As promised from my Roku 3 review I am now writing my review on the Roku 2. After purchasing the Roku 3 I was so pleased that I went to get a second one. At the time I was using the Roku 3 in the living room and I had a WD Live TV box in my bedroom (I will do a write up on why I will not recommend that product to anyone later). Given the advantage of having the headphones in the Roku 3, which I discuss here, made it an excellent candidate for the bedroom, which meant I needed to replace the one in the living room.

As is my nature I started shopping around for deals. During that time I was reminded of the price difference between the Roku 3 and the Roku 2. I purchased mine from Best Buy but I encourage you to seek out deals from other stores as well (Amazon). I naturally started considering the feature enhancements that come with the Roku 3 and whether or not I truly needed them in the living room. I am after all a firm believer that it doesn’t make sense to spend money on things you do not presently or can not foresee needing. Needless to say I decided I did not need the headphones in the living room and therefore the Roku 2 was a satisfactory decision.

First, I would like to point out that the Roku 2 offers the same great quality and functionality as the Roku 3 (minus the bells and whistles). The first thing that stood out to me when I opened the package was that the remote was different. The Roku 2 has an infrared remote instead of the NFC (near field communication) remote that comes with the Roku 3. This was a duh moment for me because if you remove the need for headphones there is no sense in having the extra hardware in the remote. This also really was not that big of a deal for me since you can also download an app to your smartphone to control any Roku player if you don’t want to use the remotes at all. All it did mean is that you have to actually point the remote at the Roku box to control it (oh my… the horror! I know… hahaha). For those who remember the days when changing the channel required getting up and turning the knob this is probably even less of a big deal.

Outside of lacking the headphones and advanced remote control the Roku 2 and Roku 3 are very similar and I would even dare to say identical. I’m sure there are hardware differences on the inside but functionally and performance wise they are the same. The Roku 2 has become a welcome addition to our home and it was an even more exciting day because it allowed me to retire the WD Live TV box, which caused nothing but headaches.

That is all I have. Please feel free to comment and/or ask questions and continue the discussion.