Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “🔴Gigabit Ethernet on Firestick / Android TV (Don’t do THIS !)”.
Now, if you’re suffering from buffering in your videos buffering in your streaming applications, maybe slow Wi-Fi speeds, then in most cases you would probably benefit in using an ethernet a hardwired connection. Now, unfortunately, most five sticks fire TVs, uh Fire TV cubes. Unless you’re talking about the third generation, don’t come with ethernet port builtin lots of Android TV devices do, but again some of them may be limited to 100 Meg. What are the options well on? The fire sticks or Fire TV devices, where you just have access to a micro, USB port. You can plug in an OTG cable which looks like this, which will basically give you a small, uh micro, USB port here, where you plug in the power cable. This you then plug into your Fire TV device, and then you have access to a fullsize USB port, where you can then plug in your USB preferral USB devices, including a USB ethernet hub like this. Now this is actually a gigabit Hub where you have a gigabit Port here, and you have three usb3 ports now.
The big issue is on the F TV devices and all the F TV cubes. The only Port that you have access to is a USB 2 Port, because USB 2.0 has that limitation of about 450 or 480 Meg you’re never going to get anywhere near the gigabit speed that this port will actually give you now. The question is: is it always beneficial to change? Well, if I test this on my device and let’s now do a speed test using the hardwired ethernet plugging into that gigabit Port, but again going into the USB 2.0 micro USB port. So let me do that now: okay, I’ve now plugged that in if I just go over to the settings, let’s see if it’s detected that ethernet connection – and we can see it says now – ethernet has been connected, so my fire definitely detects. I’M now using a hardw ethernet connection, but the moment of truth is what kind of speeds can I get with this hard wide ethernet? Let’S open up the speed test application, let’s see in test number one, I will do a few tests just to make sure that we get a. We get an average speed and we can see test number one.
We get Downstream speeds off around about 300 and 50 meg down. I mean that’s a very, very good speed that will handle any kind of 4K even 8K streaming you can handle with that. But the thing is in my house: I actually have gigabit Ethernet, so 350 Meg is less than half of what my true actual speed is, and I will test this speed on my Nvidia Shield or maybe the new htics box.
I be testing recently to see what kind of speeds do we get on that using a dedicated Port directly built into the device? Okay test number one was 350 mcdown. Let’S test that again and then I’ll jump over to my Wi-Fi 6 Network and let’s see what kind of speeds do we get with that because, again, very consistent, 350 MD down okay, let’s just do one final test to see: do we get consistently using hard wide Ethernet on my second generation yeah around about 340 is make down okay, so that’s that done. Let me now press the home button. Let’S now jump over to Wi-Fi 6 and let’s see if it’s actually better for me to stay on ethernet. I just unplug the network.
Cable, we see we jump straight back into Wi-Fi 6 press, the home button and let’s see now if we can actually get more than 350 Meg down using Wi-Fi versus that ethernet, okay, so test number one we’re pushing 440 is down so need 100 Meg more than Using hard wide, ethernet, okay, so again, test number two well above 400 Meg and getting very close to 440 Meg. Okay. So that’s 437 down do one last test, so I would say in my particular setup because of Wi-Fi 6 because of how far I am from the routa. I personally would just stick to Wi-Fi.
So the point I’m trying to make is it’s not just a one size shoe fits all. You have to look at your current setup, your current situation. How far your device is, what kind of speeds you get? It’S not necessarily a case that anyone that uses a OTG cable with that USB hub will guarantee get faster speeds because, as we can see in my setup in every case, in every test, I get much better speeds using Wi-Fi versus that USB hub. Okay, let’s make it a little bit more interesting.
Let’S now plug this USB hub into a a USB 3 port on this htic Android TV box that I reviewed a few days ago. I mean that actually has a gigabit Port anyway, but let’s just see that if you were to plug this Hub into a USB 3 Port, what kind of speeds can you get? Let me jump to that device now so using a USB 3 Hub with that gigabit Port plugged into a USB 3 Port. Let’S see what kind of speeds we get, I’m hoping it should be faster because um, we don’t have those USB 2 limitations, but you never know with these things. Okay, so test number one we can see on this box. Oh, that’s actually very slow, okay, so test number one using Okay test number one is 196 mcdown, which is actually very bad, okay and test number two and okay. So that’s a bit better round about 300 Meg, but definitely nowhere near the Conor speeds. You would expect with a gigabit Port, has 320 Meg and just to show you the difference. Let me just now from here here unplug the ethernet cable, that’s unplugged! Then we plug that directly into the ethernet port, which obviously is a a gigabit Port. That’S plug straight in let’s press back. Let’S test that again and let’s see now what using onboard dedicated, ethernet, port versus external Hub, what kind of speeds we can get with that, and you can see guys.
I mean that is just something else. So 100 % onboard ethernet, ideally with a gigabit Port like what you see on the Nvidia sh Pro like like what you see on this htics box, is definitely the best. If not using a USB hub with an OTG cable. You really have to check your speeds.
If you do get faster speeds than a Wi-Fi, then it’s worthwhile using it, but it’s definitely worthwhile checking out because we saw in my setup I get much better, much more consistent speeds using Wi-Fi than using this hub via an OTG cable and the speeds were even Worse when using this without an OTG cable, plugging it directly into a USB port onto my htics 4K box, it was a bit surprising, but in all cases it’s definitely worthwhile testing to see which particular setup works the best in your particular environment. So that’s pretty much. It for this video guys many thanks for watching, do leave me a comment below. If you are somebody that uses hard wide Ethernet or if you’re happy with Wi-Fi 5 Wi-Fi 6. What is your current way of connecting when using your favorite streaming device? Do leave me a comment below, let me know and I’ll hopefully, catch up with you guys real soon. Thanks .