We bought the streaming stick for my mother in law who needed an alternative to cable. We tried for years to get her to use services like Netflix and Hulu, but the process of figuring out if a show was available, and if it was what service had it was simply too hard, and in the end, all of the tablets and devices were left uncharged on the counter.
The Roku Streaming Stick made it easy. She didn't want to learn something new, she only wanted to watch her shows and a she already know how to use a TV and a remote.
She can now EASILY find what she is looking for using Roku's amazing search feature that searches across every available service to find what you want and never has to ask for help. She LOVES it and so do we.
so I already own a Chromcast and I am quite pleased with it . I noticed that on Roku I could stream Acorn.tv. Glory glory know more laptop in lap tablet in hand but could stream my favorite channel,( if you like English mysteries etc are English or like all things English) this is your channel. Now 45 days later love Roku for all the other channels an just gave the Chromcast to a friend.
Just as good as the box, at least for me. I don't use the head phones jack or the game ability and my WIFI is strong so I don't need the hard wire. I get all the functionality of a Roku box at half the price. Great addition to the Roku family. Well worth the price and honestly I would have paid more :) but that is our secret.
I have a roku 1 and a rokus HD. We bought the roku stick thinking we didn't need to plug it into a power source. We wanted to eliminate cords. However when we received it we were disappointed that we still needed to plug it in. We kept it anyway. It seems to run slower and has interruptions that the regular roku does not have. Other than that very good product.