It’s almost always worth buying the most expensive TV streamer

Add-on media streamers have become a lot more affordable in the past 15 years or so. When the first-generation Chromecast launched, the big deal wasn’t so much its casting-based controls as the $35 pricetag it came with. Competitors like the Apple TV could cost several times as much, which was a hard sell if you were able to get by with a TV’s native apps. $35 was an impulse purchase, no matter that you had to use your phone as the remote. Today, that isn’t even as cheap as things get — you can buy an entry-level Roku stick for $27 on Amazon, and there are probably steeper bargains out there.