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Roku Ultra 2024 Review: The Ideal Streaming Upgrade for Home Theater Enthusiasts
AT A GLANCE
Plus
Excellent Video Quality with Dolby Vision and HDR10+
Excellent Dolby Atmos Sound Separation
Backlit hands-free voice remote control with mute switch
Minus
No headphone jack on remote
Shortcut button can’t be programmed for specific apps
Search results favor Roku Channel offerings
The Verdict
The Roku Ultra 2024 uses the best video and audio formats for an excellent home theater streaming experience. Its backlit hands-free voice remote and improved Roku OS14 make accessing the content you want to watch easier.
Since 2016, Roku Ultra has been the flagship model of the Roku streamer line. Its emphasis has been on providing the best sound and video experience of any Roku device. This year's model fulfills that promise. What's more, according to Roku, the 2024 Ultra model is 30% faster than any other Roku device.
While Roku does not provide detailed specifications, it has hinted that the improvements are due to an "all-new quad-core processor purpose-built for cinematic streaming." The faster speed is also made possible because the Ultra caches your most-used apps to load them quicker, using advanced machine learning to anticipate which app you will open next.
It's running on the Fall 2024 update, Roku OS 14, with upgrades that make it fast to watch recommended titles and those saved to a global Save List. With faster speeds, you can find something to watch and start playing with minimal button presses before anyone else in the household has time to object to your choice.
Cinematic Streaming refers to the additional formats on the 2024 model, which includes HDR 10+ and Dolby performance. Its picture and sound quality rival those of its competitors, the 2024 Google TV Streamer 4K and the Apple TV 4K (now a couple of years old).
Features
By its physical appearance, you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between this newest generation of Roku Ultra and those that came before it in 2020 and 2022. That is until you see the remote. The Ultra 2024 ships with Roku Voice Remote Pro version 2.
Like the previous Remote Pro, its microphone has a mid-field microphone array that listens for your voice without the need to touch the remote. "Hey Roku" or "Ok Roku" wakes the remote to listen for commands like searching for titles, opening apps, pausing, playing, requesting a specified title on a particular service, opening home page settings, and other streamer commands. On the side of the remote, a privacy switch lets you disable the remote from listening but can accept commands when you press the microphone button.
The remote buttons are backlit when it hears your voice or when you lift the remote. This is a particularly welcome improvement when watching TV in bed. And if the remote falls into the folds of your blankets you can also use a voice command or press a button on the Ultra unit to find it.
Roku replaced the first voice remote's A and B programmable buttons with a Rocket shortcut button. Pressing it brings up a choice of 4 shortcuts that can be programmed for search, what to watch, connecting headphones, opening the Roku channel, displaying apps, controlling closed captions, or accessing voice commands.
The Guide button is new too. It displays the live TV guide to access ad-supported channels.
When you’ve ignored your Roku Ultra, it will first start a screensaver. Leave it longer (options include 30 minutes or an hour) and Backdrops can start playing, turning your TV into an art display. The Backdrops feature is new on Roku OS14 but is limited to a few Roku devices, including the Ultra. It's the same idea as the Samsung Frame TV, where a user can pick artwork from a variety of painters and photographers or choose artwork from a particular famous museum. Customize Backdrops by creating a personalized favorites list, adding individual pieces from different albums, and choosing how long to show each picture before switching to the next (from 1 second to 1 day). Pressing the "*" opens the settings and displays the artwork library that can include your uploaded photos.
To manually start Backdrops, scroll up from the top of the home screen channels, above the three suggested titles, and click on the Backdrops tile. Press OK on the remote when the Backdrop is playing to learn the artwork's title, or arrow up to access Backdrops settings.
While you can view your uploaded photos as a screensaver or Backdrop, the Ultra also has a USB Port for local media playback and is capable of playing a wide array of video and audio formats. The new Ultra also has an Ethernet port if you want to hardwire it to your router.
If you're connecting wirelessly, the 2024 model has been upgraded to Wifi 6, which reduces latency and loads streaming content faster.
Testing the New Roku Ultra and Performance
Roku describes the Ultra as having "cinematic streaming." From the first video I streamed, it was obvious that this was designed for a high-quality, immersive home theater experience. It streams in 4K, including HDR10+ and DolbyVision with Dolby Atmos sound when available.
The Ultra upscales 720p or 1080p (HD) resolution content to 4K on 4K TVs.
Along with the terrific video, sound effects moved around the room in The Empress as it used the object-based sound of Dolby Atmos. Doors opened behind me, and someone placed a bottle on the table to my left. While other players sacrifice sound effects for dialog enhancement, the Ultra has customizable sound settings that includes dialog enhancement for AC-4 content. When enabled, dialogue is crisp and takes its place among other sound effects to maintain the surround sound integrity.
Navigating the home menus was snappy, with almost no delays, or none that I could attribute to the Ultra rather than the streaming service. Netflix sped through to the profile page.
The Roku OS14 home screen has a few new tweaks, including new submenus. Below the Home menu is "My Entertainment." Once you’ve started watching a show it displays in the Continuing to Watch row. When you find a title to watch later, you can add it to your Save List that also appears in this menu. It’s also fast to access Favorite Live TV Channels, and a row for your most used apps.
The What to Watch submenu isn't new but it displays a wide variety of content. Click on a title to add to your Save List or watch immediately. This page displays rows of suggested programming, including recently added titles, what's trending on Roku, what sports are available, free pilots to watch, free movies, and various categories like All Things Home or All Things Food. Here, I could also see that Deadpool and Wolverine is on Disney Plus, or I can view Beetlejuice Beetlejuice on Max, or Oppenheimer on Prime Video. It is a place that gives me ideas of what to watch next and where popular titles are available so I can watch them or add them to my Save List.
The Sports submenu includes listings of ad-supported free sports events, apps that show sports are available on Peacock, Max, Sling, and other services, featured channels like the NFL Channel, the NBA Zone, Live Events, specific sports league events like NBA games, College Basketball Games, Golf Tournaments, and sports movies. Listing games and events under each streaming app makes it easier to find what you want to watch. Other rows in this submenu include free games or events, sports categories, English matches, and what's upcoming. Unfortunately, you can't save upcoming sports events to your Save List. The sports submenu is a convenient place for any sports fans.
The Featured Free submenu includes movies and TV shows that are available on live TV channels, as well as free TV show preview episodes and other free content.
A new submenu will occasionally appear for holidays, other special interests, or content related to a promoted title. Holiday content had its own submenu. For a few days, I saw All Things Food, which listed everything from Rachel Ray to Martha Cooks, nutrition education, Foodie Movies, seafood-centric, gourmet cuisine, bizarre eats, Fierce Female Chefs, budget fried meals, and food documentaries. The following week, the submenu disappeared from the side menu and became a category in What to Watch.
If these extra submenus are cluttering the home screen, you can hide what you don't want to see by customizing the home screen settings. The easiest way to get to those settings is to use the voice command "customize my home screen." Here, you can hide or show any submenu, choose to show or hide shortcuts like TV Off, Add Apps, and Start Backdrops, and hide or show the recommendation row of 3 constantly changing titles.
As we have become accustomed to ad-supported content, which is now ubiquitous in online streaming, it comes as no surprise that Roku's once egalitarian global search results and recommendations are now favoring Roku Channels. This bias toward Roku has become increasingly common because Roku Channel allows users to subscribe via the channel. Subscriptions are available for Paramount+, BBC Select, STARZ, MGM+, Hallmark, Britbox, Discovery+, AMC+, and more. While tracking subscriptions in one place is convenient, you must log in through the Roku channel, which is now available on other streamers like Amazon Fire TVs, Apple TV, and Samsung Smart TVs.
Along with submenus and aggregated content in the Roku Channel, the new rocket shortcut button makes it fast to access a limited number of tools. Some of these choices don’t make sense as a “shortcut.” Why would you need the shortcut button for voice commands when you can press the mic button? Or display apps when you can press the home button? Still, a few options are useful. The What to Watch shortcut is good when you've finished streaming and aren't on the home screen but want to find the next thing you want to watch. The headphone shortcut connects Bluetooth headphones without going through several menus, and the closed captions shortcut is helpful.
Lastly, as an iPhone user, I'm happy to see Apple AirPlay and HomeKit on the Ultra. Connecting to the Home Kit was as easy as scanning a QR code. However, like other Roku players, Apple AirPlay shows that it is connected, but the content from my phone never appears on screen even after several failed attempts.
Conclusion
If you enjoy home theater and have a large TV and surround sound, the Roku Ultra 2024 is one of the best choices for streaming. It's the perfect choice if you have a tech-challenged family member in your household. The picture quality is superb, and it's the only player that has dialog enhancement that doesn't silence sound effects so that you can have both dialog enhancement and good surround sound. The Sports and My Entertainment submenus are a convenient addition to directly play recommended content without cluttering the home screen.
Specifications
Size: 4.9 x 5.0 x 1.0 inches
Video: 4K HDR Dolby Vision @ 60fps, HDR10/10+, and HLG, HDMI input with HDCP 2.2
Audio: Digital Stereo over HDMI, DTS Digital Surround passthrough over HDMI, Dolby Atmos decode via HDMI
Networking: WiFi 6, 802.11 ax dual-band MIMO (2.4 GHz/5 GHz); 10/100 Base-T Ethernet
Ports: USB 3.0, HDMI 2.1b, Ethernet 10/100
Local Playback via USB port
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The title says it is an upgrade. I guess it is obviously so compared to the previous model. But compared to what competitors would it be an upgrade?

I just picked up one of these from Amazon while they were on sale. It replaces an Amazon Fire Cube which became laggy and unresponsive over time and often required a hard reset to restore its performance. My impression of the Roku so far is it considerably zippier on most things. Picture and sound are both noticeably improved. For the not so good loading apps is often very slow and I have hard wired gigabit ethernet. Once loaded however there is far less noticeable buffering than with the Fire Cube. The better picture and sound makes it worth it to me to replace what I had but it's far from perfect.

Are accessing your Internet via WiFi6 or are you saying you are using the Ethernet port on the Roku? If the latter, then you are limited to 100 Mbs since the Roku only has 10/100 Ethernet port. All TVs I have had to date have the same so it doesn't matter how fast your connection to the unit is, the speed is only as fast as the slowest device... and unfortunately that is your TV or your streaming device, whichever you are plugged into. If you want faster speeds, use wifi6 instead.

Another trick that can work with some USB ports is to use an ethernet to USB dongle and plug your ethernet plug into the USB 3.0 on the Roku which is much faster than the ethernet port. Saw this on youtube. You can contact Roku to see if their USB port supports this.

It is sad that most AV manufacturers' newest devices do not support even Gigabit Ethernet. By this time they could have 2.5Gb, but at least get with Gig.

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There is little to no lag which I assume is due to Ultra and not the streaming service Drift Boss