Best wireless phone-to-TV HD 'mirror' device

[Kev Williams]

Been wanting one of these for awhile, just about bought one from Hammacher Schlemmer, but thought I should check around... Found plenty cheaper, some more costly, but the reviews for these things are all over the map! Seems some folks expect the things to work miracles and if they don't, 'it's crap'... ;)

MY expectations-- decent picture and sound mirrored from the wife's Iphone or my LG Android, or from one of my win7 computers.

I have good wifi if that helps, bluetooth latency concerns me but not as long as sound matches picture, etc...

Some real world reviews would be nice :)

[David Bassett]

No personal experience, but my daughter is pleased with Google's Chromecast dongle & ap. At least for Android phones, it is trivial to use. My wife downloaded the ap, made the connection, and was showing photos on my daughter's TV within 5 minutes of deciding to try.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

We have Samsung smart TV's and Samsung phones and didn't need anything to show photos and videos on the TV's. I also have an 2 yr old LG phone and can do the same thing to the Samsung TV's. Perhaps what ever app or program necessary was already on the phones.

[Pat Barry]

I have Firestick and Roku. Roku is much better.

[Kev Williams]

I have a firestick one of my kids gave me for Xmas. 2 years ago. His 'quick' learning-demo took nearly 2 hours ;) -- I've never used it since ;)

I don't plan on streaming or anything, we have a 70" Sharp that already does all that- I simply want to be able to have the wife show phone pics on the TV, or be able to display YouTube vids or a web page from a computer, simple stuff...

[Art Mann]

I have had a good experience with Google Chromecast.

[Jim Becker]

Apple household and we use AppleTV for any mirroring, which is honestly infrequent.

[Doug Garson]

+1 for Chromecast

[Pat Barry]

One thing I have experienced is that the Roku is a more generic device. Both Firestick and Chrinecast work, but they favor their own somewhat propreitary applications and don't play well with their competitors apps. Ie: its a pain to put YouTube on Firestick and maybe vice versa with Prime video and Chromecast.

[Kev Williams]

So I got one of these > https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GJWQ6L5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
405269

-- I'm about ready to blow my brains out trying to get this to work. Instruction manual is useless. Online manual is useless. Onscreen how-to is useless...
to wit: "on the IOS device, swipe up to reveal the Control Center - tap the AirPlay mirroring button"
Nothing happens when I swipe up on the wife's Iphone8. And when I find what IS called 'control center', there's nothing there resembling a 'mirror screen' app of any kind. Nor anywhere else I look. The on-screen how-to menu is basically a slide show of IOS, Mac, Android and Chromecast menus (all at once) they scroll thru 5 steps to mirroring utopia:
1-select Settings (no problem)
2-select WiFi, find the dongle, connect (no problem)
3-Enter the password (no problem)
4-Go to Devices, select the 'mirror screen' app (IOS) or CAST app (android) - PROBLEM-- no such apps exist on either phone!
5-click on the app to start mirroring-- yeah, right...

NOwhere on the wife's Iphone or my Android can I find anything resembling a 'Cast' or 'mirror' app like shown on the onscreen menu.

Now, I did successfully download the PC app, and I actually streamed a song from my 'sample music' folder to the TV- only it was just the file, not the actual music, to a black screen, and when it was done, nothing else happened. When I tried to simply mirror the PC screen, nothing but black on the 70" Sharp...

Since I can't do much with the wife's phone cuz she's always talking on it, I download an AirPlay app onto my LG. Instructions show these really cool menus, and control panels with volume knobs and brightness controls, decoder activity, media resourse menus, and everything else I could ask for. The app installed fine, it's on, and running. But when I turn it on, it might as well be a light switch connected to nightlight at the North Pole; if anything's happening, I'm sure not aware of it--no menus, no choices of any kind, no nothing, anywhere on the phone. If I click on the app again, it say's 'it's running'...

And how do you fix THIS conundrum: To work the dongle, you have to turn off internet wifi to connect the dongle wifi- so then, how do I watch I internet video from my PC or phones when THEY connect to the wifi that's disconnected?

I googled "where's the mirror screen app on my iphone8?" and there was no answer to that question other than 'swipe up to reveal the Control Center'...
http://www.engraver1.com/gifs/banghead.gif

This is one reason I've never had a smart phone, I'm too stupid to figure them out. And I didn't buy the one I have now, it was a Xmas present. Have no idea what my new phone number is ;)
--and for what it's worth, I did try swiping down. And left, and right...

..

[Myk Rian]

Have no idea what my new phone number is ;)
--and for what it's worth, I did try swiping down. And left, and right.....
Call someone sitting next to you and see what number comes up on their phone.

[Kev Williams]

Guess I just needed to profess my stupidity publicly-- ;)

The wife showed me how the swipe-up works, kind of a 'deliberate' swipe that I wasn't doing-- and there's the mirror app! And it worked!

Then I figured out the app I put on my phone, had to do some slide navigating (remember, never had one of these before!) and got my phone to work too! Having an issue with sound on mine, probably need an app (lol)...

But the wife's phone works exactly like I'd hoped!

so, venting works? :D

[William Chain]

I'm not sure that little device is going to deliver what you want. When we 'mirror' or whatever you want to call it from our phones to the AppleTV or the equivalent, most of the apps that are displaying video are actually establishing their own connection to the host source. For example, when youtube video is displayed on the AppleTV, it is the youtube app on the AppleTV itself that is streaming the video via the link data from the device (iPhone, iPad, whatever), and it is buffering on its own. The connection between the phone/iPad/etc and the AppleTV simply cannot sustain the data rate the video would require (hence the need to buffer). We learned this the hard way when trying to display some online content from our laptops to the tv, and the content in question did not have a native app on the AppleTV (we were trying to stream BBC iPlayer). Short of hooking up the laptop directly via HDMI, it was too choppy to be reasonably viewable. If you're simply trying to display photos, you'll never notice this problem, it'll work like a charm. Video on the other hand, unless the device is natively streaming and buffering the content you're after, you will likely be disappointed.

[Kev Williams]

I don't necessarily want streaming, as in to watch movies, I can do that with the TV-- I simply want what's on the phone to show up on the TV. But I guess 'streaming' is what it is, depending. This thing does work pretty good, yesterday we were browsing ads on Amazon, and watche several videos of stuff for sale- Flip the phone and full size vids came on the TV in full screen 1080 without a hiccup. The only catch to the thing so far, is that to enable the dongle's wifi on the phone or PC, this means disabling my network wifi. However, the wife's phone's 'own' internet connection worked fine, and the PC I want to mirror from is networked via ethernet.

The wife is always wanting to show me pics on her phone, which are too small, and she does a lot of face-time with our first great-grandson, and so far it's working great for that, for $25 I got no complaints! :)

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

Having an issue with sound on mine, probably need an app (lol)...

iPhones have a switch on the side to turn the sound on/off. At least my wife's 8 plus does.