Amazon Fire TV with ultra 4K let’s watch live TV and sports through your TV with subscriptions to Hulu, Netflix, PlayStation Vue, and Sling TV, or connect an HD antenna to your TV to get free broadcast networks like NBC and PBS. It Simply plugs into an HDTV streams in minutes.
The Good
- High quality vivid 4K Ultra HD up to 60 fps,
- Alexa enabled voice remote
- Free broadcast TV
- Fast performance with solid Wi-Fi streaming.
The Bad
- No support for Dolby Vision.
- Some big streaming services not available
- No phone casting
- Amazon Prime is effectively a must
The Conclusion
The new Amazon Fire TV is the an awesome Ultra HD box for Amazon Prime subscribers without the capabilities built in their 4K TV. For everyone else it’s pretty much just an average streamer. It’s quick and responsive, but the Amazon branding ensures you won’t get the full use without Prime.
Video Quality
The headline feature here is the ability to output video in Ultra HD 4K at 60fps, and in high dynamic range. The previous version could do 4K but only up to 30fps, because it had an HDMI 1.4 connection and that’s all it could do. The new version has HDMI 2.0.HDR support comes in HDR10 flavour. That’s the open standard everyone has adopted. There’s no Dolby Vision, a rival format using dynamic metadata to optimise the picture scene by scene. That’s something the Apple TV 4K has for justifying its higher price tag.Streaming 4K UHD/HDR video via 5GHz band WiFi works flawlessly, and with minimum initial buffering. The picture quality, with this TV’s OLED display, is astonishing.
The Interface
The interface is clear and easy to use, and thanks to the boosted hardware inside the Fire TV it feels smooth when in use as well. I do not like that I have no way to explicitly browse content that streams for free via my Prime membership. Add in that Amazon has intentionally chosen not to include flagging on the thumbnails that identifies which content is Prime and which is not. Fire TV has introduced a regression in this regard by requiring users to click on a thumbnail before they can find out if something is pay-per-view or free.
Alexa in the TV
So I haven’t figured out how to make Alexa clean my house like Cinderella…yet. But I’m working on it. In the meantime, I have figured out that she is much more than a glorified alarm clock or DJ. Although, you should know that alarms are “not currently supported on this device,” like they are on the Echo. This is a more basic version of Alexa. It doesn’t have her full functionality. You can, however, use the new Fire TV for shopping.owever, the best part is definitely Alexa and the voice activated remote. You can say things like, “Alexa, show me comedic movies.” It will take you to a list of comedies. You can access anything on the box, such as games and apps, but it is also a virtual search engine. You can ask, “What is the overnight weather forecast for San Diego, CA?”
Final Thought
Despite the cumbersome interface, the Fire TV with 4K is in my opinion the second best streaming device out in the market especially now that it has Alexa and a payment option.For $70 you get a virtually hands free streaming device (if you have an echo and smart hub), which none of its competitors have,combined with a Prime membership it’s a great entertainment solution.
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