These are the Best Streaming Sticks in 2025

The good news about tech is that it is advancing and improving all of the time. Seemingly every week something new comes out that grabs our attention, as almost every home in the country now has a flatscreen TV on which to watch the likes of movies and TV shows.

There are countless streamers out there keen to gain your custom, but not everyone knows the best way to get the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney Plus onto their televisions.

That is where streaming sticks come in handy, essentially being plug and play, but which is the best one to get in 2025?

Chromecast with Google TV

The Chromecast by Google was a solid idea when it first came out, even if it was a little bit fiddly for some people to work out how to use it. The good news is that the company has worked hard to ensure that it is no longer as tricky to work out as it once was, making it into a full-blown streaming hub.

In other words, you get the device, plug it into the back of your TV and all of the usual apps that you would expect to see from the major streamers will be there. You simply need to log in to the services that you’ve got and you can start watching things to your heart’s content.

It’s pretty funny to me that its the YouTube app that repeatedly crashes my Google Chromecast with TV 4K. It’s like they have a special secret API with a Crash( ) function that gets called if you turn off the Chromecast while a YouTube video is playing.

— Stephen Boisvert 🇨🇦 (@srboisvert.bsky.social) 8 March 2024 at 16:51

Those of you that have grown used to ‘Casting’ things to the Chromecast from your smartphones and tablets need not worry, though; the Chromecast with Google TV still has the ability to do just that. Yet it is the support for more than 65,000 applications that will make it the go-to streaming stick for most people.

Add in the fact that it operates in 4K HDR at 60 frames per second, as well as boasting support for the likes of Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision and HDR10+, and you can soon understand why it is that it is one of the best streaming sticks that money can buy right now.

Sky Stream

There was a time when Sky broke into the British television market and you knew whether someone had it or not because of whether or not they had a large, unsightly dish on the side of their house. Those days are long gone, with the release of Sky Stream meaning that you can get all of the Sky services without the need for a satellite to be installed.

It is the company’s answer to the likes of the Amazon Fire TV and the Roku, offering the sort of services Sky Q customers will have grown used to but all through a small pebble-like device that fits in your hand.

@laura.byrnes0 Zero regrets getting the @SkyUK #Sky Stream! No dish required, so you can be streaming tomorrow with their next day delivery service, its super easy to install, literally plug and play! #AD #TVSimplified ♬ original sound – Laura Byrnes

There are drawbacks to it, of course. For starters, you will need to have a Sky subscription in order to make use of it, which can be prohibitively expensive. There is also the fact that you can’t side-load your own apps to it like you can with some of the other streaming sticks.

Yet there is no getting away from the fact that this gives people in flats or rented houses the opportunity to get Sky without having to step on anyone’s toes around the idea of having a dish installed. For a lot of people, that is a complete and utter game-changer, which is why we’ve added it to our list.

Amazon Firestick

One of the main benefits of the Amazon Firestick is that there are loads of different variations of it. The 4K Max is the top-of-the-range one and the one that we would most readily recommend you to get if you’ve got an OLED television or a decent-quality TV, but if your budget won’t stretch that far then there are plenty of other options that you should be able to afford.

Once you’ve got it, you’ll find yourself using a device that is intuitive and simple to set up, promising a speedy performance and the ability to make it your own thanks to side-loading, meaning you can add whatever apps you want.

That gives you a wealth of flexibility in terms of watching things that you might not be able to do via the Amazon Store alone. You can add a VPN to it and watch shows that are being broadcast in other countries but not in the United Kingdom, for example.

The downside is that it is obviously linked to the Amazon ecosystem, which might be a bridge too far for some people given the influence that Jeff Bezos has on the world and the way in which Amazon employees appear to be treated, but if you want the best streamer on the market, then you might have to make a compromise on your morals.