The Onn Android TV UHD streaming device is one of the most affordable 4K-ready media streamers around, having launched earlier this year for $30 and currently selling for just $20.
And while one down side to buying many cheap Android phones is that they never received software updates, that hasn’t held true for this cheap Android TV dongle. The Walmart-exclusive device has released several updates in recent months, and the latest brings security, performance, and feature improvements.
As spotted by the folks at 9to5Google, an over-the-air update that’s rolling out to the Onn Android TV UHD streamer brings:
- October 2021 security patch
- Netflix performance enhancement
- Android TV home launcher update
- Auto HDR option
Previously users could either enable or disable HDR mode manually and the setting would stay at whatever you’d last selected. But now users have the option of selecting Auto mode, which will let the device select the setting that’s appropriate for the app you’re using.
Although Google recently released a new version of Android TV that’s based on Android 12, this update for Walmart’s media streamer is still based on Android 10. But that’s not a particularly big problem, since there are few user-facing differences between the two operating systems.
If you do want more control over the Onn Android TV UHD streaming device though, there are other options – you can install a custom ROM like LineageOS to gain root access, access a streamlined user interface, and run a more recent version of Android.