- Google is lowering the minimum amount of RAM an Android TV device must have to 1GB.
- The previous minimum was 1.5GB for 1080p TVs and 2GB for 4K TVs.
- By lowering this requirement, OEMs will be able to make even cheaper Android TV devices, but it remains to be seen how well the OS will perform with only 1GB of RAM.
One of the best things about the new Google TV Streamer is how much memory it has. With 4GB of RAM at its disposal, the Google TV Streamer is one of the better performing media streaming devices out there even if it doesn’t have a particularly fast processor. However, it’s an outlier in terms of memory capacity, as the vast majority of media streamers running Android have 1.5 to 2GB of RAM. Android doesn’t need a lot of memory to work, especially when you only need to run one app at a time like on TVs, but it still needs a minimum amount to deliver an acceptable user experience. Google believes that minimum is 1GB of RAM for some new TVs launching with Android TV 14.
Android TV 14 is the latest version of the TV-optimized version of the Android OS. Like its name implies, it’s based on Android 14, but a lot of the features in Android 14 for mobile devices aren’t applicable to Android 14 for TVs. TVs are an entirely different form factor with entirely different user expectations than handheld hardware like phones and tablets, after all.