I have a second generation Chromecast on an old TV that only does 1080p. I’m fine with that, I don’t care about the resolution. Someone told me that I might like the new one with Google TV, but I don’t know much about it. I pretty much just cast from apps on my phone, so I’m not sure if there’s any reason to upgrade. The only thing I don’t like is sometimes the Chromecast icon doesn’t show up and I have to restart the app, but I doubt that’s on the Chromecast end.
Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with what I have, but I’ve been looking at comparison websites and they aren’t really telling me what I need to know, which is if I’m missing something good I shouldn’t be missing.
Also, this is not really important, but I’m on Chrome and Google thinks “Chromecast” is a misspelling.
I find the dedicated remote the Google TV ones have quite handy, and it makes it a bit more of a tv-like experience when I’m binge watching stuff.
As for extra features, the remote has a microphone so you can access the Google assistant. They’re also full Android devices so you can install apps directly onto them such as games and use the remote as a controller, though I’m not sure how many are supported since I haven’t tried that yet. Perhaps more usefully if you have a suitable USB hub and webcam you can use it for video calls, or plug in a harddrive and watch videos from that. Other than that if you’re happy with second generation one, I don’t think you’re really missing out on much.
There is no should.
You can use it with a remote to browse apps and get suggestions, or cast from a phone. You have to decide if you want that or not, no comparison website will do it for you.
I get that, but if I spend the money for no good reason, I’ll feel foolish, so I wanted to get opinions before I did.
I prefer the remote and the suggestions are often pretty good. I rarely ever cast anything.
If you’ve ever thought a Roku, fire stick, Nvidia Shield or another streaming box looked interesting then there’s not much reason not to. If you’re planning to cast from the phone I wouldn’t bother upgrading.
I had a Roku many years ago when it was still super slow and I did like it, but the speed is terrible. We have another TV, a “smart” TV, which is also glacially slow, but it’s fairly old now too. I hope Google TV is faster than that!
I went from generation 1 to 2 only when apps refused to work.
The 3. Generation doesn’t do any features different for me.
I’ve had some issues with temperature shutdowns and unreachability on all of them, maybe not so much on 3. genenation. It may be the cause of your issue, but I’m not sure.
I mostly had that issue on gen.2 but I’ve also swapped phones and moved my WiFi in between so I’m not sure. When I had gen.2 on our primary TV, it would fall out after many (8+) hours, at which point the dongle would be smoking hot. I could usually fix it by cooling it (waving it out the window 😃 )but eventually I upgraded to gen.3 and haven’t had that issue since then.
My old Chromecast died and I bought the new one. It actually lets me turn off my old TV remotely without the actual remote. I can turn it off on my phone. That’s worth getting a new one for me.
I still have another old Chromecast, but that one is connected to a newer LG TV that I can turn off using the LG app, so it doesn’t matter to me.
Not the old one I have.
Device features > Ambient mode / Video / Audio
Video > Use 50Hz / Video smoothness / Automatically turn on game mode
The new one I bought recently can download apps and comes with a remote. It also has a remote in Google Home. The old one has no physical remote or in Google Home.
I loved my first gen Chromecast, but I can’t recommend the newer ones. I got the 4k model. Aside from the fact that it draws enough power I can’t plug it into the TV’s USB… it just isn’t capable of streaming 4k without frame skips. And no, it’s not my fiber internet, the router, or the streaming service. I have a Sony TV with Android TV and it streams 4k just fine. The Chromecast was unwatchable for me, probably downgrading to 1080p would fix it, but then I didn’t need to pay extra for the 4k model, and I could have just plugged the standard model into the TV.
