The new Google TV Streamer isn’t powered by the chip we were all expecting

Summary

• Google TV Streamer offers improved AI smarts, Dolby Vision support, and doubles as a smart home hub for $100 in the US.
• The MediaTek MT8696 chip powers the device, promising faster performance with double the RAM compared to the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, which also used this chip in 2021.
• Google TV Streamer is designed to sit in front of your TV for better smart home connectivity, offering a significant hardware upgrade for people in the Chromecast ecosystem.

Google’s Pixel launch event is scheduled for August 13, and preceding the event by exactly one week, the company has decided to unveil two new smart home products.

We’re expecting the event to be stacked, considering that Google couldn’t wait an extra week to show off its 4th-gen Nest Thermostat and the all-new Google TV Streamer. The former of the two is simply a generation jump, while the latter is an all-new streaming product that has the potential to make the Chromecast 4K obsolete, even though it is still available on the Google Store.

The Google TV Streamer is a step away from the Chromecast design, which was essentially made to be tucked away behind your TV. In Google’s own words, the device has been designed to “sit in front of your TV, rather than tucked behind it,” quoting that its smart home capabilities operate better when it is not tucked away. The streamer also sports an Ethernet port, and we know that it offers 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. However, when it comes to the streamer’s chipset, Google didn’t offer any clarity. It only said that the device is “22% faster than the previous generation.”

We speculated that the streamer would house an Amlogic chip, considering that it is a big player in the streaming device market, and Google’s Chromecast 4K uses it, as do most of the Android TV/Google TV boxes lately. That, however, doesn’t appear to be the case.

As found out by Mishaal Rahman for Android Authority, the new Google streamer is equipped with a MediaTek MT8696 chip, the same SoC that the 2021 Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max runs on. According to Amazon’s specs for its streamer, the MT8696 chip has a quad-core Cortext-A55 CPU clocked at up to 2.0 GHz.

“Specs aside, performance is excellent. I’m sure the newer CPU is helping, but I think the biggest reason to buy this over the 1080p or last-gen 4K model is the upgraded RAM.”

That’s an excerpt from our Fire TV Stick 4K Max review, and we were genuinely impressed by its performance at the time. The Google TV Streamer will likely impress us more, considering that it uses the same chipset, but double the RAM, when compared to the Amazon streamer. For reference, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max comes with 2GB of RAM, while the Google Streamer doubles that to 4GB. On paper, more RAM should equal faster app loading times, less stuttering with smoother animations, and an overall fluid experience while multitasking. We’re currently testing out the Google TV Streamer. You can read our initial thoughts about it now and a full review soon.

The Google TV Streamer is available to pre-order in the US now for $100, with general availability set for September 24.