For the past 10 years or so I’ve had a PC hooked up to a dumb TV to stream my TV. Now I’m officially old and have kids in elementary school. The PC is finally unbearably slow but now I have no idea what to replace it with, or frankly even what my options are. Smart TV? Casting Stick? new PC? some newfangled option i don’t even know what to google?
Kind of depends on how much you’re willing to spend.
I had a few chromecasts about 7-9 years ago and I never liked them. They were always finicky. Maybe they’re better now.
If you have an iPhone, I would get an Apple TV. We have a smart TV but it’s also an older one and super slow and we got the Apple TV to replace the smart capability in it.
It works so much better than other devices that I’ve tried and you can use your phone in addition to the remote.
If you don’t want to spend that much, the Roku box works fairly well too.