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How to Use Ethernet with Your Chromecast and Fire Stick - Smart DNS Proxy

The Chromecast and Fire stick are pretty awesome devices, occupying more than 70% of the market share. But, streaming devices aren’t always perfect, if you have a weak Wi-Fi which can make the whole streaming thing as painful as a kick in the nuts.

Thankfully, you can use an Ethernet cable for the wireless Chromecast and Fire stick to boost your internet speed. All you need is a cheap Ethernet Adapter that you can buy off of Amazon.

Now, there are quite a few Ethernet adapters online, so, I’ll recommend you pick up one of these: UGREEN Ethernet Adapter, Ethernet Adapter for Chromecast, Amazon Ethernet Adapter. All of them, come under $15, and offer up to 100 Mbps, so watching 4K content shouldn’t be a problem at all.

We bought one ourselves as well, this one is an Amazon Ethernet Adapter and it supports the newer Chromecast 3 and Fire stick 4K. So, let’s see how you can set it up.

Fire TV stick

Before we jump into the setup, let’s do a speed test on Fire stick connected over Wi-Fi. The speed is somewhere around 5Mb/s on Wi-Fi, as the TV is far away from my router.

Now, let's see how it goes when you connect it with Ethernet. Plug in Fire stick into the TV and then connect Ethernet adapter, then plug in a rj45 cable and power supply.

Let’s see what speed you get with Ethernet. And, it turns out it’s 6.0 Mb/s on LAN. It’s slightly more than Wi-Fi, but if the Wi-Fi connection is spotty, it really helps.

Chromecast

Set up your Chromecast as you normally would, i.e. plug the Chromecast into the HDMI port on your TV. Next, instead of connecting the micro USB cable to the power on the Chromecast, plug in the micro USB end of Amazon Ethernet Adapter, then plug an Ethernet cable and power cable into the adapter.

Now, how to check if it actually works?

Well, let’s play a video on Chromecast with my Wi-Fi connected on the phone. Now, if I go to my router and turn OFF the Wi-Fi mode (pretty much every router has a Wi-Fi button on it), I wouldn't be able to watch any video on my phone, but the video should stream on Chromecast without any problem since it’s connected to Ethernet and not Wi-Fi.

So, there you go, that’s how you use an Ethernet cable with Your Chromecast and Fire stick to boost your Internet speed. We have tested it on all versions, except the first version of Fire stick, it works on all of them.

That said, check out our other video on Fire stick tips and tricks, which could help you out if you have one of those.

Thanks for reading and watching and see you in the next one.