I want to preface this by saying that I quite like my Roku Ultra. When I first picked it up earlier this year, my main goal was simply to test out Roku OS. It had been a while since I’d last used a Roku device (the last one I owned was a Roku Premiere), and I wanted to see how Roku’s current experience compared to my Fire TV Stick 4K Max, which had long been my go-to streaming device.
A few months later, the Roku Ultra has become my de facto main streamer for several reasons. A big part of that is The Roku Channel (aff) and its extensive library of free content, but I’ve also come to appreciate features like its user-friendly interface, Headphone Mode through the Roku app, the lost-remote finder, and, perhaps surprisingly, the USB port on the back.
Because the Roku Ultra is a set-top streaming box rather than a compact streaming stick like the 4K Max, it includes both an Ethernet port and a USB port. Admittedly, I was pretty disappointed to discover that the Ethernet port is limited to 10/100 speeds rather than Gigabit Ethernet, so I didn’t even bother to use it. The USB port, on the other hand, initially seemed like a great addition. I was able to connect both a portable hard drive and an SSD to it, and use the Roku Media Player app to watch movies and TV shows I had stored on them.
That versatility got me thinking: if the Roku Ultra’s USB port could handle a 2TB SSD, surely it could handle the Gigabit USB-to-Ethernet adapter I have as well. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as I hoped.
You can’t upgrade the Ethernet port on the Roku Ultra
My USB-to-Ethernet adapter has met its match
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