Lenovo Cast ready to crash the streaming market

Pocket-sized fun with Lenovo's Cast

Lenovo is jumping into the heavily congested media-streaming space through its new streaming device - the Cast.

The pocket-sized circular device is designed to connect to a TV's HDMI port and works in a similar way to the Roku Streaming Stick, Google Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV Stick that are currently populating the space.

Once it is plugged into the TV it can be used to cast online or offline content from any number of different smartphones or tablets across Android, Windows 8.1 and iOS. It is primarily designed to work with devices running Android 4.3 and above. This means that the Cast only works with selected Miracast or DLNA-enabled Windows 8.1 and iOS devices.

It isn't a dongle!

From there on in you can stream any content to the stick just so long as you are within its 65-foot (20 metre) range and it achieves this through a dual-frequency Wi-Fi. It fits snugly into a bracket onto the back of the TV and is connected using the HDMI and USB cables that come as part of the package, thus slightly different to the dongles that were mentioned earlier.

Lenovo plans to release the Cast around the world in August and it will be priced at a competitive $49 (around £32, or AU$63.50).