Last weekend I decided to move an older TV up from our basement to our bedroom and put a Roku Streaming Stick on it. We weren’t really using it downstairs, and with the addition of a Roku, I could turn it into something much more useful for how we watch entertainment.

I decided to do the Roku based on reviews, and for a couple specific reasons. First, although I’m an Amazon Prime member, I don’t buy much digital media from Amazon. I’m more likely to purchase from Apple or Google, or just watch other streaming services like Hulu or Netflix. Therefore the Amazon Fire Stick didn’t have any real value-add to me. I know some people talk about the games you can get on the Fire Stick, but again I’m not likely to use them.

I also picked the Roku Streaming Stick over their less expensive player, the Roku Express. The more reviews that I read about the Express, the more concerned I became about its much slower processor. I decided that the added speed that comes with the Streaming Stick was worth the extra $20. Frankly, I’m glad I did, as the Streaming Stick is very zippy and responsive in just about everything I could do with it.

The last reason I chose the Roku was for its capability to stream audio to a smartphone, so that you can listen to the TV through headphones from across the room. Since this is a bedroom TV, I want to make sure I’m not disturbing others in the house if I’m watching something at odd hours. The Roku iOS remote works well, and it’s just a simply click to change where the audio is played from.

Overall, I’m happy with the purchase, and I might even check out a few other channels that I don’t have on my AppleTV.