Before I jump into the review of the New Fire TV, I want to note other people's review on
this product .
High profile Critics like CNET and Techradar seem to be good with this product, but individuals
with reviews of their own on Amazon not so much
This is a head scratcher because typically Amazons products tend to review pretty well,
especially on their website.
Here the Fire Stick for example.
So I guess the question is where do I land on this?
To be completely honest there's a lot to not like about this device, but...what are you
guys looking at?
I wasn't...I wasn't talking about you
I was talking about Roku. I wasn't
Oh come on - don't go. I didn't think he would...
I should go after him, right?
Actually let's start the review first, I'll deal with him in a little bit
The unboxing experience is pretty nice.
Definitely a step up from the Fire tablet unboxing I did in my last video.
You can power the Fire TV either with a wall outlet
or by plugging it into a usb slot in the television itself
Also, odd no reset button.
I think this is a mistake, but to be fair I've only had the fire TV lock up on me once
in the few weeks I've owned it.
I just had to unplug the fire TV and plug it back in to get it going again.
After putting my wifi in, an update to the Fire TV, a few reboots and logging into my
Amazon account, I was good to get streaming.
Actually I take that back, I didn't need to log in!
I think because amazon shipped it and they had my account info they had me already logged
in and ready to go.
Nice touch Amazon!
I really like the app picker at the beginning of the setup.
It shows popular options in several categories to get you started in streaming.
After I was in I tried to find where I could search for apps.
But then I realized that was what Alexa was for.
This makes installing apps really easy.
I bought a kit including the echo dot
To use that with it, you have to link Alexa on the echo dot in the Alexa app
After that short process you're good to go.
The interface is really nice
It looks a lot nicer than the Roku interface which I can appreciate, but it's a little
bit amazon-centric.
To be fair Amazon does promote things other than their apps.
I like how on the main screen if you highlight something Amazon is promoting it shows a trailer
in the background but it's totally out of the way and you can still control things if
the trailer doesn't grab you.
But the Fire TV definitely pushes Amazon services for sure.
It's like every other thing is something Amazon is streaming.
And they update this home screen pretty frequently.
It seems like daily, which is really nice for getting exposed to new things.
It supports tons of apps - Netflix, Hulu, Epix, Prime Video, and there are even some
I'll talk about later Plex and HDHomerun
There are some notable missing - Vudu and Google Play Movies for instance.
I guess amazon didn't want the competition.
But I will note although it has YouTube, it's not a official app.
YouTube and Amazon have a complicated relationship.
It works but it's a less than perfect experience with video stuttering and some additional
load times, but it's pretty good for the most part
And it supports HDR which we'll talk about later
you can beam YouTube from your phone to the Fire TV which is a really fun feature
Also the screensaver that it uses is really awesome.
These photos just stop me in my tracks at times
Let's just enjoy these for a little bit
Hey I've been there!
But Alexa is where this thing shines
You can control Alexa via the voice remote or hands free with a nearby echo device like
my echo dot
You can pause, play or even rewind or fast forward a specific amount of seconds.
Really cool stuff
But this functionality doesn't work on every app
Prime Video works flawlessly.
Netflix is close but it won't let you specify an amount of seconds, you can just fast forward
or rewind 10 seconds at a time
And Hulu just supports pausing and playing
YouTube would let you pause and play but fast forward or rewind just skipped to another
video.
But even HDHomerun supported fast forward and I wouldn't consider that a high profile
app, although again you couldn't specify the amount seconds
I imagine support will be added in the near future for all of these features for all of
these apps though
Here's some cool things you can do.
I can tell Alexa to play a particular show and sometimes it's smart enough to know
where I can watch that show for free
Alexa, Play Stranger Things
See here, it knew it was on Netflix
Alexa, play This Is Us
And here it knew it was on Hulu
And a simple "Alexa play" gets things going
But sometimes you hit some walls with Alexa.
Like if I tell it to play SpongeBob SquarePants it takes me to purchase it instead of to prime
video where I can watch it for free.
And this is Alexa, so you can even control smart devices
Set the temperature to 52
The heat is set to 52
Or order something
Order toilet paper
Alright
Or have it tell you a joke
Tell me a joke
What is a pirates favorite animal? Arrhhh-varks
This is a lot of functionality you don't get with other devices.
But I will say controlling the Fire TV sometimes feels a little limited.
Here is all the commands I'm aware you can do
Be sure to be specific in your wording.
It's not the smartest voice control I've seen
But what's missing?
You can't navigate the menus by saying up or down, it just supports pretty specific
stuff
Even something as simple as turning on your tv is out of the question.
"Alexa, turn the tv on"
Sorry I didn't find tv
Nope nothing.
What's dumb here is this device supports HDMI CEC so theoretically Amazon could program
this feature in.
By the way HDMI CEC is an awesome feature that MANY people don't know about
Basically it allows the device and the TV to communicate so the Fire TV can control
your television and vis versa,
To make things a little more clear, by clicking the home button on my fire TV remote, the
tv will turn on
And I can control my fire tv with my television remote - it's really simple and really awesome
you're welcome!
Not all TVs support it, but a lot do and it's really a easy setup.
I found the performance to be pretty good
I've used the Fire TV Stick and I found this to be a good bit faster and more responsive.
and I've used the 2015 Fire TV and to be honest it's tough to say which is faster.
It's really close, but this certainly isn't an upgrade from that.
There is a bit of lag sometimes, but it's tough to say if it's because it's not
a powerful enough device or if it might be improved through software updates
One question I had going into purchasing this was how reliable this Fire TV was
I'm happy to say even after long streaming sessions it held up like a champ
I did run into some bugs and app crashes and it makes me think this device needs to cook
a little longer in the developer oven
I think amazon will eventually polish up this device with a few patches and updates
This is a 4K HDR device, so what about that, right?
Well this is embarrassing, but I don't have a tv with HDR...or 4k
I know, I know.
I can see the comments now.
"You call yourself a tech reviewer and you don't have a 4k HDR TV?
Unsub!
- Love, Mom"
You might be wondering why I'd buy one of these without a TV supporting those features
and I have a reason I promise, but I'll get to that later
Luckily a friend of mine has a 4K HDR tv and they allowed me give it go
4K HDR with the Fire TV is really nice.
I tried netflix, amazon, youtube in HDR and HDR is awesome, but I'd say even a non HDR
image still looks great from this device in 4k.
I could only notice the HDR difference in select scenes that really take advantage of
the extra range of color.
But watching at 4k though, that was a game changer for me.
The edges and crispness of the image we're nearly perfect.
It definitely makes me want to accidentally drop a bucket of water on my 60in Vizio
Loading the 4k HDR image was plenty fast even despite the extra data powering that image.
My friend has fiber internet at a gigabit speed and loading was near instantaneous with
the Fire TV
But you shouldn't need that much.
Amazon claims a speed of 20 megabits per second should do the trick.
Which is surprising, I would have thought you would need more.
The fire supports HDR 10 and not the Dolby Version of HDR so make sure your tv supports
that if you're wanting to take advantage of HDR.
Also at this time only Netflix, YouTube and Amazon apps support HDR, so not a huge collection
right now, but I'm sure more will come later.
Also, this device is perfectly portable.
Just bring it along and connect it to wifi and you're off and running
The built in HDMI cable helps this portability, but another reason I like having an all in
one device like this is it saves you a little bit of money.
An HDMI cable that supports 4k at 60hz with HDR runs for about $10 on Amazon.
It's a nice little bit of savings baked in there
The main reason I got a 4k HDR device without a 4k or HDR television was because I wanted
to use HDHomerun.
HDHomerun doesn't require a 4k hdr device, but I needed the extra horsepower to get this
thing going
It's a service that allows you to watch television off of an antenna
Actually it's a little more complicated than that, but it requires quite a bit of
horsepower.
And Roku doesn't have an app for it, so that's why I decided to pick up this Fire
TV
I'm happy to say it works pretty well.
Not totally perfect with a few hitches here and there but pretty good nonetheless
To be fair no device I've ever used runs HDhomerun perfectly.
I also tried plex which is a popular app for playing media stored internally on your network
I was able to watch tv shows I recorded on my computer from the HD Homerun seamlessly
- great performance here.
I haven't talked about specs yet, because I think a device like this is more about what
it can do than what's on the inside
But it rocks a Amlogic Quad-core 1.5 GHz | ARM 4xCA53 and Mali450 MP3 GPU
Yeah I don't know what those are either, but they work well enough.
It also has 2 gb of ram and only sports 8gb of storage which in this day and age does
seems a bit low, but that appears to be the norm for these small tv devices.
It should be enough to store any apps you might want, but storing let's say your movie
collection is out of the question.
But that's not what a device like this is for so it's totally forgivable
It supports these codecs on the screen if that interests you.
Pause the screen if you want this, I'm about to take them away.
And gone...
But If you were hoping of gaming on this device, oh boy you're going to be disappointed.
I tried to play crossy road, yes crossy road and man that was bad.
Very laggy and did I mention it's just crossy road.
This is not an intense game by any stretch
After that I didn't bother with any other games.
If it can't handle Crossy road, I don't think it will run Crysis.
It does support some game controllers, but with it's lack of graphics power, I wouldn't
bother getting one.
Also a little random the included remote for some unknown reason uses bluetooth instead
of well whatever it was using before
I'm not sure what's the deal with the change, but it still takes 2 AAA batteries
But nothing else has changed.
Exact same layout and form factor.
Comparing it to my roku remote - this is the previous version of the Roku remote granted,
but the fires is skinnier and has more buttons, although the Roku remote has buttons to specific
apps which is nice.
But the sleeker design actually hurts the Fire a little bit.
I found this remote really easy to lose with it being all black and it being so skinny
it easily slides right into my seat cushions.
Hmm maybe smaller and sleeker isn't always better...just a thought.
There is even a remote app and it works as you'd expect, but it does use some sort
of a touchpad instead of buttons which is fine, but a little odd.
Also it doesn't support private listening through the phone like Roku does.
This is a nifty feature on Rokus where you can listen to the audio streaming from the
phone instead of it going through the tv speakers.
You can do this with earbuds to get a private listening experience
To put it simply, if you want a new Amazon Fire with HDR and the idea of Alexa being
built in appeals, then at this point this is device to get.
It's a pretty good device, but it's definitely not perfect.
If you already have the 2015 Amazon Fire TV, then you might want to wait for the next Amazon
Fire if you're wanting an upgrade
Rumor is it's coming out next year sometime.
Also if you're happy with your current streaming solution like through Smart Tv or Game console,
I really don't see a need to switch unless you think you'd benefit from the hands free
control of Alexa or you're wanting the 4k HDR support
With that said where do I land on this device and rift between critics and the average user
I think the issue here is the marketing.
This is a new 4k HDR fire streaming stick, I don't care that amazon is calling it a Fire
TV and not a streaming stick.
If you look at it like that, I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Not that this is a step back from the 2015 amazon fire tv.
No not at all.
It's more of side step
As I mentioned before, I used the 2015 Fire TV for a few weeks before getting this one
and although the older version is more polished with less bugs, I don't think performance
is that different as the streaming box.
It's basically the same thing in smaller profile.
That is unless you care about gaming on these, a microSD card slot for sideloading things
and getting an Ethernet jack built in
Well on that last one, you can get an Ethernet jack on this sold separately for $15
...except you can't right now.
It's not on sale for a few more weeks.
If these drawbacks are pushing you away from this device, then you might want to consider
the new Roku devices that came out recently.
There is a lot more of a selection to choose from and they seem really nice on paper although
I haven't used one yet
And they can control the volume on your TV from the remote, how great is that?
I've linked some to look at in the description.
I think that's it for the review, thanks so much for watching...I uhh, I gotta go now
I thought I might find you here
So, how are you holding up?
I'm sorry, I mean, I don't even like Crossy road
Why don't you just come home, I heard there's a new episode of the Walking
Dead that just came out...I've been really wanting to see that.
Listen, maybe you're not the perfect streaming box for everyone, but your
perfect for me...
At least until something better comes out
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