Google Nexus Player review – Android TV isn’t quite ready

Google’s Chromecast was a refreshingly simple device which let you get multimedia content onto TV. The bargain price certainly didn’t hurt its popularity either, although it definitely had some shortcomings. The Nexus Player is the Chromecast’s bigger brother; it uses the full Android TV operating system rather than a bare-bones interface and has much greater potential to take over your living room.

Through a combination of Android apps and the ability to Cast from smartphones, it’s fair to say that the Nexus Player is more like the Google version of the Apple TV. The one advantage that this product should have is that it’s possible to install additional apps via the app store, which is similar to how the Roku 3 works, whereas the Apple TV limits you to Apple’s chosen apps.

Build quality, hardware and size

The Nexus Player is a round box, compared to the square Apple TV. It’s tough, small (with just an 83mm diameter) and well-made, making it easy to tuck out of the way next to your TV. As a full-on set-top box, the Nexus Player has to be powered by the separate power adaptor, rather than the Chromecast, which could be powered via your TV’s USB ports using the Micro USB cable.

Underneath the box, you’ll find a Micro USB port, which is for expansion options, and an HDMI output. It supports HDMI 1.4a, which means a maximum resolution of 1080p, so this box is not 4K ready. Given the limited amount of 4K content, we don’t mind this limitation.

Wireless comes via the integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi adaptor, which uses 2×2 MIMO antennas. When connected to a 5GHz 802.11ac network, the extra speeds will come in handy, making playing high bit-rate files from a NAS or local PC a lot faster. By comparison, the Chromecast only supported 2.4GHz 802.11n networks.

There’s no Ethernet port, although you can buy a Micro USB-to-Ethernet adaptor if you’d rather go wired. It’s only a USB2 port, so you’ll be limited to 100Mbit/s Ethernet, although given that this technology will give you transfer speeds of around 85Mbit/s, it’ll be fast enough for everything.

Setup and control

Getting the Nexus Player set up is simple, as you just need to hook up the power cable and plug the HDMI cable into your TV. There’s no cable provided in the box, but you can buy any model as we’ve proved that expensive HDMI cables make no difference.

You control the Nexus Player via the incredibly simple remote. It has a four-way cursor pad for navigation and for fast-forwarding and rewinding; a central Select button; and a Play/pause button. It also has a back button, which doesn’t mirror Android Lollipop’s design, using a left-facing arrow rather than a triangle. This is a little strange as the Home button uses Lollipop’s familiar circle.

Google has used Bluetooth to pair the remote to the Nexus Player. It’s a good choice, as it means that you don’t need line-of-sight for the remote to work, letting you tuck the set-top box away behind your TV if you don’t want to look at it.

Bluetooth has a second purpose: you can press the Microphone button and use the remote’s built-in mic to issue voice commands to Nexus Player, much like you can do with the Amazon Fire TV. Speaking to your remote, you can issue commands or search for content. There’s a degree of universal search built-in. For example, if you have Plex installed, the search results will include matches from your Plex server. Voice commands turned out to be accurate in our testing, and searching for content was noticeably faster than using text input.

You can also use your Android smartphone or tablet as a remote by installing the Android TV Remote Control. It works using Wi-Fi, although you first of all have to enter the pairing code from your Nexus Player. Once done, the app replicates all of the features of the remote, plus lets you use your phone’s onscreen keyboard if you’d rather search using text.

Android TV interface

The Nexus Player is powered by Android TV, which brings an Android-like experience to the big screen. The interface doesn’t differ drastically from what we’ve seen on other media streamers, with large, easy-to-read tiles and icons that are perfect for a couch-based experience. It uses much of the Material Design styling you’re used to with Android 5.0.

Three carousels of content on the home screen comprise the ‘Android TV Launcher’ that optimises the Android experience for the big screen. The first is recommended content, which draws from services including Google Play Movies & TV and YouTube. If you sign into third party services they will also be added to the list, as long as the developer has enabled support for it. With Plex, for instance, content from your Plex Media Server will also appear here.

A carousel for your apps appears underneath, although this could quickly become unwieldy if you install a lot of them. However, this is a problem you likely won’t encounter any time soon, due to the incredibly limited selection in the Play Store – more on this later. Finally, below this is a list of games that, in theory, could suffer from the same problem as apps but again isn’t an immediate issue due to a serious lack of content.

Navigating around the user interface is pleasingly responsive, thanks in part to the quad-core 1.8GHz Intel Atom processor and 1GB of RAM inside the Nexus Player. We didn’t experience any delay or lag even when rapidly jumping between apps. Menus were nicely animated with the same wipes and circular burst animations we’ve seen on Android smartphones and tablets running Lollipop. There are other pleasant visual flourishes too, such as the home menu that overlays neatly over the content you’re currently playing.

Android TV Apps and Chromecast

As with the Apple TV, the Nexus Player gives you two ways of getting content on your TV. The first is via native apps, which are either pre-installed or you download from the Google Play store. Using these apps, you don’t need anything else bar the remote control to get watching.

As the Nexus Player is essentially running the same Android 5.0 as on smartphones and tablets, albeit with a custom launcher, we were expecting healthy app support at launch, but unfortunately this is exactly the area where Android TV falls short. Very few apps have been updated with support for Android TV, meaning the available choices are currently extremely limited. A glance at the media-related apps and you’ll see that the only real notable options  are YouTube and Netflix.

There’s no sign of any of the catch-up services, such as BBC iPlayer or ITV Player. Similarly, there’s no sign of services like Now TV. It’s perhaps no surprise Amazon Instant Video is missing given Amazon has its own media streaming box, but the lack of services is still somewhat shocking.

Music is equally barren, with the only notable inclusion being TuneIn radio. There’s no official Spotify app, no Napster or Deezer, meaning the only real streaming music option is conveniently Google’s own Google Play Music service.

It is actually possible to ‘sideload’ Android apps on to the Nexus Player using a slightly convoluted process of connecting to the Nexus Player via FTP and installing Sideloader Launcher to access apps that aren’t supposed to work on Android TV. This can create problems, however, because some apps aren’t designed to be navigated using a remote control and are dependent on touch inputs.

We tried getting Spotify to work through this method and couldn’t get past the sign in screen, as it was confusingly oriented horizontally. Similarly, while the BBC iPlayer app happily installed and we were able to navigate around the app, it’s not actually possible to start playing any content, rendering it useless. There’s no choice but to wait for the app to officially be available. It shouldn’t be too difficult for developers to get their apps working on Android TV, but at launch its massively disappointing for the store to be so empty.

That doesn’t mean that the Nexus Player is devoid of all content, as the second method of getting media on it is to use Chromecast. This lets you beam content (Casting) from a Chromecast-enabled app (iOS or Android) directly to the Nexus Player. Casting is a mature and smart technology, as your sending device merely tells the Nexus Player where the media stream is, letting the set-top box connect to it directly. This means that you can use your phone or tablet for anything else, or even turn its display off while you watch. Cleverly, you can control playback from your mobile, using the scrubbing bar to quickly skip through content if you like.

Chromecast support also opens up the Nexus Player to a wide range of content both now and in the future, as it’s relatively trivial for developers to add support for the technology. You can check out our list of the best Chromecast apps to see what’s available

With Chromecast you also get a second option: mirroring. This lets you mirror your Android device’s display or a Chrome tab (any OS) to the Nexus Player. In this way, you can cast any bit of content or a game to your TV.  With 802.11ac Wi-Fi, we noticed that Casting content from a NAS or local PC was a much smoother experience. We did notice when casting the entire screen from a connected smartphone that there was a lot of video compression and image artefacts when attempting to play games, however. There’s also a fractional delay between the connected device and what is shown on the Nexus Player.

Content

Using the combination of Chromecast and native apps, the Nexus Player has access to a wide-range of content, both online and over your home network. We’re covering the most popular services here, so this list is not exhaustive.

Movies and TV on demand – Netflix, Now TV, Amazon Prime Instant Video, Google Play Movies

Netflix is the big name in on-demand streaming, carrying some exclusive programming, such as House of Cards and, in the UK, Better Call Saul. With the Nexus Player you get support for Netflix via the clean and responsive dedicated app, although you can also use the iOS and Android Netflix apps to beam content.

As with the Chromecast, Google has hardcoded its own DNS servers into the Nexus Player, which means that you can’t easily change the settings you need if you want to access US Netflix. It’s not impossible to bypass Google’s settings, although you need a router that supports certain features. Our guide on how to get US Netflix on Chromecast will help.

On top of that, the native Google Play Movies & TV app gives you access to Google’s own well-stocked store of film and TV shows. This lets you rent or buy films and TV programmes, which you can then watch on any other Android device.

That’s all you get with integrated apps, as support for other services comes via Chromecast. This means that if you’ve got an iPhone, iPad or Android device, you can stream content from Blinkbox and Wuaki.TV. We’re pleased to see Sky Now TV support via Chromecast, as you can get up-to-date movies, live programming (including Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic) and access to all of Sky’s sports channels, depending on the type of subscription you pay for. BT Sport support also means that you can watch any of the channel’s live via the app on your mobile device.

Sadly, there’s still no support for Amazon Prime Instant Video, either via a dedicated Android TV app or Chromecast. It’s a shame, as Apple TV has support for this content via AirPlay.

Catch-up TV

There’s no support for catch-up TV from dedicated Android TV apps. Instead, you’re limited to using apps that support Chromecast. At the moment that means that you’re limited to using the BBC iPlayer app for iOS or Android. There’s no 4oD, ITV Player or Demand Five support, nor support for Sky Go. It’s a little disappointing, but in order to get all of the catch-up services, you need a box, such as the BT Mini YouView box.

DLNA media servers and Plex

If you want to stream content from your home server using DLNA/UPnP, you’ll need to use an Android app that supports the server, such as the excellent Bubble UPnP. You do this by browsing media servers from your phone or tablet and then Casting the content to the Nexus Player. As the Nexus Player has pretty good codec support, including .MKV files, you shouldn’t need to transcode too much content in order to get it to play.

However, a more elegant solution is to use the Plex app available for the Nexus Player. This gives you native support for Plex servers, including transcoding on the fly, so any content will play. Our guide on how to use the Plex server tells you everything that you need to know.

Surround sound

Where supported, the Nexus Player supports Dolby Digital surround sound via its HDMI output. This means that you can get immersive sound from Netflix and Google Play content (amongst others).

Games

The dedicated Google Play Games app is slightly deceiving, as it’s currently rather empty and initially made us think there simply weren’t many games available for Android TV. However, the actual games catalogue is in the full Google Play Store app, with the Games app more for viewing your profile and monitoring your achievements. Games that you own on Android will also appear but you’ll find many of them aren’t currently compatible with Android TV, even the ones that seem ideal for  use with the optional GamePad (around £35).

It’s a decently constructed controller that takes a lot of inspiration from the Xbox, with the ubiquitous dual analogue sticks and four trigger buttons. The sticks are responsive but we weren’t fond of the D-Pad, which doesn’t have enough travel. It compares favourably to the optional controller for the Amazon Fire TV, however.

Graphics power comes from an Imagination PowerVR Series 6 Graphics 2D/3DEngine. We weren’t able to benchmark the Nexus Player using Epic Citadel, as although we could side-load it we couldn’t get past the first screen using either the remote control or GamePad. Still, playing games such as the Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion remake was an enjoyable and smooth experience. However, the Nexus Player only has 8GB of internal storage, which means once the games library does grow, you could potentially run out of space very quickly. Asphalt 8: Airborne is a 1.42GB download, for example. You can add extra capacity using a USB OTG flash drive, or an external hard disk connected with a USB OTG cable.

Of course, you can use any games that are compatible with Chromecast, such as the excellent Big Web Quiz, which lets up to five Android and iOS players compete in an interactive quiz.

Conclusion

The Nexus Player is a device with plenty of potential, but is currently let down by poor app support for Android TV. While many of these limitations can be overcome by using Chromecast, the fact is that the actual Chromecast costs just £30, making it by far the better deal.

While many of the same limitations can be levelled at the Apple TV, the fact is that Apple’s box is cheaper and, currently, has slightly better content support, including Amazon Prime Instant Video via AirPlay. Besides, if you want to use AirPlay from an iOS device, the Apple TV is your only choice. Likewise, both the Amazon Fire TV and Roku 3 both have better media support.

At the moment, the Nexus Player’s big problem is that it’s a bigger and less-convenient Chromecast. It’s running on a platform that has plenty of potential and, as app support increases, it will become a better product. Indeed, we’ll update this review as more native content becomes available. Until then, the Nexus Player is too expensive and too limited, and the Chromecast is better value.