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Walmart has been selling media streaming devices from companies Roku, Google, Xiaomi, Apple, NVIDIA, and TiVo for years. But now Walmart is launching its own line of Android TV devices under its in-house Onn brand.
A $30 Onn 4K media streamer and $25 Onn FHD Streaming Stick showed up on the Walmart website in May, and some units were even on sale in brick and mortar stores – Elias from AFTVNews walked into a Walmart, bought one, and posted a hands-on review.
But it turns out that they were supposed to officially launch next week – and that’s when you should be ale to easily place an order online or pick one up in most Walmart stores. TechCrunch reports that Walmart just sort of jumped the gun by posting product pages on its website a little early.
Both of Walmart’s new media streamers are powered by Google’s Android TV software and they should both be capable of streaming content from popular services including Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, Apple TV+ and Amazon.
The 4K model seems to be a much better deal unless you really have your heart set on a stick rather than a dongle. It has a faster processor and more memory, which not only mean it can handle higher-definition video streaming, but the user interface should be a little more responsive and games or apps should run a little better (although if you want a gaming device, the NVIDIA Shield TV is still the Android TV box to beta).
More importantly, at $30, the Onn 4K Android TV device is one of the cheapest 4K media streamers to date… although just barely. You can pick up a Roku Premiere 4K HDR device for just $4 more.
Still, I guess it’s nice to have choices. And next week you’ll have a few more.
via TechCrunch, AFTVNews, and Liliputing (1)(2)
The 4K model seems like a significantly better purchase. For only $5 more, you’re getting an SOC that is 65% more powerful in benchmarks (34,000 vs 56,000 Antutu score), and it has proper support for h265 video decoding (it supports 10-bit 4K h265 video).
Also, it appears the Wifi hardware in the 4K model is better. They both support up to 802.11ac, but the 4K model has a MIMO antenna array (2 transmit, and 2 receive antennas), so it will achieve a much higher connection speed, and much better reliability. That alone is worth the $5, several times over.
The Roku Premiere might look like a close competitor at $34, but it uses extremely inadequate Wifi hardware for 2021, it has an 802.11n single-band adapter, which means that it’s only able to use 2.4ghz 802.11n (maybe 50mbps in absolute peak conditions, and probably 15-20mbps in average conditions). The 802.11ac MIMO adapter in the Onn 4K should be able to support closer to 700-900mbps in average conditions.
Does it support VP9 and AV1? Would be incredible if it did. One of the excuses Google gave for withdrawing YouTube TV from Roku is lack of AV1 support.
Both the $25 stick, and the $30 4K box support VP9. The stick only supports VP9 up to 1080p@60fps, and the 4K box supports VP9 up to 4K@60fps. This is just as per the specs from the SOCs.
Neither of them support AV1 hardware decoding.