I turned my streaming stick into a dumb app launcher, and that's all it should be

Streaming sticks shouldn’t have apps. The Chromecast Ultra is the last good streaming stick. Just cast, and it plays. End of story.

Its nice to be able to use it with a remote instead of fumbling around with your phone.

Also performance, decoding support, not burning your phone’s battery, etc

Chromecast doesnt use your phone for decoding. It just tells the stick to play the video, and it plays it directly. It shouldn’t drain your phone at all.

The remote is a personal preference, but I was happy for the phone to be the remote. Having a second remote didnt gain me anything.

To be fair, I haven’t used Chromecast in a long time. Maybe even 10 years ago now.

I remember having connectivity issues, where I’d go to pause the content and realize it disconnected again. So maybe the battery drain was because of poor connections, or poorly designed apps

There were definitely some shitty Chromecast apps. ABC in Aus had a terrible one.

Ultra was good for connectivity, as it has an Ethernet port. Relying on wifi on a streaming stick behind a TV was tough. My TV behaves as a signal blocking wall, anything WiFi behind it is a dead zone.

I also haven’t tried the new Chromecast with google TV in a few years, but it was so terrible I returned it immediately and started scouring eBay for another Ultra. I am very sad Google killed the plain Chromecast line.