Netflix vs. Plex vs. Amazon Prime
We don’t watch TV anymore. We consume media, and we do it on our own terms. We binge on series, gorge on visual snacks, and don’t even bother to wipe away the crumbs. But just as there’s no single best restaurant, there’s no single best media provider: It’s all a matter of taste. We’ve sidestepped Hulu, because your own kitchen (or, outside our stretched metaphor, your own media collection) could be the best way to serve up what you want.
ROUND 1
Library
Netflix and Amazon have been investing in their own content. Some of it is awesome—tastes differ, but we’d say Netflix’s original series tend to best Amazon’s examples—and it’s generally exclusive to each platform. But the vast majority of each of their libraries is made up of licensed stuff that the companies doesn’t own, and that means that the content you get from Amazon and Netflix is highly volatile. You could be halfway through a series, only to see it drop off the face of the earth when one of the companies’ contracts comes due. The selection of movies available on each is, barring a couple of highlights, trending toward the bargain basement. And while you should probably keep your sense of entitlement in check when you’re paying so little for so much, using both services can be frustrating.
Cooking up your own media library with Plex raises its own questions about ownership. DRM-protected digital files don’t work, and ripping content you own from physical media means you’re violating a license, even if the law doesn’t make specific mention of its legality. But if you back it up, and mumble into your sleeve when asked where the content came from, that’s a custom library that’ll never run off and leave you.
Winner: Plex
ROUND 2
Interface
Barring occasional glitches, Netflix’s library is organized in a clear, attractive manner, which makes discovering new stuff to watch particularly easy. It sniffs out the kind of content you like, often by using its secret clandestine categories; if you’re opposed to a little data tracking, this probably isn’t for you. Amazon’s interface, at least on the web, borrows so many design cues from the store that it’s verging on unpleasant to use, although it does a little better when it comes to its mobile apps. Step carefully while using it, or letting your kids use it, because not everything Amazon carries is offered as part of Prime Video— higher-end content is up for rental or purchase, adding extra fees on top.
Plex might surprise you with how well it manages a library of poorly named and format-flexible files. It’s not absolutely perfect, but its library management features, which pull relevant information and imagery from a bunch of online sources, are generally accurate and automatic, and presented within an interface that you can configure exactly to your liking. You can syphon your files off into your own categories, and (if you’re paying) split user accounts, so tiny eyes won’t be ruined by horrific content.
Winner: Netflix
ROUND 3
Accessibility
Streaming services are streaming services, right? They are until they don’t stream to the thing you want them to stream to. Amazon’s stupid ongoing squabbles with Google mean that the only way to get Prime Video content piped in to your Chromecast is through screen sharing or streaming via a browser tab, which is inefficient and painful. Netflix is much happier to hit up just about any streaming device, from Roku to Chromecast to every smart TV worth its salt. There are probably toasters with Netflix support. Both have mobile apps that serve up the perfect level of content for your bandwidth, and browser apps that work well.
But what of Plex? Like sort-of-similar rival Kodi, it’s supported on a whole host of devices, with a great mobile app to support it, and your library is available if you have the hardware. Plex does offer its own cloud service, but you’re more likely to host your files yourself—and if you want them in an alternate format from the original, or at a slower bitrate, you need enough processing power to transcode those videos and convert them on the fly, and the upload speed to send them where you want them. With it, streaming anywhere is flawless and foolproof.
Winner: Netflix
ROUND 4
Speed
Remember that comment about upload speed under “Accessibility”? Yeah. This is where Plex has the potential to fall apart. Even hosted on strong hardware, its interface speed is generally much slower than you’d find poking through Netflix and Amazon’s libraries, and it can take a while for the monkeys to crank up enough transcoding steam to get your files up on screen. It’s by no means a deal-breaker, but if you crave the dopamine hit of instant video, it’s probably bottom of the pile.
Amazon’s video, running through its massive server farm, gets to the screen almost impossibly fast, though it does take a while to get up to full resolution. Netflix, also usually running its files through AWS, is a few femtoseconds slower, but no slouch in the speed department, for now at least. Whether Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video stay snappy will potentially soon depend on which tier of broadband connection you’re willing to stump up the cash for (thanks, FCC), and we have heard talk of certain nameless ISPs already throttling traffic from media providers; we’d imagine personal upload speeds will be similarly hacked away at, if less regulated countries are anything to go by. So, it’s a bit of a moot point.
Winner: Prime
ROUND 5
Value
A base installation of Plex is free, and you get a fair amount of functionality for it. But filling your library with content isn’t free, and we won’t hear you arguing otherwise. Also, to get the full functionality out of Plex, you need to pay for its mobile apps ($4.99 on Android), and for a Plex Pass ($4.99 monthly) to do things such as adding parental controls. Netflix, tiered depending on how many devices you want to use it on simultaneously, has gone up in price over the past few years, currently $10.99 per month for the two-device package.
That’s not bad, considering the amount of content on offer, but it’s nowhere near as good as Amazon Prime’s deal, which basically gives you a premium tier service from its whole ecosystem. Recently bumped to $119 yearly (there is a monthly plan, we swear, but it’s hard to access and slightly more expensive, so you’re better off sticking with the annual membership), it gets you expedited shipping, discounts on certain items, Prime Instant Video (obviously), as well as cool extras, like a free Twitch subscription every month, and, as a Twitch Prime subscriber, a pack of middling free games 12 times a year. We’d subscribe even if there weren’t videos on offer.
Winner: Prime