It may seem a bit strange to do a nexus tv review now - the box is a little bit older. The remotes are a bit flakey (link to other remote article), and there really should be better things on the market. Except that there really aren’t. A home brewed Kodi install on a raspberry pi 3 ? In some instances that might deliver a better experience. But as far as things to purchase on the open market, I can’t find a better box than my Nexus player - except for that remote issue.
Some boxes do a good job delivering a set top experience right out of the gate, but few give as nice an interface as the Nexus Player does. All the apps are easy to install, you can access side-loading and most importantly when someone new turns it on you don’t have to train them to use the Nexus tv. It’s a very intuitive interface.
The main thing I love about the nexus player - and one that isn't easily found in the modern ones is the straightforward and simple menu and interface. The top bar is a stream of available content. Some paid offerings from google and a lot of free options from youtube to crackle and a lot more. I typically only access the YouTube links from this menu, but it’s neat to see what’s going on in the world through this little interface. It could be made better by also including shows you are watching in Kodi or from Netflix, but I think I understand why that's not feasable.
The second row is your apps. You can reorder the rows and even double stack them in the latest Nougat release. I only have about 4 apps I use regularly so I admittedly don’t take full advantage of the options for the nexus playler.
Nexus Tv Review - What I Don’t Like
The Remote!! The Mic i don’t think EVER worked, or if it did work it did not hear you correctly. The remote - as pictured above - is very basic and stripped down. It worked most of the time for the first year we owned the box. After that it would regularly drop the connection and need to be re-syned. Then in order to get it to work we started to have to wipe the Nexus Player. That’s when I seriously started looking into getting another remote for it.
That’s really it. And since solving my remote control problem, I have had no real issue with my nexus box. It gives me all the kodi steams i’m use to. It gives a superior Netflix and YouTube experience to most other set top boxes i’ve tried and it’s very light and snappy as far as responsiveness goes.
I’m not sure you’ll find a better android box for the price that these slightly outdated ones go for. Actually, i'm' not sure you can still pick up a nexus player. If you can, it's very worth it. If not a native Android TV experience would probably on a raspberry pie 3 would be my next recommendation.