The Fire TV Stick will be the proverbial rug that
ties the room together – it's fast, responsive and works flawlessly with
Amazon's infrastructure. If you aren't an Amazon insider, however, consider the
other streaming options before you buy.
In the past, if you want a smart TV, you would have to pay out good money.
Now, for a few dollars, you can have a smart TV. All they need is a spare HDMI and a device no bigger than a USB stick.
All this is happening because the
set-top box landscape is changing. Full-size goliaths such as the Roku3, Amazon Fire TV and AppleTV used to duke it out for control of your
television. But then came Google's Chromecast, it's David - a set-top box built into
a thumb drive form factor and fits entirely behind a TV. The Fire Stick is
Amazon's answer to Google's device and what an answer it is.
The
Fire TV Stick is petite and powerful. It fits flush with most TV's HDMI ports
and, unlike its main competitor Chromecast, comes with a fairly decent remote.
In terms of content, you'll find just about everything here. Netflix, iPlayer,
Sky News, Spotify, while Amazon's Prime Instant Video basically sits at the
head of the proverbial table.
Almost everything feels right about
the Amazon Fire TV Stick, but most of all is its $39.99 price tag. It's a
little more than Chromecast, but less than the RokuStreaming Stick; it feels like a supremely
good value for what you get in the box.
Where Amazon Fire TV Stick slightly
stumbles, however, is its deep-rooted attachment to its mother service, Amazon Prime. Without Prime, the set-top stick
feels devoid of personality.
Yes, you can still get those great
aforementioned apps, yes you'll zip around from one section of the interface to
the next thanks to its powerfulcomponents, and yes you'll even get a
30-day trial for free just for buying the streaming stick – but, after the
trial runs out or you choose not to commit to Amazon's service, the whole
experience feels sterile without Prime.
At this point in the game, a
streaming stick is nothing new. It's a plastic, thumb drive-sized device that
plugs into any HDMI port (not just MHL-equippedports) and draws
power from a USB port on the TV or from a wall outlet via the included
converter. The exterior itself isn't all that exciting – it's 84.9 x 25.0 x
11.5mm and has the Amazon logo on one side – but it's the lack of any distinct
features that help the Fire TV Stick blend into the back of any TV. It even
comes with an HDMI extender cable in case you've got a wall-mounted setup and
no additional space to spare in the back.
While these extras are something the
Chromecast comes standard with, the more
expensive Roku Streaming Stick does not. Sometimes, it's the simple things in
life that really count, and Amazon scores major points for putting the consumer
first.
After you've got the stick firmly
seated in an HDMI port you've got to provide a power solution. You'll need to
connect the micro-USB powered stick to either a USB port on the TV or, attach the adapter and
plug it into the wall. If you choose the former, you'll get a warning when you
boot the system up for the first time. It'll tell you that it can't draw enough
power from the USB port to provide the ideal
experience. I opted for the power
via a wall socket.
Where the full-size set-top
boxes like the NexusPlayer and AppleTV struggle with too little
content to choose from on their platforms, Amazon Fire TV has an abundance of
apps at your disposal. All of the primary suspects are here and accounted for:
Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Instant, Sky News, Spotify and more. It actually
feels rather strange loading up Netflix on anAmazon device - if you
take Now TV as an example of a device that has its own interests at heart, you
will find neither Netflix or Amazon on board. In my view, the more open the
better.
Amazon fire stick is a most for every home. let do more intensive interview of this wonderful products.
