Google Chromecast Ultra

Price: £69

The new Chromecast is here with added support for 4K streaming. We’ve had an early look at Google’s latest dongle.

Price

Whereas the old Chromecast was a pocket money product thanks to its £30 price tag, Google is releasing the updated Ultra at £69, which is quite a leap in price from its more humble brethren.

No doubt the added technology involved in rendering 4K content required a general bump in specs, hence the increased cost, but bear in mind that this is currently the only mainstream streaming stick available in the UK that can handle UHD content.

There’s no set release date as yet, but Google announced that you should expect to see the new Chromecast ‘soon’, so we expect it to be hitting stores before Christmas.

Design

There’s little room for design aesthetics in streaming sticks, mainly due to the fact that they’re often relegated to the back of a TV set. That being said the new Chromecast Ultra retains the circular frame of the previous model, but the loud colours have been replaced with a stately black.

You still attach the device through an HDMI lead that dangles the Chromecast Ultra behind your TV, and power is drawn from a USB lead connected to a power block. Google has told us that the power block also houses an optional ethernet connection so that you can run the device directly into your router via a wired connection.

Features

Just as in design, Chromecasts are never really much for features. What they do they do well, but the addition of 4K UHD streaming is the main headline here. We didn’t have the opportunity to test how seamless the streaming was, as a packed press area with hundreds of mobile devices trying to connect to the same Wi-Fi connection isn’t a normal state of affairs, so we’re looking forward to getting the device back to PC Advisor towers for a real-world Netflix binge. We do know that the new device is the first to support HDR and Dolby Vision, plus Google claim that it will be 1.8x faster than the previous model.

Software

One of the Chromecast’s best features has always been that there is no interface to deal with. The device just attaches to your TV and when you want to stream content from your smartphone, tablet or PC, you hit the Cast option on the video. Therefore the only software involved is internal and hidden from the user. We believe that the Chromecast runs a lightweight Linux based OS, but we’ve yet to confirm this. Google points out that the device will be compatible with a number of streaming services including Spotify, BT Sport, YouTube 4K and Google Play.

Verdict

Chromecasts have always been cheap and cheerful devices that you can throw into your bag and take anywhere. The new Ultra 4K model is a bit pricier, but it still looks like good value to us.