4K UHD ROKU TV
Beware playing with this television, even trying it out. It will spoil all other televisions for you, because of one simple but defining trait — it’s so fast. If you’ve ever fumbled with your remote to get the big game or your favourite show on screen ASAP, only to wait through some start-up animation, then a home screen, and you’re still waiting for it… There’s none of that here. TCL’s Roku TV turns on like a phone. Press ‘on’ and it’s on.
This might seem a small thing, and perhaps it is, until you use it. When we called TCL to confirm the product’s arrival, they didn’t say “Isn’t Roku great?” or “Isn’t is a great-value TV?”. No, they said “we all can’t believe how fast it is.” Which was exactly what we were already thinking.
So beware: after using TCL’s Roku TV, all other TVs feel frustratingly slow.
Roku at last
However, the real headline here is simply Roku becoming officially available in Australia. Roku is massive in the States: the no. 1 TV streaming platform by hours streamed in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, its streaming boxes and sticks wildly prevalent there, even having its own Roku Channel, with ‘Roku Originals’ and hundreds of freerise of Netflix: Roku’s founder Anthony Wood became a Netflix vice president after Netflix decided not to get into hardware itself, and until recently Roku’s offices were still sub-let from Netflix.
