Simply shy of its tenth birthday, Google lastly introduced the first-gen Chromecast has reached the top of its life this week. One of many first mainstream units designed to simply accept streams out of your cellphone, pill, or PC, this dongle helped cement Google’s place in the lounge, and constructed a novel product lineup that also continues to at the present time.
Launched simply 13 months after the failure of the Nexus Q, the first-gen Chromecast was an entire polar reverse of a product. Priced at an inexpensive $35, Google’s authentic dongle was designed with a single function in thoughts: casting out of your cellphone or pill. It paired practically completely with Google’s different merchandise of that point, particularly the second-gen Nexus 7 that held its announcement on the very same day.
Within the decade since, casting has turn out to be close to ubiquitous — all people, even iPhone customers, is aware of what it means. The Chromecast household has additionally expanded during the last ten years, each in scope and in performance. With two 1080p revisions in 2015 and 2018, a 4K mannequin that grew to become synonymous with Stadia, an audio-only mannequin for streaming to dwelling stereos, and, in fact, the latest Google TV-powered choices, it is one product lineup that hasn’t languished all through the final decade.
In honor of the first-gen Chromecast, I am curious which of Google’s streaming merchandise are individuals at present utilizing? Are you on one of many older Chromecasts that require a cellphone or laptop computer to pick out content material? Or have you ever made the transfer to Google TV and its remote-based UI? To maintain issues easy, I am solely itemizing the video-focused ones beneath — sorry, Chromecast Audio followers — and I’ve paired the 4K and 1080p variations of the Google TV mannequin collectively, as they’re fairly comparable. Choose all the models you at present use in your house.