Skip to main content

Watch us unbox the new Roku 4

The new Roku 4 streaming set-top box ships to pre-order customers and lands on store shelves today. We just got our review sample and wasted no time cracking open the box. As soon as we did, we realized we needed to share the experience.

As you’ll see in our video, the Roku 4 is bigger than it appears in the pictures Roku released earlier this month. Despite the fact that the Roku’s promo images include the Roku remote for some scale, opening the box yields a bit of a surprise as the set-top box has a bigger footprint than we think many will expect.

Related Videos

In case you missed the announcement, the Roku 4 is the most advanced streaming set-top box the company has made to date, with support for 4K Ultra HD video up to 60 frames per second via its HDCP 2.2-compliant HDMI 2.0a output. The streamer supports both HEVC (H.265) and VP9 for decoding 4K Ultra HD streams from the likes of Amazon, Netflix, Vudu, UltraFlix, and YouTube.

Roku-4-unboxing
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Part an parcel with the launch of the Roku 4 is the company’s new Roku OS version 7, which offers Universal Voice search, a dedicated channel for 4K Ultra HD content, and 4K Ultra HD screensavers, among a bevy of other useful features. The new operating system will begin to roll out to older Roku devices

It’s also worth noting the streaming video service VUDU today announced 12 4K Ultra HD movie titles available for rental and purchase to coincide with the launch of the Roku 4.

We’ll be putting the Roku 4 through the wringer and will be publishing our full review in the coming days, so be sure to check back with Digital Trends frequently. In the coming weeks we’ll also pit the Roku 4 against Amazon’s new Fire TV and the forthcoming Apple TV, which will begin to ship late next week.

Available from: Amazon

Editors' Recommendations

Sharp is bringing one of the first OLED Roku TVs to the U.S. in 2023
Sharp OLED TV.

Sharp has been on the fringes of the U.S. TV market for several years, but that might be about to change. The company, which is still headquartered in Japan ,but has been majority-owned by Chinese manufacturing giant Foxconn since 2016, has announced that it plans to sell a Roku-powered 4K OLED TV in the U.S. in spring 2023. It could be the first opportunity for people to buy a Roku TV with an OLED panel. The company will also introduce its latest mini-LED-powered QLED TV, the Aquos XLED.

Sharp's Japan-only DS1 OLED TV Sharp

Read more
Joe searches for a killer in explosive You Season 4 trailer
you season four trailer netflix s4 e1 00 15 11 20 r

For three seasons, Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) has been an obsessed stalker and murderer. Now, the tables have flipped as Joe goes from the hunter to the hunted in the first trailer for You season 4 part 1.

After the tumultuous ending to his relationship with Love (Victoria Pedretti), Joe flees to Europe to start anew. Going by the name Jonathan Moore, Joe is a professor in London and falls in with the most "insane, damaged people on Earth: a circle of privileged douchebags." Wherever Joe ends up, murder soon follows, but this time, it's not by his hand. Joe channels his inner Sherlock Holmes and attempts to stop the killer from stalking him and targeting his friend group.

Read more
Did Roku just upend the midrange TV landscape?
TCL's Scott Ramirez at CES 2023.

One of the biggest stories of CES 2023 isn't on the show floor at the Las Vegas Convention Center. It's not the hottest new gadget or even a bigger, better TV. It's not a Sony car. It's not faster. It's not smaller.

No, the biggest news of CES 2023 may well come down to a logo. Specifically, the Roku logo adorning the front of new Roku-branded Roku TVs. That phrase sounds a little odd, of course. But the simple fact is that while "Roku TV" may well be the name for a television that's powered by the Roku operating system — and three out of four new TVs sold in North America have been of that nature for a number of years now — the televisions themselves have always been made by another company.

Read more