Walmart’s next Google TV device may be more powerful than Google TV Streamer, just not where it counts

Ben Schoon | Oct 28 2024 - 7:45 am PT

Walmart appears to be working on a new Google TV device that might be even more powerful than Google’s latest, the Google TV Streamer. Sorta.

A new Walmart streaming device has surfaced this week, as first spotted by 91Mobiles and AFTVNews. The device showed up within a Geekbench benchmark result, but was also listed by the unofficial AndroidTV-Guide database. The brand that Walmart uses for its Google TV devices, SDMC, recently unveiled new models which align with this as well.

Benchmark results are easy to manipulate and shouldn’t be taken as concrete proof of, well anything, but the evidence here does appear to be stacking up.

This new device from Walmart, possibly branded as “4K Plus,” seems to be an upgrade on Walmart’s $20~ streaming device that launched last year. The main upgrade appears to be a new chipset, Amlogic’s S905X5M. The new chip, as the benchmark shows, has more raw power compared to the chip in the older streaming device, and also scores about 200 points higher than the Google TV Streamer and its MediaTek chipset. It’s still significantly less powerful compared to Nvidia Shield, though.

The benchmark also says the device is running Android 14, newer than the Android 12 builds on even Walmart’s newest Onn Pro device.

But the key piece of information here is the amount of memory. Both the database listing and the benchmark pin this streaming device down with just 2GB of RAM. That’s half of what’s found in the Google TV Streamer, and the primary spec that seems to make Google’s latest device feel so snappy.

There’s no sign as to when Walmart’s next Google TV device will launch, but the last big release was in May 2023, with the previous generation launching in June 2021. With that in mind, a mid-2025 release would be when this next release is expected. In the meantime, the 2023 4K Onn and 1080p Onn streaming devices remain available for $19.88 and $14.88, while the newer Onn Pro is $49.88.