realme launched the 4K Smart Google TV Stick as the India’s first 4K Google TV Stick last month. It has HDR 10+ support, has dual-band Wi-Fi, HDMI 2.1 and comes with a Bluetooth voice remote control. Is this worth the price? Is this a better deal compared to Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and Mi Box 4K? Let us dive into the review to find out.
Box Contents
- realme 4K Smart Google TV Stick
- Remote
- Power Supply (5V-1A)
- micro USB Cable
- HDMI Extender
- User Guide
The realme 4K Smart Google TV Stick is a tiny little stick that is made of plastic and is similar to other TV sticks available in the market. It has a realme logo on the front along with an LED indicator. It measures 29.8 x 90 x 14.5 mm and weighs 30 grams.
You can see the model number RMV2105, Made in India branding, and it also mentions 5V-1A input on the back of the stick.
There is an HDMI port on the left side, and the company says that it supports HDMI 2.1. You can also see the micro USB power port on the side. Even though you can power the stick using the micro USB port on the TV, the company recommends using the power adapter since some TVs might not offer 5W output. It doesn’t have any other ports.
The remote resembles the one that comes with realme TVs with power button, microphone hole, mute button and nav pad, but this comes with Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video and even YouTube music shortcut buttons. You can also see back, Home and settings button, and the Google Assistant button is present between the volume buttons. The microphone on the remote picks up the voice commands clearly.
Software and apps
This is the first Android streaming stick to run on the latest Google TV platform that runs above Android TV, where you will find curated content from your multiple streaming services like Netflix, Prime, etc. This uses Google’s knowledge graph and user’s experience in creating personalized content, Google TV curates and organizes movies, shows, and more from across your apps and subscriptions into one place.
It runs Android TV OS 11 with August security patch.
You can find Search, Home, Apps and Library sections. The settings option give a notification panel on the side, similar to what you find on phones. The watchlist feature that lets you quickly bookmark and save any content that you plan to watch later. Watchlists can also be updated from the Google app on your smartphone.
There is Ambient mode that can show art gallery from curated images, weather, time, portrait Google photos from your profile, and can also automatically curate photos and display them as a screensaver.
Clicking the apps shows all the apps installed. It has Netflix, YouTube, Hotstar, Zee5, Voot, MX Player, Sunnxt, Sony Liv, Apple TV, Alt Balaji and YouTube Music pre-installed. You can download more apps and games from the Google Play Store.
Performance
The stick is powered by Amlogic Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A35 processor clocked at up to 2GHz and Mali G31 dual-core GPU. Navigation with the remote is smooth without any lags. The Google TV UI takes some time to get the best experience after turning on, and there is a slight lag when you open several apps in the background. It is not as smooth compared to Amazon Fire TV stick. Hope realme can fix it with an update.
The manufacture of the stick is Skyworth Digital. Out of 2GB of RAM you get 1.9GB of RAM. Out of 8GB of internal storage, only 4.49GB is usable.
It supports a lot of audio and video codecs and can play 4K video at up to 60fps. This includes H.265 HEVC, H.264 as well as MPEG 1/2/4. It natively supports RM, MOV, VOB, AVI, MKV, TS, Mp4 and 3D video formats, MP3, APE and FLAC audio formats with DOLBY and DTS.
The stick has HDR support, but it doesn’t have Dolby Vision. 12-bit color format is default, and there is no option to switch from SDR to HDR.
Since it has Widevine L1 certification, it can play up to 4K content on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other streaming apps, but we had issues with Netflix which didn’t play 4K content properly, but Amazon Prime didn’t have issues. However, Prime video doesn’t support Dolby 5.1 channel audio. We didn’t test it, but users have reported that Hotstar doesn’t support 4K. Hope realme will fix these issues in the future update.
Connectivity
It has Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2.4GHz/5GHz) and Bluetooth 5.0 (AIDA64 shows it has Bluetooth 4+). There is an HDMI 2.1 port. Since it is a streaming stick, there is no audio out or an option to connect external drives. In 5GHz Wi-Fi, it clocked 355Mbps download speed and 152Mbps upload speed in an 1Gbps connection, which is better than the Wi-Fi speed in some TVs.
Conclusion
So, should get the realme 4K Smart Google TV Stick? If you already have an old 4K non-smart TV that doesn’t run any streaming apps, this is a decent pick, but only after realme fixes the existing issues in the software. The new Google TV experience is good, and it has HDR support, but there is no Dolby Vision.
However, there is Amazon Fire TV stick that is selling an offer price of Rs. 2,999 instead of Rs. 5,999 launch price, and also comes with Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and doesn’t have any 4K or HDR streaming issues. The Mi Box 4k with audio out and a USB port is also a good option.
Availability
The realme 4K Smart Google TV Stick is priced at Rs. 3999, but it is available at an offer price of Rs. 2999 from Flipkart and Rs. 3499 from realme.com for a limited period.