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Roku Ultra 2020 Review: More Speed, More Features, and a Bit More Ultra - Cord Cutters News

Roku Ultra 2020 Review: More Speed, More Features, and a Bit More Ultra - Cord Cutters News

Roku Ultra 2020 Review: More Speed, More Features, and a Bit More Ultra - Cord Cutters News
Oct 15, 2020 2 mins, 54 secs

The latest Roku Ultra is here and the company’s promising a faster, more feature-rich iteration of its top-of-the-line dedicated streaming device.

Of course, this isn’t the first Roku device to bear the name “Ultra” and the 2019 version took the top spot in our recent Roku vs.

It’ll be up to you to determine whether that makes for a more upscale streaming device, but it seems like it’ll resist fingerprints bit better than the 2019 model.

Roku’s product details tout a “new and improved” processor in this new Ultra, breaking away from the ARM Cortex A53 chip that’s powered a whole host of Roku devices in the past, including last year’s Ultra, as well as the Express, Streaming Stick and Premiere lines.

Overall, the 2020 Roku Ultra boasts a promising list of upgrades, but the proof is in the streaming.

Like we said earlier, our 2020 Roku Ultra review unit wasn’t equipped with version 9.4 so it more or less behaves like you’d expect if you’ve used a Roku device in the past few years.

With Dolby Vision now included, we naturally set about testing the new Ultra on some content that supports the fancy HDR format.

We checked out Dolby Vision offerings on services like Apple TV+ and Disney+, including streaming a 4K version of Thor Ragnorok — for… research purposes.

By default, though, our 2020 Ultra enabled Dolby Vision HDR mode at all times, including the home screen and other content that doesn’t actually support HDR.

TiVo has since addressed the issue, and thankfully the Roku Ultra lets you disable having Dolby Vision on at all times by heading to Settings.

However, we should note when we turned off that feature and then immediately returned to a 4K Dolby Vision stream of Thor Ragnorok, the Ultra froze and reset itself.

So yes, the setup process was straightforward and Dolby Vision offers up the expect depth and detail (despite one isolated hiccup), but how does this new 2020 Roku Ultra perform overall, and does it provide an upgrade over last year’s version.

When we conducted our first comparison, the 2019 Roku Ultra prevailed with an overall time of 78.17 seconds, the only sub-100-second time in our tests.

Yep, that’s the 2020 Roku Ultra scoring an overall time of 66.63 seconds, or a little under 15% faster than last year’s version?

So in the interest of fairness, we pulled out the 2019 Ultra, updated all its apps and software, and put it through the tests one more time?

So yes, performance-wise the 2020 Roku Ultra is a bit more Ultra than last year’s model.

In the end, Roku’s top-of-the-line Ultra remains its highest performing dedicated streaming box, outpacing last year’s Ultra by a solid margin in each our speed tests?

And of course, Dolby Vision hardware compatibility doesn’t mean much unless you can also enjoy supported shows and movies, so you’ll get more value out of this feature if you have, say Disney+, Apple TV+, or Netflix’s Ultra HD/HDR plan.

Beyond that though, the 2020 Roku Ultra still offers some welcome features in a familiar, dependable bit of hardware even if you don’t need fancy HDR support.

For now though, if your looking for a top-of-the-line, feature-packed streaming box, the 2020 Roku Ultra deserves a good, long look.

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

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