The first item I would like to offer a review on is the Roku 3. I personally own a Roku 2 and Roku 3. What led me to want to purchase the Roku 3 or a similar device is probably the same reason you are reading this review now. I feel that cable companies (Optimum, Verizon, Time Warner, etc.) over charge and under deliver for their service. I also have a server at my home that contains quite a bit of data on it and I was looking for a way to stream pictures, music, and personal videos to my TV. Last, I was interested in having a device that would turn my TV into a “smart TV.”

During my searching I came across a variety of options and narrowed it down to Google Chromecast, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick, and Roku. I ultimately settled on the Roku for a number of reasons. There will be another blog where I will go into detail the differences I found between each of the above devices and why I ultimately decided on the Roku 3. The purpose of this post is instead to discuss what my thoughts are on the Roku 3.

Roku offers a variety of products (Roku Streaming Stick, Roku 1 – 4) each offering a variety of features and in my opinion all reasonably priced. This is the part where I get very honest. While I love my Roku 3, the only reason I chose it over the Roku 2 was because I got it for only $10 more. If I had to pay the true difference (currently $20) I may not have pulled the trigger on the Roku 3. I purchased my Roku 3 (and Roku 2) from Best Buy but you can also get it from Amazon. They will from time to time offer some really good discounts. So, I encourage you to check them out from time to time. The reason I may not have spent the extra $20 was because the only difference that I was able to discern, when purchasing, was that the Roku 3 came with headphones that you could plug into the remote, which did not strike me as a worthwhile $20 upgrade. WOW WAS I WRONG!

Now, besides the headphone feature I also found out that the remote does not have to be pointed at the Roku base station to operate it. In hindsight this is a bit of a “duh” because in order for the headphones to work information needs to be communicated between the remote and the base station and it would be very inconvenient if the only way to accomplish this was to have the remote continuously pointing at the base station.

The Remote

The reason I personally enjoy having the remote that comes with the Roku 3 is because it means I do not need the IR (infrared) sensor pointing at the base station. This is convenient because if you are like me you like to have a clean setup (minimal wires and minimal devices to stare at). In addition to that my wife is a very light sleeper and claims that the LED light on the front of the Roku wakes her up. True or not, its a non-issue with the Roku 3 because I can tuck it behind the dresser and everyone is happy!

The Headphones

As I mentioned before I did not think the headphones were worthy of a $20 upgrade. However, now that I have them, I do not know what I would do without them. It is very convenient to have these when I am trying to watch a show or listen to audio and my wife is either working on her school work or trying to sleep. I don’t know about you but I used to try and turn the volume down so that it wouldn’t disturb her but I could still watch. This was probably the worst idea I ever came up with because I couldn’t hear a thing and it would wake her before I could get it loud enough to enjoy whatever I was trying to watch.

Something else that I really enjoy about the Roku is that it isn’t proprietary (they aren’t in bed with anyone in particular like the Chromecast, Firestick, and Apple TV). So, I felt that as technology moved forward there was a better chance that Roku would continue to evolve and adapt to an ever changing market without limitations.

In the end I would strongly recommend the Roku 3 or Roku 2 (review to come) to anyone who was looking to enhance their home entertainment experience without paying costly prices for cable.