Streamingboxes and dongles like the Nexus Player in the test here are now something like the entertainment brain for any TV: movies, TV series, photos and music from the own server directly and wireless streaming to the TV, media library and video on- Demand services, or even a little gaming – all this is no problem with them.
Nexus Player: Features and Design
With its Nexus Player and Android TV, Google is now entering the competition with Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV Box. The device produced by the Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Asus costs 99 euros and is thus as expensive as the Amazon competition, while the Apple-Box of the third generation is now under 80 euros to be.
Nexus Player: Entertainment tailored for you
Visually, the Nexus Player differs only in its form: it is round, not square. Otherwise, the box is also black and equipped with an HDMI port. The remote control looks similar to the Amazon template: It includes, besides the usual basic buttons, a button for the language search.
Nexus Player: Installation and Android TV App offer
Nexus Player in the official video
Nexus Player: Cast support as at Chromecast
The core of the box, like the Fire TV Box, is a quad-core processor, as well as a gigabyte of memory, which ensure an extremely fluid operation. The disadvantage: While the Amazon and Apple boxes can also be connected to the network via Ethernet cable, Google only waits with a WLAN connection.
Lesetipp: Comparison of streaming boxes - Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast and Co.
The picture is played in full-HD quality (1080p). 4K is, as in the competition, so far misleading.
The Nexus Player is extremely simple and easy to use: With just a few clicks through the screen and after logging into the WLAN network, the box starts up. Anyone who uses an active Google account on his or her smartphone can handle these steps even more quickly. It is recommended to run a systemupdate at the same time to keep the box up-to-date.
On the clearly structured and very tidy-looking start screen of the Android TV platform, the user welcomes the top offers from the Google Movie & TV Store, as well as a small selection of apps. Already preinstalled are the Google's own media ports Netflix, YouTube, the ZDF Mediathek and Zattoo.
More apps can be reloaded from the Google Play store. However the selection there is surprisingly limited and around a large variety smaller, as for example at Amazons Fire TV. The category Video & TV offers the most selection. In addition to this, you can also download relevant apps such as the ARD-Mediathek, 7TV, the arte-Mediathek, Red Bull TV, ZDF heute and Sport 1. But VoD portals like Watchever or Amazone Prime are completely missing.
Better placed is the Nexus Player on the casual gaming front. However, the selection behind Amazon remains here. A compatible game controller (gamepad price: 49 Euro) would have to be purchased.
As with the small brother, the Chromecast dongle, the Google Cast feature lets you add more content to the TV with the help of the box. The prerequisite is that the used app has the Google Cast icon. As with Airplay, you can select the Nexus as the player.
Practical and useful: The modern Android interface adapts to the contents used. If, for example, the arte app and Red Bull TV were last used, the start screen will again show the highlights of these offers.
So Android-TV likes to feel like: the everyday handling and the use of the Nexus Player make mood. The language search works perfectly. Technically, the box is up to date with only the Ethernet port missing.
But in comparison to the direct competition, especially from Amazon, the Google box lags especially because of insufficient app selection clearly afterwards. And the advantage of using the existing mini-USB port to play offline media via the player has been eliminated with the latest firmware update. It will therefore be exciting what the Internet company will make of its entertainment sales vehicle. So far, it's not much more than a slightly brighter Chromecast stick.
Conclusion
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