Roku Ultra 2024: Backlit Remote Upgrades Roku's $100 Player video

Hey, everybody. Roku has a new streaming player. This is the $99 Roku Ultra about twice the price of other Roku. But it has this Spiffy remote. Let's check it out. So the Roku Ultra is more expensive than other Roku players about twice as much 99 bucks compared to 50 or less. So what are you actually getting for that extra money? So the new thing about the Roku Ultra 2024 is the remote. This remote is improved in three different ways. The first and most important to me is the back lighting. So unlike any previous remote, the keys actually light up so you can pick this thing up and in the dark, you can easily see what key you're pressing, which is cool because there's some extra keys down at the bottom. They get really confusing. Another really cool thing about this is the battery life. So they didn't actually make a trade off when they created uh this remote a lot of times uh the backlight will drain the battery. But Roku is claiming that you can get months of battery life out of this. If I get a couple of weeks between charges. Fine. That's great. I'll take it. Of course, this is a rechargeable remote. There's no batteries required for it. And the third thing that's cool, that's different this year is a new shortcut button. So if you look here, there's this little rocket. If you click on it, you can actually call up a miniature menu at the bottom of the screen that you can customize to launch different apps. You can also jump right to search and you know, again, customize a lot of these different functions. So you just hold down on that button to choose which of those apps or functions you're gonna launch. So that button a really neat way to integrate it. And I'm kind of a big fan of rock. So it's good stuff. Otherwise, you know, this is the standard Roku Ultra and for what it's worth, I have one at my house, I've been using it uh as my main TV streaming device for years. Uh The reason I really like Roku is because it has a really simple operating system. My kids can use it. You can just jump right into the app. So it's not a bunch of clutter on the screen. It's always been really responsive. Uh The speed on the ultra is really good. And you know, again, this extra remote I think is really worth it. I like previous Roku Ultras, this uh Roku remote finder is still included on this. It's a voice activated remote finder. So you can just say, hey, Roku, find my remote, it just beeps from wherever it is in the room at my house. We use that all the time, really cool feature. So again, those are the things you get on the step up uh $99 Roku Ultra. And by the way, if you, if you don't want to spend that much money, you can get pretty much the same functionality for streaming and everything else with the less expensive uh Roku devices including four khdr and all the streaming capabilities available on those. So what you're really paying for here really is that included remote. So you can also buy that remote separately to pair with an existing Roku player to get those new features. It's the brand new voice remote pro pretty much identical to one included in the Ultra, but all things considered. I think it's a really nice improvement. That's a look at the new 2024 Roku Ultra. If you want more information, check out cnet.com.