This is the Nexus Player—the newest official hardware for the new Android TV platform. As you can see, there is some ASUS branding around the sides because this little device here is manufactured by ASUS with the help of Google, of course. This device works in conjunction with the ASUS Game Controller, which I actually do not have because I don’t really play too many games (at least on Android anyways). I will see the focus on the Nexus Player itself. But if you guys want me to get my hands on the ASUS Game Controller, certainly let me know because I might just do that if that’s something you guys want to see.

But anyway guys, let’s go ahead and get into this box. We of course need to take off the plastic wrap like so since this is a brand new unopened box. Then we can slide off the orange cover, which side note: great color choice Google! I’m definitely a fan of orange if you guys couldn’t tell already. But now we can slice off both the left and right sides of the box and slide off the top cover and viola, we’ll find a hockey puck. Yup that’s right. I thought this was the Nexus Player but nope, it’s not. It’s just a hockey puck. Happy April Fools! I’ll see you guys in the next video. See ya!

No, I’m kidding! This is actually the Nexus Player, which I’m going to set to the side for now because I don’t want to get too carried away. Underneath that, we will find a basic setup guide, which is also well-colored and has a basic setup animation that shows you where to connect all the cords on the back of the Nexus Player. Underneath that though, it gets a little messy. So first of all, we’ll find the Nexus Display Remote, which is almost identical to the Fire TV remote if you guys remember that little device from a while back. I will definitely come back to this remote but for now we’re going to continue our journey to the center of the box. We’ll see that this is actually where the packaging gets messy, like I said earlier. I’ll just say that.

We will find some batteries here, which are just some basic cobalt Panasonic batteries it looks like. But we’ll also find the power AC cord, which is intertwined in all sorts of cardboard. I will say this is by far, the worst packaging of any Nexus device I’ve ever seen. Not that it really matters too much but you know, presentation is important and yeah, this is kind of sloppy as you can see. I did actually manage to get the power cord out of here though so that is good.

But you think that would be the last item on the box, but this setup instruction packet is actually the last thing in the box, which is a bit unusual. I would think that it would be towards the top with the other setup packet but no it’s actually just sitting here on the bottom. And it’s pretty simple, you guys won’t probably need this at all.

But this guy here is the star of the show, the Nexus Player hockey puck looking device that I joke about. Honestly, the design really isn’t all that bad at all. It has a matte finish on the top with a very shiny reflective coating bezel around the sides. For a sit top box, it’s pretty simple but very sexy for what it is. As you can see, there are three ports on the bottom that are actually carved out of the center. Those include an HDMI port, a microUSB port and a power AC port and that is about it.

If we take a look at the remote, it feels really good on the hands. The biggest difference between this remote and say the Fire TV remote is the back, which is sort of carved out in a shape of a triangle I want to say. It’s very sharp, kind of has abrupt edges which adds some extra grip. It doesn’t feel all that comfortable in the hands nor does it feel uncomfortable since this device is so lightweight. It’s just right. The battery pack can be slid off to allow for two triple A batteries to be inserted. And then the front of the remote has buttons for the back, home, play, and pause buttons along with a dedicated search button which is also pretty handy.

Now if we plug this device in into the TV, setup is pretty straightforward. You’ll only need to connect it to Wi-Fi and your Google account that you can do via your phone or laptop just like a Chromecast device by going to G.co/AndroidTV. Once that’s all done doing its thing, you’ll be presented with the main home screen where you can actually scroll through various content that feeds you primarily Google stuff like Google Play Music, Google Play Movies and TV Shows—really the entire OS looks really nice though and it uses material design in almost every way possible, which is always great to see. I’m definitely a huge fan of material design. There are some apps like Hulu, Netflix, and Google Play Music like I mentioned earlier. And there are expected to be a ton more apps coming soon once this device has more time to mature.

So this has been my first look at the Google Nexus Player. If you’re at all interested at this device, drop me a comment or send me a message on Twitter @BeauHD. Let me know what other type of content you’d like to see. Do you want to see apps or maybe a full review? Let me know and I’ll try to cover it in a future video.