Save yourself the headache, avoid chromecast if you can use somehtinge else.Plex is a media server software that enables you to take care of the large size of media collections. Sometimes i need to reboot the damn thing beucase it wont connnect to wifi. Chromecast even at times stutters on youtube 4K + 1.75x speed just to give you an example. I have built in google tv and Roku on my TV's but i choose to ONLY use the Firestick 4k and 4K Max because its just stable, fast and works. I bought 3 chromecast 4k's and 2 of them are in my bin of junk. That said, the Chromecast is easily good value for money. If the Apple TV ever goes on sale I'm happy to pay the $200 for the much better performance. I'm spoiled by my upper mid tier PC and PS5. Personally I'm a bit tired of the Chromecast's slowness. I find the Fire TV performs speedier and better though. If you're in the Amazon ecosystem the value to you with Chromecast is the ability to remove all ads via above customizations. It'll reduce the RAM usage, remove excess garbage on the home screen and reduce the number of animations. There are dashboard customizations you can look up to make it speedier. I'd put it higher than any smart TV's built in apps, but far far slower than Apple TV and Nvidia Shield. There's easily a lag between button pressing and scrolling.

The 'speediness' and performance isn't great. When one retailer has the Chromecast on sale that'll mean all the retailers do. $30 for HD and $55 for 4K are the matching historic lows from Black Friday 2022 and Christmas 2022. It plugs into any HDMI port and that's all you need. The value in the Chromecast is the very low cost of entry to get streaming video access for any TV. I've posted this before in other Chromecast threads and will also echo some of the posts here.

Chromecast with google tv plex server