When Google announced Chromecast, many people were excited. After all when we first found out that a $35 device had as much functionality as it did, we figured who wouldn’t be excited? Unfortunately Chromecast was only sold in the US at first, and there wasn’t much sign of Google moving it overseas all that soon. Thankfully back in early October Amazon started shipping it to many places throughout the world, and over the months Chromecast has garnered support of places like Hulu, and Google themselves are expanding support for the device by adding things like Drive integration.
Still Chromecast lacks quite a bit of functionality, namely that you can’t stream browser windows from your mobile device, only a PC or Chromebook, and that you can’t share local media or even your mobile device’s screen to Chromecast. Asus seems to have heard the cry of those wanting Chromecast outside the US as well as those who want local device streaming and screen mirroring and is bringing everyone the Asus Miracast Dongle. If the term Miracast sounds familiar, that’s because it’s a technology that Google had started building into Android in the Jelly Bean days. Miracast lets you do exactly what you think; stream local media and mirror your screen to another via the Miracast protocol via a WiFi connection.
The Asus Miracast Dongle supports full 1080p output and works very much like a Chromecast does. It has an HDMI port that you plug straight into your TV and looks like a large USB storage dongle. There’s a USB port that powers the device, and you can either plug it into your TV, or if your TV doesn’t have USB ports for some reason you can also use a standard USB charging adapter that plugs into a wall. It has support for WiFi b/g/n/a, and like always the faster your home WiFi the faster streaming will likely be. Asus says that the Miracast dongle works with all of its devices, as well as the Nexus 7. Right now Asus doesn’t say specifically that it works with any Android device running Jelly Bean or higher, but since that’s all the Nexus 7 is we don’t see any reason this wouldn’t work with whatever device you want. Retail pricing is expected to be around 79 Euros, which is a little over 100 US Dollars, and is quite a bit more expensive than the Chromecast. Check out the promo video below to see it in action, and we’ll let you know whenever they announce a release date.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9WNbOHbhc8