Google has announced a new wave of cheaper Google TVs coming soon, but there's a pretty major downside for anyone who likes seamless performance.
Shobana Radhakrishnan, Google’s senior director of engineering for TVs, announced in a recent YouTube video that Google will be launching "affordable and reliable low RAM panel TVs." Now, it is worth noting that while many of the best smart TVs have become more affordable, they still far exceed most non-smart TVs. As such, the idea of releasing a television with less RAM could help to bridge that pricing gap.
However, Google didn't reveal how much RAM will be included in the TVs, although we can make an educated guess. Usually, Android TVs require around 1GB of RAM after companies dropped the number from 1.5GB to cut the cost of the devices.
That said, Google TVs usually have a little more to them, requiring a minimum of 2GB of RAM. With that in mind, I'd speculate that Google TVs releasing with around 1GB would make the most sense.
What are the benefits and downsides to cutting the RAM?
Proceeding with this choice does have some noticeable benefits, primarily because it will allow Google to sell the TVs at a much lower cost. This will, in turn, help more people to experience Smart TVs, which will lead to more exposure to Google's features. Overall, it isn't a bad move, but there is one major hurdle that could put a spanner in the works.
The problem is that cheaper Android TV devices with less RAM and Storage tend to offer much worse performance. Now, this is an issue when you buy a TV that is designed to allow you to do things like stream from some of the best streaming sites. As such, it can lead many to question why they'd bother buying one when you could just pick up an Amazon Fire TV Stick for cheaper?
Hopefully, Google has worked out something with Amazon and Netflix to help the cheaper TVs get the most out of their RAM, but we'll have to wait until we can test one ourselves.
However, Google I/O has made the prospect of owning one of its TVs pretty tempting with a slew of new announcements. For instance, bringing Android 16 to Smart TVs with some pretty major improvements, such as enhanced HDMI-CEC, Eclipsa Audio, a modernized interface, and much more.
On top of Android 16, it was also recently revealed that Google TVs are looking at some pretty impressive Gemini-backed features too. These include improved search results, as well as being able to answer your questions and bring up relevant YouTube videos to help answer your questions.
There have been more announcements about Google's future plans over the last few days. For a full breakdown, why not check out our full recap of Google I/O for all the news and releases made during the event.
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