Review google tv11/21/2023 ![]() ![]() Where the power button might be on a cell phone (on the right edge as you hold it vertically), Sony added channel and volume controls, plus a Mute button. The four Google TV buttons mostly mirror the Android controls: you get Home, Menu, and Back, but Android's Search button is swapped for a picture-in-picture toggle that lets you watch live TV in a small (sadly unmovable) window while you do something else. In between, there's a matte black, clickable trackpad below a five-way directional button and four Google TV controls. 75-inch thick slab are the remote-like buttons: six power and input controls up top, and playback controls plus a few colored function buttons on the bottom. The GS7 comes with a clicker that does feel considerably more like a remote than the game controller-like accessory for the company's TVs. Sadly, Sony still hasn't solved the remote riddle. We've seen all sorts of different solutions to this problem, from the giant keyboard and mouse for the Logitech Revue to the cramped, complicated remote that ships with Sony's Google TV-enabled televisions. It needs to feel like a remote and be easy to use with one hand, but it also needs to have a QWERTY keyboard, a touchpad, lots of input buttons, various specific navigation keys, and oh so much more. I get that designing and building a remote for a Google TV product must be hard. It's not very loud, though, and I guess that's the tradeoff - you won't hear it when you use it, but don't put the GS7 on top of anything that can melt. Thank goodness: the GS7 gets remarkably hot when it's in use, even with all the vents and fans working away. Since everything is on the back of the GS7, the sides and bottom are used for vents. ![]() Thanks to wide file support, the GS7 is an excellent conduit for playing back content you have stored on hard drives, in addition to all the streaming capabilities. It's a solid selection of ports, letting you connect a couple of external drives or devices to the GS7, though I'd always like an RCA connection for the legacy devices I just can't get rid of. You get HDMI in and out, digital optical out (for audio), an IR blaster, ethernet, two USB, and a big two-pin power adapter. There are no controls or buttons anywhere on the device, and all the ports are on the back - after fuming at all the devices requiring USB cables to stick out the front, I couldn't be happier. You'll never notice it - and that's a good thing The top has slightly raised dots all over it, which are nice-looking, but you'll probably never see the top and almost definitely won't ever notice it. It's a glossy, black rectangle, a little big at 8 inches wide and 1.3 inches tall, with a curved front so that there's a slight lip on the top. Sony meets that criteria with the 1.3-pound GS7, and still manages to inject at least a little bit of design flair into the device. All I ask of a set-top box is that it slide easily and unnoticed into the stack of boxes and gadgets next to my TV. ![]()
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