Gadgetory

hey what is up guys I'm Kim PhD here and you may have seen me tease or hint a little bit on Twitter about the next two weeks or so of mkbhd videos because they are going to be filled with a lot of awesome stuff but this is the beginning of it this is the full review of Google's chromecast one of Google's newest products that was announced alongside the new Nexus 7 which I also have coverage of coming up very soon but this is the chromecast so there's a lot of cool things about this product it is a very simple product but it does have a lot of implications about the future of what Google is gonna be focusing on but basically chromecast is a dongle that you plug into your TV via HDMI that turns it into a smart TV of sorts now as a box actually says it's the easiest way to watch online video on your TV and I agree with that but you can see here the focus is on the video but it does a bit more than just video as you'll see in a second so when you get your chromecast you of course get everything in this convenient little box here and when you open it up inside on the left are all the instructions you need to set it up for the first time and you only have to set it up once I got mine done and literally about two minutes flat so it's pretty easy and aside from the chromecast you get a USB cable for power an HDMI extender if your TV's HDMI port is a bit hard to reach and a power brick which you only have to use if you can't get USB power from your TV but most newer TVs have powered USB ports anyway so this isn't going to be a thing that everyone needs to use the chromecast itself is pretty small it's just a dongle obviously the HDMI is on one side to plug it in and USB input for power and a small reset button on the other side also side note chromecast and everything inside of it is mostly based on Android not chrome which makes the logo and the name of the product in the Box a little bit misleading but whatever that doesn't actually matter so you plug your chromecast into the back of your regular TV not a smart TV doesn't really matter you hook it up to USB power whether that's into the wall or into the USB port in your TV follow the 2-minute set-up guide and boom you are ready to cast so my chromecast has a name it's called Marquez's chromecast very clever and it's connected to my Wi-Fi network which is called mkbhd so now every supported device that's also on the mkbhd network can see and cast to this chromecast enable TV so right now supported devices include every Android device every iPhone every iPad and every computer running Google Chrome thanks to the chromecast Chrome extension so I'll put the link right below that like button for that if you want to try it out first with the portable devices when you run your chromecast is turned on you'll actually see a chromecast button on the top of the YouTube app the Google Play Movies app the Google Play Music app and unfortunately those Plus Netflix and Pandora are the only apps that natively support chromecast but since the API is out and now it's brand-new hopefully we'll see way more apps like Hulu and Plex and Spotify and even Dropbox and more showing up with this button so press that button once and choose your chromecast TV and the media you are playing on your mobile device will now begin to buffer and start playing on your TV so your device is now a remote control for the media on your TV you have all your playback controls you can view the cue and add stuff to the cue you can go ahead and pause and play the media with the tap of a finger with a very very tiny delay between the button press and the action you can go ahead and adjust the volume if you want you can even totally exit the app and go do whatever else you wanted to do on your device while the media continues playing on your TV because you don't have to have the app open the device will go ahead and show you notification controls in the notification center which is pretty sweet on Android I've actually seen a lot of reviewers and people talking about the chromecast using a bit of what I would say bad phrasing or bad word choice it makes it seem like you are beaming the content directly from the device to the TV but that is not what is going on here what's happening is you're actually transferring the action from your device to your TV so the chromecast has an internet connection of its own so when you're playing YouTube video on your phone and tap the chromecast button the chromecast then looks up the YouTube video and start streaming it on its own independent of what your phone is doing same deal with Google Play Music and when it starts streaming it's on its own independent of your phone you're listening to a song on your phone's own internet connection you hit the chromecast button then your phone tells the chromecast what song it was listening to essentially and your chromecast goes and looks up the song and pulls it down all by itself and start playing from there that's why locally stored media is so weird right now with the chromecast it's really not meant for that think of this as the Nexus Q reloaded Google Play Movies works the same way hit that cast button and you're suddenly streaming a movie directly from the cloud to your TV the device is just an idle remote for you to do whatever it wants use open other applications multitask whatever it's totally free and that's actually kind of a nice feature I found out the quality of the media was also pretty great I have a 1080p TV here so I know immediate it and for the first few seconds of playback of a video sometimes the videos were a little bit soft but after a few seconds of buffering it sharpened right up to full HD quality which was nice now for the stuff that's not natively supported yet there is always Chrome's extension that allows for individual tab streaming through chromecast so you download the extension for Chrome pair it up with your TV and start casting and then you're actually sending ten over your internet connection to your TV so this one's a little more weird if you have a solid connection then the will it'll be pretty fast they'll obviously be a slight delay when scrolling around a web page and you know sometimes I couldn't see my mouse while on the TV while casting only on my laptop screen but then again the quality here is pretty good it starts off low-quality when the casting is initiating but after a few seconds it sharpens right up and you can read whole articles of text watch full screen videos and basically browse the web like you would on your laptop so if you want to show someone a neat website or an article or some video or something that's not in YouTube or Google Play you can just go ahead and stream your tab cast your tab over to your TV and start showing people your internet in that way so that's pretty cool that you're not restricted to just supported apps again one that API rolls out it'll smoke being supported like everywhere and you won't have to worry about streaming your tabs all the time I also tried to stream my entire desktop and but that actually ended up crashing I guess that's too many pixels for it to handle so in the end that's it that's the Google chromecast my full review probably could have been ten seconds of me just saying hey it makes your TV smart and it's only 35 bucks buy it you know it's pretty simple no buy probably an instant buy for a lot of people who have a TV but don't have a smart TV and this is everything the Nexus Q wanted to be but never really got to be because the price was just totally wrong so either way this is a US only product it's really only available on the Play Store on from Amazon right now and it's kind of hard to get which is why it'll be probably happy to know that I'll be giving away one of these I have an extra Google chromecast I'll be giving away probably the same day that this video was uploaded so either today or tomorrow within 24 hours of this upload check out the Twitter link in the description for more details on how to get in on that giveaway it'll be pretty simple and it'll be international either way that's it thanks for watching this quick video review of the chromecast and I'll talk to you guys in the next one thanks