I bought one for myself and my mom. I like the streaming stick fairly well, I like how we can stream our pictures from various devices but the remote seems to have a short in it. If I was to purchase again, I would get the Roku 2, have one for our old Tv and never had any problems with it.
It has so many applications and I like it better than my old apple TV based on what's available, namely amazon prime streaming. My only criticism is the speed of it, I have very good internet but there's a delay at times where there was not with my apple tv.
I was led to understand the Roku stick would allow me to stream without cable or satellite accounts. I quickly discovered almost every channel I tried to add required me to enter my channel provider account info. I don't have a channel provider (only air TV using a smart TV) which is why I purchased the Roku stick. I don't see where the Roku provides my any benefit over just my smart TV.