Look at the light before you do anything. A flashing red light is Roku's low-power warning — it's not a fault code and it's not a dying device. It means the stick isn't being fed enough current, and it tells you exactly where to start.
Why USB power fails
A Roku stick wants 5V at 1A.
A typical TV USB port is USB 2.0, which supplies 500mA — half of what the stick needs. A USB 3.0 port manages 900mA, which is closer but still short. That gap is the whole problem, and it's why "it worked on my old TV" is such a common report: some TVs have a higher-current service port and some don't.
What makes this confusing is the failure pattern. It isn't dead-or-alive. An underpowered stick will often boot fine, sit on the home screen quite happily, and then glitch, freeze or reboot once you start streaming — because that's when the Wi-Fi radio and the decoder both come up and the draw peaks. People conclude the app is broken, or the Wi-Fi is bad. It's the power.
So: plug it into the wall using the adapter that came in the box. Not a phone charger from a drawer, not the TV's USB port, and not a USB hub. If the supplied cable has been lost, the replacement needs to be rated 5V 1A or better.
If you'd rather keep the cable tidy and use the TV's USB port, that's fine if the port can actually supply it. Some can. The way you find out is whether the red light stops flashing and whether it survives twenty minutes of streaming.
If there's no light at all
Different problem. No light means nothing is arriving.
Swap the power cable first — these are thin, they live behind furniture, and they fail at the connector far more often than the stick does. Then try a different outlet, skipping any power strip or extension for the test.
Then plug the stick into a phone charger you know works, away from the TV entirely. If a light comes on there, the stick is alive and the problem is upstream. If it stays dark on a known-good adapter and a known-good cable, that's a dead unit.
If it lights up but hangs on the Roku logo
That's software, not power, and it needs a different fix.
Hold the physical Reset button for about 10 seconds, and let go when the status light starts blinking rapidly. Every Roku has one — a pinhole on the sticks, a proper button on the boxes. This is a full factory reset, so you'll be setting it up and signing back into apps afterwards.
Give it a proper power cycle afterwards: unplug for 30 seconds, plug back in, and let it complete setup without interrupting it. A reset that gets interrupted partway leaves it in the same hung state and people conclude the reset didn't work.
If it still hangs on the logo after a completed factory reset, that's the end of the road. Storage failure on these is not repairable and not worth repairing.
If it's powered but the screen is black
Check you're on the right HDMI input before anything else — it's the most common non-fault on this list, and it costs nothing to rule out.
Then reseat the HDMI connection. Sticks hang directly off the port under their own weight, which works loose over time, especially on a wall-mounted set. If the picture comes and goes when you nudge it, that's your answer and a short HDMI extension solves it permanently.
Beyond that it's a signal problem rather than a power one — Roku TV black screen fixes covers that properly.
Working out whether it's actually dead
Take the stick and its wall adapter to a different TV. Two minutes, and it separates the device from everything around it.
Lights up and boots on the other set, your original TV's port or input is the problem. Behaves identically, it's the stick. Either way you stop guessing, which is worth more than any individual fix on this page.
The honest summary: no light on a known-good wall adapter, or a persistent logo hang after a completed factory reset, means it's finished. Everything short of that is usually power delivery, and power delivery is usually free to fix.
FAQ
The red light is flashing. That's the low-power warning. Move it to the wall adapter — a TV USB port supplies 0.5A and the stick wants 1A.
Can I power it from the TV's USB port? Sometimes. Most TV ports are USB 2.0 at 500mA, which is under spec. If the red light stops and it streams for twenty minutes without stuttering, your port is one of the good ones.
It boots fine then freezes when I start a show. Classic underpowering. Streaming is when the draw peaks. Wall adapter.
Stuck on the Roku logo. Hold Reset for about 10 seconds for a factory reset, then power cycle and let setup finish uninterrupted.
How do I know it's dead? No light on an adapter and cable you've proven work, or still hanging on the logo after a completed reset.