![]() Price: The Chromecast with Google TV 4K ($49), Fire TV Stick 4K ($49) and Fire TV Stick 4K Max ($54) are similarly priced, and the Max offers a few extra perks for that additional $5. Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz) Bluetooth®ĭolby Atmos, Dolby Digital (5.1 surround sound), Dolby Digital Plus (7.1 surround sound)ĭolby Atmos, 7.1 surround sound, 2-channel stereo and HDMI audio pass through up to 5.1Īlexa Voice Remote w/ Live TV and App buttons (In one instance, “show me classic James Bond movies” returned only a single result: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.) Service-specific searches such as “comedies on Netflix” didn’t work either, and Alexa is incapable of dealing with follow-up searches to filter its results.Chromecast with Google TVChromecast with Google TV 4K Although Alexa handles titles, actors, and directors without issue, advanced searches such as “new comedy movies” and “90s TV shows” yielded a lot of results that merely had those keywords in their titles or descriptions. You don’t even need a remote in some cases, since Amazon’s Echo speakers can control playback and launch certain videos with hands-free voice commands.īut along the way, Amazon’s forgotten to expand upon the basics. Thanks to Amazon’s Alexa assistant, you can look for movies and TV shows, stream music, control smart home devices, and ask for general information such as the weather forecast. Voice search is supposed to be the Fire TV’s saving grace. Why are rentals interspersed with subscription video? Why does Better Call Saul appear three times in one row? What human decided this made any sense? Alexa falls behind Everything just needs to be much simpler. While Amazon’s goal of pulling content out of individual apps has merit, the execution has so little organization, and so much unnecessary cruft, that it’s not particularly useful in practice. There’s going to be lots of overlap.Īnd that’s all before you move beyond the home screen and into the Fire TV’s subsections for Your Videos, Movies, TV Shows, and Apps. The top row is recent content, and the bottom row is favorite apps. And because your favorite apps will also probably be the ones you use the most, you’ll often be staring at two rows of largely duplicate tiles. Although the recents row can technically include individual TV shows and movies, as opposed to just apps, Amazon is the only video source that feeds into this. On its own, 4K HDR is not a differentiator for Amazon.Įven the rows of apps near the top of the Fire TV home screen are an example of bloat, with one row for customizable favorites, and another for recent content. Still, Roku’s Streaming Stick+ delivers all the same 4K HDR apps for the same $70. Amazon helpfully highlights some of its own 4K HDR content on the Fire TV home screen-the opening scene to Sneaky Pete makes a great demo-and the Fire TV also supports 4K HDR in Netflix and YouTube. Amazon opted not to include an infrared emitter and TV control buttons on its remote, leaving the Fire TV with a clear disadvantage against the latest Roku Streaming Sticks and higher-end streamers like the Apple TV 4K and Nvidia Shield TV.Īs for 4K HDR, it’s a nice perk for users with compatible TVs, allowing the screen to run at higher brightness levels without blowing out colors in bright scenes or ruining shadow detail in dark ones. ![]() The new Fire TV’s remote control, meanwhile, is exactly the same as Amazon’s other streamers, and that’s a problem. Even Amazon’s first-generation Fire TV box from 2014 does a better job. ![]() ![]() In PlayStation Vue, for instance, the interface lags a half-second behind each button press, and the channel guide needs time to load onto the screen as you scroll through. In practice this means the Fire TV runs smoothly most of the time, but will crawl through some more demanding apps. Performance floats between the Fire TV Stick and old Fire TV box, with twice the RAM of the former, but a slower processor than the latter. The new Fire TV (middle) is like a cross between the Fire TV Stick and the last-generation box. And like the Fire TV Stick, there are no ports for full-sized USB, microSD, or ethernet if you want wired connectivity, you’ll need to buy Amazon’s $15 adapter. Instead of sitting on a TV stand, the new Fire TV is a pendant that hangs behind the TV on a short built-in HDMI cable. Although the new Fire TV inherits the name from Amazon’s now-discontinued set-top box, it hews a bit closer to the entry-level Fire TV Stick in design and performance.
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