Walmart Onn 4K Plus review: Fast and cheap 4K streaming

Best Prices Today: Walmart Onn 4K Plus

Walmart has another winner on its hands with the Onn 4K Plus Streaming Device.

For $30, you get a compact streaming box with 4K HDR, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos support. It’s a surprisingly speedy streaming player for the money, with a generous 16GB of storage for apps and its Google TV software is generally useful (at least when it’s not shoving banner ads in your face).

Roku’s budget streamers (such as the $40 Streaming Stick Plus) have a slight edge in terms of ease-of-use, and Walmart’s own Onn 4K Pro has some additional features and is also worth considering. But if you want a sub-$50 streaming device that does pretty much everything well, the Onn 4K Plus is tough to beat.

An unexpectedly speedy streamer

The Onn 4K Plus measures about an inch thick and is small enough to fit in one’s palm. It comes with a power adapter permanently attached to five-foot USB-C cable, and it uses HDMI to connect with your TV. (Roku, by contrast, no longer includes a wall charger with its budget streamers.)

I’m an Apple TV guy, but the Walmart Onn 4K Plus is what I’d buy if I didn’t want to spend that much.

Walmart doesn’t publicize processor details, but the Onn 4K Plus reportedly uses a quad-core 2.5GHz Amlogic S905X5M chip. Surprisingly, benchmarks by AFTVNews have shown that it’s faster than Walmart’s $50 Onn 4K Pro, and is only slower than Amazon’s Fire TV Cube and Nvidia’s Shield TV devices.

My own real-world testing bears this out. With both the Onn 4K Plus and Onn 4K Pro running side by side, the cheaper Plus was often a bit quicker at launching apps, and it was much smoother at speed-scrolling through the Pluto TV channel guides and Google TV’s Live menu. (The Onn 4K Plus was also noticeably faster at loading apps than the Roku Streaming Stick Plus.)

That said, the pricier Onn 4K Pro has twice the RAM as the cheaper model—4GB versus 2GB—and that made a difference when switching between apps. After cycling through three or four apps, the Onn 4K Plus usually had to reload the next app from scratch, whereas the Onn 4K Pro would pick up where I’d left off.

The Onn 4K Plus also has half the storage of its more expensive sibling—16GB versus 32GB—but that shouldn’t be an issue unless you’re installing a bunch of games on it. It’s still more generous than the 8GB on Amazon’s cheapest Fire TV Sticks.

While we’re comparing, the Onn 4K Plus supports Bluetooth accessories (such as wireless earbuds) and Wi-Fi 6, but has no USB-A accessory port and no wired ethernet port. Those are exclusive to the Onn 4K Pro in Walmart’s lineup.

It comes with a feature-rich remote

If you like a remote with a lot of buttons, the Onn 4K Plus is for you. Beyond the standard directional pad, home, and back buttons, the Plus’ remote has buttons for voice commands, quick settings, profile-switching, a link to Google’s live TV guide, a link to free videos, a channel flipper, and the obligatory paid-advertising shortcuts for various streaming services (YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, and Paramount).

The remote can also control the power on your TV, and its volume buttons can control TVs, soundbars, and external A/V systems. Unlike Roku’s players, you’re not limited to HDMI-CEC control, either, as the remote can control sound systems over IR if that’s a necessity for your setup.

Lastly, the remote has a programmable Star button in the top-right corner. You can use it to access smart home controls via a Google Home panel or set it to launch your favorite app.

If that’s not customizable enough for you, third-party apps such as TVQuickActions let you remap the remote buttons to do whatever you want. I’ve used this to quickly access the full app list, map the Live button to Channels DVR, and reassign the pre-programmed app buttons. While Amazon’s Fire TV devices prevent such behavior, the Google TV platform Walmart uses is more permissive.

And yet, a few things are missing: The remote’s buttons aren’t backlit like they are on the Onn 4K Pro remote, and there’s no “finder” function for playing a sound on the remote if it goes missing. The remote lacks dedicated fast-forward, rewind, and play/pause buttons as well—you must use the directional pad and select button instead—which may take adjustment if you’re coming from a Roku or Fire TV device.

Google TV has too much clutter, but it’s still useful

Like Walmart’s other Onn streamers, the Onn 4K Plus runs on Android TV with a menu system known as Google TV. That means Google’s home screen will suggest things to watch based on your interests.

The first three home-screen rows are pretty useful, with a row of recommendations followed by a list of your installed apps and a “Continue Watching” row. The latter pulls in movies and shows you’ve started watching on services such as Netflix, HBO Max, Apple TV, and Disney+, so you can quickly pick up where you left off.

Things get dicey, however, when you scroll down further, with sponsored content rows, lists of free content from Google, and on-demand movies to purchase. In the screenshot above, for instance, you can see how a large sponsored panel appears directly below the “Continue Watching” row.

Google does let you customize what appears on the home screen to some extent, with a “Your services” menu where you can toggle recommendations for each streaming service. If you don’t subscribe to Peacock, for instance, you can hide its content from the home screen.

Still, certain things can’t be disabled, like the movie purchase row and recommendations from Google’s own free streaming services. That means you must wade through some noise just to get useful signal.

More Google stuff

Because the Onn 4K Plus is a Google TV device, is has some other notable tie-ins to Google’s ecosystem.

Most notably, the device’s Screensaver mode ties into Google Photos, letting you choose which albums to appear when the device is idle. By setting up live albums, you can turn your TV into a photo frame that’s always updating with new pictures, and it’s easy to get sucked into revisiting those memories. (Roku devices can show Google Photos albums as well, but the setup is clunkier.)

The Onn 4K Plus also works as a Google Cast device, so you can stream video or music from Cast-supported apps on your phone and mirror the screen from an Android device or the Chrome browser.

Walmart’s streamer ties into Google’s smart home system as well. Using the Google Home panel in the quick settings menu, you can view connected cameras and adjust connected lights, thermostats, plugs, and other smart home devices,

Should you buy the Walmart Onn 4K Plus?

I’m an Apple TV guy, but the Walmart Onn 4K Plus is what I’d buy if I didn’t want to spend that much, especially for a secondary TV. It offers great performance, enough storage, and software that I generally find useful despite its ad-related annoyances. The Google Photos tie-in is a nice touch, as that’s where we store our family photos.

There’s always a case for other streaming boxes. Roku’s latest Streaming Sticks are frequently on sale and provide a less chaotic (but increasingly frustrating) interface, and Amazon’s Fire TV streamers might appeal to folks who are all-in on Alexa. The Walmart Onn 4K Pro is also compelling for the extra bells and whistles, most notably its USB-A port and remote-finder function.

But the Walmart Onn 4K Plus is what I’ll suggest for folks who want an inexpensive upgrade over an old streaming player or stodgy smart TV software, especially if they aren’t set on another platform, such as Roku. No other streamer offers more for less.

This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best media streamers.

Best Prices Today: Walmart Onn 4K Plus