Amazon Fire TV Stick With Alexa Voice Remote Review

 

THE BOTTOM LINE

Amazon's Fire TV Stick is faster and less expensive than ever, and comes with an Alexa-enabled voice remote out of the box, making it the best budget-friendly media streamer you can buy.

PROS:

• Inexpensive
• Comes with an improved voice remote that can control your TV
• Voice search and Amazon Alexa are very useful
• Fast performance

CONS:

• Missing some notable streaming services

AMAZON FIRE TV STICK WITH ALEXA VOICE REMOTE SPECS:

Resolution	1080p
HDR	HDR10
Platform	Amazon Fire OS

PRODUCT DETAILS(AS PER AMAZON):

Content-Forward UI Puts Your Apps & Games Front and Center

We’ve made a host of improvements that reduce the number of work customers have to do to engage with the content they love. This means customers use your apps more, leading to more sessions, deeper engagement, and more opportunities to generate revenue. We expect these and many other features will make the new Fire TV Stick even more popular, further expanding the reach for your apps and games.

To make it simple for customers to access their existing app library, we’ve added a new “My Apps” icon to the Heads Up Display. Holding down the Home button on the Fire TV remote brings up the Heads Up Display (pictured below), and from there customers can go directly to their app library, reducing the clicks it takes for them to start engaging with your content.

Heads Up Display Featuring the “My Apps” Icon

To get your app in front of the right customers, we’ve also refined our recommendations to surface new content. Based on their existing preferences, customers will see personalized recommendations in the “Recommended for You” and “Top Free Apps” categories. For example, customers that tend to prefer cooking apps, are more likely to be recommended content related to food and drink, getting your app in front of the right customers and increasing the likelihood that it is downloaded.

Personalization Recommendations on Home Gateway

To make it easier for customers to discover new apps within a category, we’ve created a new 2D layout that displays dozens of apps at once. For customers, this makes it easier to explore the category, surfacing more content on the screen while reducing the effort to scan the entire catalog. For developers, this increases the likelihood that customers are exposed to your app, helping you reach new customers.

New 2D Category Layout

To make it even easier for Fire TV customers to discover new content, we are bringing them a brand-new, content-forward experience via a software update later this year. Updates will include a new "My Apps & Games" row on the Home Gateway, where customers can arrange their favorite apps for faster access. There will also be additional rows like "New to Fire TV Apps" and "Best New Fire TV Apps" that will help customers discover new content. Search optimizations will introduce a 2D grid that displays apps and movies above the fold when customers search for a specific keyword. These are just some of the many changes that will go live with the new UI refresh, making app discovery that much easier for your customers.

Notifications To Keep Customers Engaged

Once customers have found your app and downloaded it, you want to keep them engaged and using your app as much as possible. Fire TV’s Android-based software features notifications that will help keep your app top of mind, increasing customer engagement and sessions. After an app has been installed, customers get a quick notification letting them know it’s ready to launch. Customers who take the time to install your app are re-engaged once the process is complete, drawing their attention back to your app and keeping their interest fresh. The notification appears in the bottom right-hand section of the screen, alerting customers that the download is complete and giving them the option to launch your app in one click.

Post-Install Notification

To ensure customers are using the most recent version of your app, Fire TV offers two types of update notifications. The "Required Update" notification is a visual prompt on an app icon, indicating that there is a new update available. The second update notification is presented to customers via an on-device dialogue box (shown below). When a customer starts a new session in your app or game, they are presented with the option to “Update Now” or “Launch without Updating” alongside details that describe what’s new in the update.

App Update Notification

Alexa Powered Voice Search Helps Customers Find New Content

Fire TV Stick now comes with the Alexa Voice Remote, making it easier for customers to find exactly what they’re looking for. Alexa is Amazon’s cloud-based voice service that allows customers to instantly play music and get information, news, sports scores, weather, and more—just press and ask. Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote allows customers to search for specific apps by name, open an existing app, or request broader searches like “racing” through voice commands. To make it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for, we’ve also made voice search more powerful. Voice search now extends to app metadata, so search results are refined and more effective than before. For example, if “racing” is a keyword in your app’s metadata, your game will be surfaced in search results when a customer asks for “racing games”.

Bringing Your Apps to Amazon Fire TV Is Easy

The new Fire TV Stick runs on Fire OS 5, which is based on Android Lollipop, so you can develop with the tools and frameworks you’re familiar with. If you have a media app, you can use our  Web App Starter Kit (WASK) to speed up the process of bringing it to Fire TV. Customers like the Republican and Democratic National Convention have used WASK to bring their content to Fire TV. “WASK enabled us to quickly get a TV app up and running for tens of thousands of people to watch content both live and on-demand”, said 2016 RNC Deputy Digital Director, Doug Hochberg. According to DNC Innovation Coordinator Shelby Wagenseller, “WASK enabled [the DNC] to quickly create a TV app, without wasting time and energy bringing in additional development resources.” Other development tools are also available, such as System X-Ray, which provides streamlined intelligence on app behavior and performance during testing.

Amazon's Fire TV Stick simplifies streaming with power, volume, and mute buttons in a single remote.

PRODUCT FEATURES

• With 50% more power than the previous generation, Fire TV Stick delivers quick app starts and fast streaming in Full HD
• Includes Alexa Voice Remote with power and volume buttons
• Less clutter, more control - Alexa Voice Remote lets you use your voice to search and launch shows across apps
• All-new preset buttons get you to your favorite apps quickly
• Plus, control power and volume on your TV and soundbar with a single remote
• Home theater audio with Dolby Atmos - Feel scenes come to life with immersive Dolby Atmos audio on select titles with compatible home audio systems
• Tens of thousands of channels, Alexa skills, and apps - Including Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, and HBO Max (subscriptions not included)
• 500,000+ movies and TV episodes - With thousands included in your Prime membership
• Live TV - Watch your favorite live TV, news, and sports with subscriptions to SLING TV, YouTube TV, and others
• Use the Guide button to see what's available and when
• Free TV - Access over 20,000 free movies and TV shows from apps like IMDb TV, Tubi, Pluto TV, and more
• Listen to music - Stream on Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora, and others (subscriptions not included)
• Simple and intuitive - Quickly access your favorite apps, live TV, and things you use most, all from the main menu
• Easy to set up, stays hidden - Plugin behind your TV, turn on the TV, and connect to the internet to get set up
• Subscription fees may apply

WHAT'S INCLUDED

• Fire TV Stick (3rd Gen)
• Alexa Voice Remote 3rd Gen
• USB cable/power adapter
• HDMI extender

PRODUCT DETAILS

• 5.79"H x 1.06"W x 5.51"D
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Requires two AAA batteries (included)
• Connectors: USB, HDMI
• Memory: 1GB
• Wireless: WiFi, Bluetooth
• Model no. B08C1W5N87

Voice and Playback Performance

Voice recognition is excellent. Even with my voice sounding hoarse from a cold, the Fire TV Stick understood all of my requests. It brought up search results for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Gundam, and Voltron with no issue gave me a weather forecast for the coming week and answered various bits of trivia. It's impressively accurate and responsive for a $40 streaming device.

 

Performance is aided in part by a quad-core processor that significantly speeds things up over the previous model. Navigating menus isn't quite as fast as it is with the 4K-capable Fire TV Cube, and the stick can only output up to 1080p video, but it's still very responsive. I had no issue flipping between different apps and quickly loading movies and shows.

 

Like all media streamers, especially ones that only use Wi-Fi, video quality depends on the speed and signal strength of your network. If you want to use a wired connection, an optional Ethernet adapter for Fire TV devices is available for $15.

 

The Second Best Streamer Under $50

In the $50 range, the Fire TV Stick 4K stands out as our Editors' Choice for budget media streamers. If you haven't upgraded to 4K, though, the standard Fire TV Stick is an easy way to save $10, and is equally worthy of the award. The Google Chromecast and Roku Premiere both present very compelling alternatives to Amazon's Sticks, with the ability to access the Google Play on-demand libraries Fire TV can't. They make their own compromises, though; the Chromecast has no remote and requires you to use your smartphone, tablet, or computer to control it, while the Roku Premiere has a much less feature-rich voice experience.