Some Roku models have a “gaming remote” which communicates movement of the remote to the Roku. If you have the remote sitting somewhere where it gets frequently jostled, that will cause it to use more power than if it were stationary. In general RF remotes use more power than IR remotes, but extreme battery consumption probably means the remote is communicating a lot with the STB, perhaps because of movement, perhaps because someone is playing a game that requires a lot of button presses, etc.
I got a Roku, and liked it, and then our TV died and I got a Roku enabled replacement. Which was excellent since my subscriptions went over to it very easily.
Never used a Firestick so no opinion on it.
What is the benefit of jailbreaking a Fire Stick? I didn’t even know that was a thing. I jailbroke my iPad but that’s because there are things I wanted to do that Apple frowned on, but I thought the Fire Stick was just pretty much a pass-through for other services.
Let’s just say a “friend” of mine did this and pays $10 a month and gets almost every channel in the world.
I have both.
I prefer the Roku - except it overheats while the firestick has never done that. I don’t like youtube on either, however it’s easier to do youtube through my phone and then mirror it on roku (things stay mirrored on roku. the firestick and my phone do not play nicely together and the connection constanly drops or gets out of sync.
I find the roku menu & search less fussy than amazon’s.
Neither is so great or so bad that one is a clear winner or loser.
We have several Roku’s in the house. Although I am sure that the Firestick has the functionality, the one thing that has impressed me about Roku is the integration with the Android App. Since one of the main selling points about the Roku is the searching, I find it EXTREMELY helpful to pull up the App, and use the Keyboard for searching. Plus, anything you can do on the Remote, you can do with the App.
Yup, controlling the Roku with a phone is pretty cool and handy if you misplace the remote.
FYI, the Straight Dope Message Board frowns on copyright violations and IP theft. You don’t want to say any more about this.
Some of the higher level Rokus (like Ultra) have a find button on the base unit that will cause the remote to beep so you can find it.
Some of the higher level Rokus also have customizable buttons on the remote to auto-launch whatever app you like. The remote will still have the 4 fixed app buttons, but there will be 2 extras to auto-launch whatever you want. Those are nice because with the TV off, you can press the custom button on the remote and the Roku will turn the TV on, switch the TV to the Roku input, and have the app already running.
I have both, and I very much prefer the Roku’s UI over the Firestick. The Roku’s is very simple, but that makes it easier to get around IMHO. I always feel like the Firestick is trying to sell me something, and I have to navigate around their advertisements to get where I want to go. With the Roku, there may be an ad over on the right side, but you don’t have to move past it at all.
I read a few months ago that the Firestick got a new UI, and I have not seen that.
Another cool feature about the Roku is that with the app on your phone, you can be playing the video on your TV but run the sound through your phone to whatever it’s connected to, such as ear buds.
What are the frequency of the ads ? I’m paying almost a 100 for cable tv, and only watch a couple of shows that often have commercials every 6 to 10 minutes - which drives me insane. I know about a DVR but I’m a luddite who’s considering the jump to streaming.
It’s not ads like commercials. It’s just banners and stuff like that when you’re in the screens for the device itself. The home screen of the Roku might have a small banner down in the corner for a show or channel. The home screen of the Firestick has a background which is some Amazon show. I hardly notice the Roku ads, but the Firestick ads are much more in your face. In either case, you can generally just ignore them. Neither device inserts ads into an app. If you’re watching Netflix or whatever, there won’t be any ads.
Thanks!
Yeah, that’s the one downside of my upgraded Roku, it has ads. But they are on the upper right of the screen, and the things I need to pay attention to are all on the left, and I’m honestly not certain what they even advertise, probably Roku content? And once i select an app (like Netflix) there are no more Roku ads.
I’ve been using Roku devices for more than 10 years, going back to the hockey puck-shaped LT model. They’ve always worked well, even when I had only marginal speed with DSL. I currently have an Express for home and a Roku Stick that I bought to use in hotels, but that didn’t work out well due to difficult HDMI port access and ability to get into hotel TV option settings.
One good thing is that that it’s easy to get free trials on many channels–sometimes more than once by using different email addresses or different platforms. For example you can get separate free trials for Showtime via Amazon, Hulu and on Roku itself.
I don’t know if Firesticks have this feature, but some (not all) Rokus have a headphone jack on the remote so you can listen with headphones or earbuds easily. Sound quality is good enough for TV dialogue, but not for music. Still, it’s a handy feature at times.
I have a set of ancient 2.1 computer speakers plugged into my Roku TV’s headphone jack.
I’d phrase this more as “you can sideload Android apps onto the Fire Stick but not Roku” since you don’t need to do anything to overtly “jailbreak” it. And there are completely legitimate reasons to sideload stuff onto the Fire Stick – basically because you want to run whatever Android app isn’t available through the Amazon app store. Which can include web browsers or (legal) streaming clients that just aren’t on the Fire Stick yet via Amazon or other programs. You can get an application to use the remote as a mouse, link a Bluetooth keyboard and use the Fire Stick as a general purpose low spec Android-based computer, basically.
But it’s still a pretty niche reason that most people aren’t going to care about.
For your average user I think Roku is better. Amazon devices exist mostly to sell Amazon content, and in the past they have had a feud with Google and would not carry YouTube, which I consider essential.
I think Roku has more models/options as well. For example you can get a RF remote, which works on radio frequency so you don’t have to point the remote directly at the device. It works from under bed covers. 
Ars Technica has a very recent review of Chromecast vs Roku vs Fire Stick here: The Best Streaming Stick To Buy For $50: Chromecast vs Roku vs Fire TV Stick 4K | Ars Technica. It looks pretty in depth and useful. Looks like it leans towards Google, with the main reservation about Amazon being that it steers you towards Amazon content at the cost of quality.
While I technically have a Chromecast plugged into our TV (I got it free with a Stadia game purchase) I don’t typically use it. Our TV has Roku built into it. It works well enough such that I don’t feel any pressure to use the other device, but I do see their point regarding the dated nature of the UI.