Chromecast vs. Amazon FireTV Cube

[Domingo]

I currently have an Amazon FireTV Cube that I bought back in 2021. We have the full gambit of streaming services and we use YouTubeTV a lot for normal television viewing.
It does the job, but it's quirky with certain streaming services. Paramount errors out with lots of newer content, Disney+ and Hulu love applying HDR to non-HDR content at random, HBO can't do HDR and Atmos at the same time, etc. Plus, YouTube TV has had lots of small freezing issues over the last month that seem to only happen via that device.
Minor stuff, but enough to be annoying.
I should have roughly $100 left in Google store credit, though. How's the Chromecast? I'm thinking of getting one of Google's new 4K streaming boxes with that $ and I'm assuming it'll have the same UI/UX.

Is it worth getting or is it a step backward from the Cube?

 

[uOpt]

They are both garbage. Do yourself a favor and get yourself an Apple TV. On average the TVOS apps are much better than the Android apps. Plus there is a lot less spam.

I have all three.

 

[Toboggan]

I was gifted a Chromecast the first year they were released and finally hooked it up a month or so ago. Once it updated I couldn't get the sound to work, I might not have had it setup right, but the video streams were inconsistent and/or took forever to load. Some apps I couldn't even cast with like MLB.TV. Also read that gen1 Chromecast isn't supported, I think they recently announced all of them were being dropped, but the first gen ones were dropped last year or something.

 

[OFaceSIG]

I currently have an Amazon FireTV Cube that I bought back in 2021. We have the full gambit of streaming services and we use YouTubeTV a lot for normal television viewing.
It does the job, but it's quirky with certain streaming services. Paramount errors out with lots of newer content, Disney+ and Hulu love applying HDR to non-HDR content at random, HBO can't do HDR and Atmos at the same time, etc. Plus, YouTube TV has had lots of small freezing issues over the last month that seem to only happen via that device.
Minor stuff, but enough to be annoying.
I should have roughly $100 left in Google store credit, though. How's the Chromecast? I'm thinking of getting one of Google's new 4K streaming boxes with that $ and I'm assuming it'll have the same UI/UX.

Is it worth getting or is it a step backward from the Cube?

I've used all the various versions of Chromecasts. Now I have the one with a remote on an old Sony XBR and it looks, feels and responds just like a modern Google/Android TV. I love it. I can't complain at all.

 

[kydsid]

They are both garbage. Do yourself a favor and get yourself an Apple TV. On average the TVOS apps are much better than the Android apps. Plus there is a lot less spam.

I have all three.

This - I'm not apple fan in anything but the TV. I've used a shield, a firetv stick and cube, Chromecast and roku. Once I bought an appletv I was soooo passed I'd waited so long to get one.

OP you may have google credit, use it for something else, get appletv

 

[Domingo]

I eventually ended up doing a factory reset of my FireTV Cube and that seemed to fix all of my previous issues. I'd uninstalled/removed/reinstalled seemingly all of those problematic apps to no avail, but the full-on reset pretty much did the trick. Disney+ is still weird with Hulu content, but the normal Hulu app still works fine. I don't think D+ was ever designed with advertisements in mind, so it doesn't know what to do when an HDR/Dolby show has adverts in a normal color space. Maybe they eventually fixed it, but I kinda prefer the vanilla Hulu app anyway.

I ended up using my Google credit for a $40 phone case, lol.