to run on the corporate’s intuitive Google TV software program and helps each Dolby Imaginative and prescient and Dolby Atmos, whereas providing entry to a big selection of streaming apps. Nonetheless, beneath the hood, it packs twice as a lot RAM and 4 occasions the quantity of storage. The included distant additionally includes a new customizable shortcut button, and now you can use the field itself to ping your distant when you’ll be able to’t discover it.
However what really units the streaming machine aside is what it does past streaming. It doubles as a superb good residence hub with help for Matter, Thread, and Google Assistant voice controls by way of the distant. It additionally includes a built-in ethernet port for dependable connectivity and a brand new good residence panel, which helps you to management appropriate good residence gadgets, corresponding to lights and thermostats, instantly out of your display. You’ll be able to even use it to view reside digicam feeds in your TV and pull up a livestream when somebody rings your video doorbell.