Just as we predicted last week, the price of Google’s set-top box has suddenly gone up, a lot. The company has just bumped up the price of the Google TV Streamer by 50%, which means it now costs $149 in the U.S., compared to just $99 if you bought one yesterday.
For now, the price hike is only in the U.S., but it seems almost a certainty that other regions will get the same treatment soon. That’s because the reasons for the price increase are not regional, but global. In a statement to 9to5Google, it said it has no option to do this because of the “rising component costs” it’s facing, which has become a euphemism for the ultra-expensive and difficult-to-procure memory chips that are essential in basically every computing device.
We predicted that Google would soon be making such a move just last week, when Amazon announced that it was bumping up the prices of its Fire TV Stick streaming devices by a hefty number. Amazon wasn’t the first to do this. Apple, Roku and Walmart’s Onn brand have also done the same, with price increases matching the Google TV Streamer’s 50% rise, on some products.
This is not good news for anyone who has been saving up to buy a streaming device, because it means they’ll need to continue saving for longer than they’d planned. While streaming devices aren’t the most expensive gadgets by any means, there’s a lot of difference between a $99 price tag and a $149 one, especially if money is tight – not uncommon, these days.
The higher price may cause some consumers to question if they can justify paying more, considering that the Google TV Streamer is now quite a bit more expensive than comparable devices, such as Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Max, which costs just $85 (after the latest hike).
The only thing that really separates the Google TV Streamer from that device is that it has more storage capacity and it also supports Google Cast. But if you can live without those things, it’s going to be much harder to ignore some of the alternatives. Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K is another option, which costs just $80.
Indeed, the Google TV Streamer might now be a tough sell to anyone, given that the Google TV operating system is just as littered with ads as Roku or Fire TV. If you want to avoid ads, you simply buy one of Apple’s Apple TV 4K devices, or if you can tolerate the ads, then Roku and Amazon offer much more value for money.
