I Bought a Chromecast and It’s the Best Thing Ever

I had heard many good things about the Google Chromecast, but I was on the fence about it because we already have an X-Box in our flat which we used to watch Netflix and I wasn’t really sure if there was any other use for it.

But when my teammate Guohao went to Canada recently, he said he was buying one for himself, so I thought this was the sign that I should buy one, too. I asked him to buy one for me, and he did.

In case you don’t know, Chromecast is a thumb-sized media streaming device that plugs into the HDMI port on your TV and allows you to use a smart phone, tablet, or laptop to cast your favorite entertainment and apps right to the big screen.

When I first took it out of its box to set it up, my flatmate Nantoy was amazed at how small it was. It’s smaller than the palm of my hand.

Set up is super simple. You just need to plug one end to the HDMI port and the other end to a power source. The instructions on how to connect it to your wifi will then show up on the TV, so you just have to follow the instructions (it involves registering it on chromecast.com/setup).

Once done, you can use apps or your Google Chrome browser (you have to install the chromecast extension first) to cast pretty much anything to the TV.

No more streaming movies or Youtube videos on teeny tiny screens!

I really love that when I cast one of the tabs to the TV, I can still use the other tabs or the rest of my laptop to do something else, so I can multitask, and I can do so from a comfortable distance from the TV unlike before, when my laptop to HDMI connector was so short, the laptop had to be beside the TV.

I’m not the only one who loves the gadget. My flatmates keep raving about it, too. In fact Dred says its so much better than a smart TV because typing on the latter is quite tedious. A guest of ours also commented the same thing when Nantoy gave his glowing report about the chromecast. Both wondered if they could buy a chromecast to use on a smart TV.

Speaking of guests, last night we had some of Nantoy and Monica’s friends over for a karaoke session. Do we have a magic sing? No. We just used my laptop to search for karaoke videos on Youtube and added them to a queue to cast to the TV. Entertaining has never been so convenient and affordable!

It’s not very expensive, too, it costs the equivalent of S$55 in Canada, but you can buy it in Singapore for over S$60.

So if you don’t have one yet, I suggest you go get one. You won’t regret it.

Do I sound like a commercial? I promise this is not a sponsored post! 😂