Google's latest event saw the unveiling of the next generation of its popular Chromecast device, which includes a number of new features as well as a price and design that seem to be the very antithesis of Apple's Apple TV.
The new Chromecast comes in two iterations: one for video streaming and another for audio streaming. Both devices are priced very aggressively, costing only $35 each. Google has also announced that a number of popular services, such as Showtime and Spotify, are now supported by the device, according to Digital Trends.
Other popular services include Sling TV, a live TV subscription that gives customers 20 channels of live TV for $20 per month. Sports apps are set to be supported by the new Chromecast as well, with NBA and DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket getting new features for the device.
What makes the new Chromecast a formidable device is fact that it uses apps that are already downloaded on a smartphone to juggle all the shows that consumers would like to watch, or stream, for that matter. In contrast to Apple TV, which requires users to have multiple logins and a big remote for the TV, Google's Chromecast is connected wirelessly via Google, which makes watching a smarter TV easier than ever before, reported Fast Co. Design.
However, it may not be a clean sweep for Google, as other heavyweights such as Roku and Amazon have also offered their own streaming sticks. Though Google's Chromecast is the cheapest of the three, Amazon's Fire TV Stick, which only costs $5 more, offers twice as much RAM and 31 times the internal storage. While the Chromecast is equipped with 512 MB of RAM and 256 MB of internal storage, the Fire TV Stick is equipped with 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage, reported Engadget.
Then again, Google has rarely underwhelmed when it comes to their devices. Thus, the war of streaming sticks begins.
