Gadget of the Day
Gadget of the Day: The Roku 3
By Swanni Follow @SwanniOnTV
Washington, D.C. (March 13, 2013) -
We are now featuring the
Gadget of the Day -- a TV-related product that is earning strong
consumer and/or critical reviews -- and one that's available at a
significant discount compared to what other retailers might be
asking for it.
Today's
Gadget of the Day is the
Roku 3, the new edition of the company's streaming set-top
boxes. It's available today at Amazon for $99.
The
Roku 3 include a faster Wi-Fi, improved
search and a better interface, according to USA Today. Roku
offers 750 channels of streaming channels; some free and some
not, such as Amazon and Netflix. (See:
Roku Has 700 Channels - But Are They Free?)
The box will allow viewers to search for a program across Roku's
750 channel lineup. For example, if you were trying to find an
obscure Francois Truffaut film, the Roku 3 search engine would
check each channel and then display the results for any channel
that offered that film.
In addition, the Roku 3 includes a headphone jack in the remote
control which can mute the sound while you continue watching and
listening via headphones.
The Roku 3, which is today's third-best selling electronics
product at Amazon, has a customer rating of 4.5 stars out of a possible
five, based on 83 reviews. Here are some excerpts from the
reviews:
"After
a few days with Roku 3 I decided to upgrade my initial 4-star
rating to a 5-star. I still wish Roku supported YouTube natively
but the lack of it is mitigated by the major improvements this
new Roku has over its predecessors. Amazon's reviewing guideline
suggests that 5 stars means "I love it" and I absolutely do love
Roku 3. Indeed, I can easily switch to my PS3 or Blu-ray player
if I wanted to watch YouTube but there's no other device with
such a great selection of channels and the better, faster user
interface alone is worth one extra star."
"The Roku 3's user interface is just awesome, and much snappier
than the pervious one. It's much easier to navigate the
channels with the new user interface. They also added a
centralized search where you can search for titles or actors
across all channels and they then show which channels offer that
content. This is really an AWESOME and very useful feature!
Besides the improved UI, I really love the new remote control,
which contains a head-set jack and volume controls."
