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4.8

Overall Score

LAST UPDATED: February 25th, 2024

Twitch is a live streaming video platform which was purchased by Amazon.com in 2014. The service was designed for avid video game fans and participants, including video game tours from users, e-sports broadcasts, and other gaming events.  The website can be viewed live or through an on-demand setup for $10.99 per month. The site does not have any regular television programming, nor does it have movies on demand.

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The Good

  • Two subscription options
  • Stream through software
  • Quality options

Subscription Options

Twitch offers two different subscription options. The first is an ad-driven, but free, subscription. The premium package is called Turbo, which costs $10.99 per month but takes away ads.

Mobile Device Compatibility

Twitch is compatible with a number of mobile devices, allowing subscribers to stream without many issues.  Also, Twitch has a mobile app for both iOS and Android.

Ability to Stream Through Software

Twitch allows its users to stream within software, such as EA's Origin, to get their video gaming experience out there. Also, if users have a modern Nvidia card, they can easily stream their in-game experience to Twitch via the card's ShadowPlay driver feature.

Reduced Buffering Complications

With Twitch, subscribers do not need to worry about the strength or speed of the Internet connection. If users do have problems with streaming, they can transition between the video settings (high, medium, low, and mobile) to get your video back up to a consistent stream. Twitch is definitely a unique streaming TV service, as it is for gaming, not a movie and TV episode viewing. The main benefit to Twitch's services is their unique platform and popularity among gamers. Twitch is quickly catching fire and is becoming a huge entertainment platform, creating an online gaming community. It is available to stream through mobile devices and Twitch's mobile app.
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The Bad

  • Support for Mac
  • Archiving streams

PC-Driven Gaming Platforms

Twitch is catered to function at its best on PC-based platforms. There isn't much support for those who use Mac products for gaming.

Archiving Your Past Twitch Streams

Users have to manually set up archiving in their settings in order to access past streams. After 60 days, your archived streams will be deleted if you haven't automatically set up the save feature. Although Twitch is unique and not a standard streaming TV service, they have a few drawbacks subscribers should be aware of before paying for the monthly subscription.  Twitch functions best on PCs and doesn't have much support for Mac products.  Also, users have to manually set up archiving in order to view past streaming.

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The Bottom Line

For gamers, there are many benefits to using Twitch in order to stream and share your gaming experience. Users can broadcast to other users from within their gaming experience via specialized hardware. However, the high hardware overhead made this platform somewhat expensive to get the most out of. Also note that if you are wanting a traditional streaming TV service, Twitch is for gaming, not TV and movie viewing. We recommend reviewing the top rated companies before making a final decision.

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Star Rating

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4.2

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38 Reviews

Review Breakdown

5 grade

53%

4 grade

32%

3 grade

5%

2 grade

3%

1 grade

8%

Sentiment Criteria

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Quality

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Amanda George IL

Their system must not be equipped to deal with the amount of customers they have because everything I try to stream with them lags so badly. I will be cancelling my service and moving to someone else. When you call customer service to get help all they say is to restart it when that's not the problem.

8 months ago