Roku Streaming Stick 4K

Our editorial rating, not aggregated user reviews

Reviewers have been near-unanimous that this is the streaming stick to buy if you want the box to get out of the way. Tom's Guide called it the new best streaming device on release, TechRadar praised the jump in start-up and app-switching speed over the old Stick+, and the Dolby Vision support puts it ahead of every stick at its price including Roku's own cheaper Streaming Stick Plus, which drops Dolby Vision entirely. It also does things Amazon will not: AirPlay from an iPhone, and a search that historically ranked results by what a title costs across services rather than steering you to one shop. So why not a nine. Because the thing people bought it for is being eroded from underneath. Roku's 2026 home-screen redesign, which it called its biggest update in more than a decade, added more advertised tiles, an AI recommendation strip and no opt-out, and the reaction from Pocket-lint and PCWorld was blunt: cluttered, ad-infested, and in one tested format an autoplaying trailer standing between you and the home screen. Roku is still the least aggressive of the big platforms, but the gap is closing and the trend runs the wrong way. Add the secondary annoyances that show up in review after review. The bundled Voice Remote takes AAA batteries, has no headphone jack, no backlight and no lost-remote finder, all of which you only get by paying up for the 4K+ and its Voice Remote Pro. There is no Twitch app, no cloud gaming and no sideloading. And UK reviewers at Cord Busters now steer most buyers to the cheaper Streaming Stick Plus unless Dolby Vision is the reason you came. None of that disqualifies it, which is why it sits in the eights rather than the sevens, but it is a long enough list to keep it out of the top band.