If you’re not happy with your 4K smart TV’s onboard software, today you can add some third-party smarts for a little bit less. Amazon is selling the Roku Premiere with 4K and HDR support for $29—about $10 cheaper than usual.
The Premiere includes a small set-top box (more like a square puck, really) and remote. We reviewed the Premiere in late 2018. Our biggest problem was that for $40 you got a remote that required line of sight to the box, and it lacked any of the voice and TV controls we’ve seen in the remotes of pricier Roku players.
That’s a problem when the asking price is $40, but at $29 it’s an acceptable bargain, especially when this Roku box supports 4K HDR visuals. Besides, Alexa and Google Assistant can integrate with the Premiere, which makes the voice control issue on the remote less painful if you have a smart speaker in your home.
Roku includes a variety of nice features, such as a private listening feature that lets you pipe TV audio through your mobile device. That way you can slap on some headphones so as not to disturb the rest of the house without a cord snaking across the living room floor to the couch.