Walmart has a new “Onn 4K Plus” streaming device on the way, and the hardware seems like it’s going to fill a gap left by the death of the Chromecast.
Google announced last year that, after over a decade, it would stop producing the Chromecast streaming device that had sold millions over the course of a few hardware generations. The latest Chromecast with Google TV generation, which first debuted in 2020, was replaced by the twice-as-expensive Google TV Streamer which also fits into a different form factor.
Walmart’s Onn brand, a staple in the Google TV market for a few years now, may be gunning to fill that gap.
While the Walmart Onn 4K Box fits into the form factor of the Chromecast quite well and is very affordable at just $20, the 2023 release is starting to be a bit outdated, and also lacks just a bit on horsepower. The newer Walmart Onn 4K Plus will presumably deliver some additional power.
Leaked photos of the Walmart Onn 4K Plus with Google TV hit the web this week courtesy of an early review program that popped up on Home Tester Reviews over the past few weeks. Dozens of reviews praise the device, though don’t reveal its price. What we can see is the updated hardware, which looks just a bit nicer than the existing Onn 4K box, as well as some of the upgrades that come with it. The power cable appears to now be USB-C instead of microUSB. The remote now has the “Free TV” button that first showed up on last year’s Onn 4K Pro box. In terms of fitting into the Chromecast’s shoes, there’s no built-in HDMI cable, but there is a piece of adhesive to mount the device to a TV.
One image shows the back of the box which details a few of the technical specs including 4K output with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. The device runs on top of 2GB of RAM and has 16GB of storage, double that of both the Chromecast and Walmart’s other smaller streaming devices. The chipset is mentioned to be a quad-core chip with a G310 V2 GPU, suggesting this might be the Amlogic S905X5M, even newer than the S905X4 found in Walmart’s Pro box.
Notably, the packaging here is updated to match Walmart’s overall refresh to the Onn brand, but there’s also a new “US compatible only” disclaimer on the box. Last year, Walmart’s Onn boxes started enforcing a software-based region lock on certain devices, so it stands to reason that this happens out of the box on the latest model. The manual specifies that “Google TV services including apps, content, and/or features are not supported on this device outside the U.S. and Puerto Rico.”
It’s unclear when Walmart will launch this device, but this review program appears to have started in early March. Walmart has been known to have a messy launch setup for these devices, though, so the device could arrive as soon as next week or as late as the next few months. Either way, we now know what to expect, and it seems pretty enticing.
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