Amazon are about to release their Fire TV Stick and here is our review.
Fire TV Stick connects your HDTV to a world of online entertainment. With a huge selection of movies and TV episodes, voice search that actually works and exclusive features like ASAP, Fire TV Stick is an easy way to enjoy Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, BBC iPlayer, low-cost movie rentals, live and on-demand sports, music, photos, games and more.
What’s in the Box?
The box contains the Fire TV Stick, a remote, some batteries, a manual, an HDMI extender, a USB power cable and a plug.
A Closer Look
The Fire TV Stick is quite small as is the remote.
Using the Fire TV Stick
The first thing you to is connect the USB power to the Fire TV Stick then connect the Fire TV Stick to an HDMI socket on your TV.
Then switch on the TV and away you go.
There is a 3 minute getting started movie you can watch.
If you have an Android or iOS device you can download the Fire TV Remote App to the device. When you tap connect you need to put in a pin number that is displayed on your TV.
Then you can use your device as a remote, including using Voice Commands.
Final Thoughts
Most modern TV’s now internet capabilities and even apps like Netflix and Amazon built in, but what if you have a TV that doesn’t have it – what do you do then? Well that’s where the Amazon Fire TV Stick comes in. It’s a small device that connects to an HDMI port on your TV and delivers streaming content with very little effort.
The Fire TV Stick is a dual core device with 1GB of memory (that’s double what Google Chromecast or the Roku Steaming Stick has) and a dedicated VideoCore4 graphics engine. It also has 8GB of flash storage so you can store quite a lot on it.
It can stream up to 1080p HD quality TV or movies and has Dolby Digital Plus surround sound capabilities.
The Stick is wireless and connects to your home router using a dual bank (MIMO) signal ensuring the best quality you can get from the Stick – after all, when you are watching a movie the last thing you want in the middle of a major action scene is for the device to stuff buffering!
The Stick gives you the ability to connect to a variety of subscription and streaming services such as Amazon Instant Video (obviously) and Amazon Prime Instant Video, Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Spotify, YouTube and lots more. There are also over 400 games you can play if you get bored of watching TV or listening to music.
The Stick was very easy to set up and within a few minutes I was choosing what to watch.
The inclusion of an HDMI extender in the box really worked for me. The TV I wanted to use the Stick on is mounted to the wall and in my case part of the mount goes over the HDMI sockets on the TV. Normally this isn’t a problem for the HDMI cables I use but the Stick is a bigger than the cables and so needs some clearance, and that’s where the HDMI extender worked perfectly.
The remote is easy to use, and if you want to add voice search you can easily do so by downloading the iOS or Android app.
There is a feature of the Stick called ASAP which stands for Advanced Streaming and Prediction, which basically means it learns what you like to watch and dynamically adapts to your viewing habits which enables immediate viewing of your chosen TV show or movie.
You can also view your own videos and photos on the Stick – you just have upload them to Amazon Cloud Drive first.
Because the Stick is so small you can easily pack it in your bag when you go away so you can view content wherever you are.
If you have a older TV or you just want the ability to watch TV shows and movies wherever you are then you should get yourself the Amazon Fire TV Stick, it delivers everything you need.
The cost of the Fire TV Stick is £35 and it can be ordered right now from Amazon.
Pre-order mine. Thanks for the review.