Old Telly, New Tricks: The Honest Truth About Budget Streaming Sticks

There is a particular kind of rage reserved for a smart TV that takes 40 seconds to open iPlayer. The panel is fine. The picture is fine. The sound is merely okay. But the software has the pace of a queue at a motorway services, and every app update seems to add another little pause before anything actually happens.

The tempting fix is a cheap streaming stick. Thirty quid, maybe less if you catch a deal, and suddenly your ageing telly has a new brain. No new screen, no delivery van, no fiddling with wall brackets. But does it actually work — and where does the cheap dongle fantasy fall apart?

We spent a fortnight with three budget sticks on a 2018 43-inch 1080p set, fed by a very normal 36Mbps FTTC line. The diet was iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, My5, Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and a bit of Spotify. No fibre-to-the-home heroics, no review-room trickery. Just a British living room, a free HDMI port and a remote control cull.

What a cheap stick is actually good at

Plenty, as it turns out. The first thing you notice is not picture quality. It is speed. Menus respond when you press the button. Apps open in a few seconds rather than a few geological eras. iPlayer remembers where you were. ITVX stops pretending it has crashed. Channel 4 behaves like a modern app rather than a favour from 2016.

That is the core case for a budget stick, and it is a strong one. If your TV's panel is still decent and the only problem is the software, a £30-ish dongle is one of the best-value upgrades in tech. It can add apps your telly never had, revive ones it has quietly dropped, and delay a £500 television replacement by a year or two. For plenty of households, that is the whole ball game.

It will not, however, turn a tired TV into a new one. The stick does not improve contrast, black levels or viewing angles. It cannot add HDMI 2.1, fix a dented bezel or make a creaky panel behave. And it absolutely cannot rescue rubbish built-in speakers. If your main complaint is that everything looks washed out or sounds like a phone in a biscuit tin, put the £30 towards a new set or a soundbar instead.

The catches nobody puts on the box

The first hidden cost is power. Many sticks are happy plugged into a TV's USB port, but older sets often supply too little juice. You then need the supplied mains adapter and, crucially, a free plug socket. Behind a wall-mounted telly, that can be the difference between a five-minute job and a Sunday afternoon of cable management.

Wi-Fi is the second trap. A stick hanging off the back of a TV, close to a wall, is not in the best place for reception. If your router is in the hall and the telly is in the back room, use the short HDMI extender that comes in the box, or budget for a longer one. On a 36Mbps line, HD streaming was fine, but the stick's home screen still felt sluggish when the signal dropped to two bars. A cheap dongle cannot fix a weak Wi-Fi signal.

Then there is the remote situation. HDMI-CEC is supposed to let one remote do the lot, and sometimes it does. Sometimes it does not. You may find yourself juggling the TV remote for volume, the stick remote for apps and the soundbar remote for everything else. Some budget sticks have volume and power buttons that can be programmed; others make you live with the clutter. It is not a deal-breaker, but it is the sort of thing that makes a cheap fix feel less cheap after a week.

App selection is another gotcha. The big UK catch-up services are well covered on the main platforms, but not every app appears on every stick. If you are loyal to a particular niche service, check before buying. And remember that a streaming stick is not a Freeview tuner. You still need the aerial and the TV's own tuner for live broadcast channels, unless you are streaming them through a service that offers them.

Finally, there is the advertising and privacy angle. Budget sticks often come with busy home screens, promoted content and data collection. You can usually turn some of it off, but not all of it. That is the trade for the low price. If that bothers you, a slightly more expensive box from a brand with a cleaner interface may be worth the extra.

Which one should you buy?

For most people, the simple answer is the one that matches your patience. Roku is the least fussy: straightforward menus, good UK app support and very little shouting. Amazon's Fire TV Stick is the most feature-packed and the most promotional; if you already use Alexa, it makes more sense. Google TV sits somewhere in the middle, with a decent recommendation feed and a remote that feels nicer than the price suggests.

Do not pay extra for 4K ifyour telly is 1080p. Do not buy a games console instead unless you actually want one. And do not expect the stick to fix a bad panel, bad sound or bad broadband. It is a software transplant, not a full-body upgrade.

The Reviewr verdict

If your old smart TV still has a good picture and the apps are the only thing driving you mad, a budget streaming stick is a smart, sensible buy. It is not glamorous. It will not impress anyone on a specs sheet. But it can buy you another couple of years with a telly you already own, and that is worth more than another round of app-update roulette.

Rating: 4/5 — for the right household. For the wrong one, it is £30 spent avoiding the real problem.

Buy if: the panel is fine, the apps are slow and you have a spare HDMI port and plug socket. Skip if: the picture is poor, the sound is worse, or your Wi-Fi barely reaches the sofa.