Just happened to stumble on this and thought I’d throw some opinion out there for ya’. I have been watching the Roku vs other players debates for awhile as a Roku owner who is mostly happy with Roku but always looking out for options and leaning towards AppleTV myself.
I haven’t used AppleTV for Plex much but have been keeping an eye on it over the years. I have been using Roku - with or without Plex - for a long time and I believe what you’re experiencing is typical and your reason is similar to mine for why I haven’t really felt compelled to switch yet myself.
I did have Nvidia Shield and Chromecast devices as well but had issues of one sort or another with them that had be return to Roku. I miss my old WDTV sometimes too.
Functionally a lot depends on how your local media is setup - if you’re doing 1080p AC3\EAC3 files then any device will work just fine and it’ll be more about what interface you prefer or other features and functions you might want out of the box (like gaming or home automation hub maybe). Where the hiccups tend to come in are around higher end functions like profile support, DV\HDR10(+), Atmos and TrueHD\DTS-HD. All the devices can experience hiccups there - even the Nvidia Shield.
Roku as a platform doesn’t change much and has had dedicated Plex devs for quite some time so it’s pretty rock solid as a combination. So well that I’ve been running the Plex Beta on Roku for years with only a rare hiccup that is usually solved within days. FYI - rebooting Roku device by pulling power for 20 seconds instead of using the menu reboot can solve lots of random bugs (like suddenly not reading my soundbar support for DTS\DD+).
AppleTV has gone through lots of software changes from Apple over the years including changing the entire audio\video engine and Plex hasn’t had as consistent of development resources there. Plex recently picked up more so it’ll probably improve but most people are pretty happy with their AppleTV experience I think. That’s probably very true for people not doing much 4k bluray rips. There’s a thread for a new beta player testing in the forums here so that looks like it’s picking back up and is promising.
Lots of folks using Plex on AppleTV and running into hiccups with the Plex client tend to use Infuse on their AppleTV instead. Infuse is a local media playback solution that doesn’t require a server and is pretty popular on it’s own (like Kodi if you’re familiar with it). Infuse has an option to direct connect to Plex server so the combo seems to be well regarded and commonly suggested (particularly for 4k content).
Roku is pretty stable and capable but can feel very sluggish particularly if you’re using other streaming services or want more out of it besides just streaming content. RokuTV is usually more sluggish and more prone to hiccups than Roku stand alone boxes as well so that’s something to keep in mind too. I’ve not had much trouble with RokuTV and the simplicity is nice but my stand alone boxes are definitely a snappier experience. RokuTVs tend to be more low to midrange in quality if that’s a consideration as well; though for the price they are usually considered a good value (TCL and Hisense mostly).
The ads on Roku can be an issue for some compared to AppleTV which don’t have ads other than for their own services. I block the ads on Roku via DNS blocking but personally I think the ad spaces are pretty minimal and static so aren’t intrusive. Most Roku promotional things can also be turned off.
Roku also caches Plex credentials so if your internet goes out sometimes, Roku accessing Plex is less impacted (there are guides on setting up Plex to work better without internet access for authentication but Roku kinda doesn’t need it).
Roku and AppleTV are both pretty simplistic and good for ease of use in a household being a consideration. The Shield navigation was frustrating for some in my house.
Overall I don’t think there’s really a “right” answer because there’s so many different situations and they all offer something useful so it’s not like any of them are bad. In every “which one is better” thread you’ll get proponents of all of them (like some fan groups they can get pretty vocal too).
Overall I’d say the Nvidia Shield and AppleTV are considered the top performance devices. Shield wins for most media format support - particularly bluray rips with native formats - though FireTV and ChromeCast have been putting out a bit more format support these days. At the same time, folks like the very snappy interface that AppleTV provides particularly if the household is already Apple centric. Roku, FireTV, ChromeCast are considered good more budget friendly alternatives. Roku is mostly service agnostic (they don’t sell their own content but that’s changed a bit lately) but if you have Amazon Prime or Google\YouTubeTV then their dedicated devices will usually be more seamless of an experience for their services.
Anyways… I had a quiet morning so thought I’d throw some thoughts on this since I came across it and you hadn’t gotten any responses yet. Hope it helps!
Edit: So it was just released today - or at least I saw it first today - that those static home screen ads on Roku will be animated ads which can be a bit more distracting but so far there’s no audio which is a big plus. Article with more details. DNS ad blocking will probably still block these ads though (so far that’s been pretty successful).
