The Fire TV Stick: A Sleek and Powerful Streaming Device

The new Fire TV stick is a significant upgrade from its predecessors, boasting a host of exciting features that make it an attractive option for anyone looking to take their streaming game to the next level. One of the standout features of this device is its support for Amazon's Alexa Voice Assistant, which provides access to over 7,000 skills and allows users to control their entertainment experience with ease. With just a tap of the mic button on the remote, users can say launch I player, play music for my Spotify, or search YouTube for tech chat videos - making it incredibly convenient to find what you're looking for.

For those familiar with Amazon's Echo and Dot devices, Alexa is sure to feel like home. However, even experienced Alexa users may encounter some limitations on the Fire TV stick. The voice recognition can be hit-or-miss at times, and there are a fair few services that simply don't work with Alexa - which can be frustrating for those who want to use their device to access all sorts of streaming services. Additionally, while Alexa is an excellent addition, it's not necessary to use the device if you prefer to stick to the remote control. In fact, many users find that the simplicity of the Fire TV stick's interface makes it feel more straightforward and intuitive.

So what sets the new Fire TV stick apart from its predecessors? For one thing, it boasts a faster quad-core processor, which provides a significant boost in performance compared to the dual-core processor found on older models. This means that loading times are quicker, and overall streaming quality is much improved - thanks in part to the device's new dual antenna 80211 AC Wi-Fi capabilities. Bluetooth 4.1 is also present on this model, which offers faster data transfer speeds than its predecessor.

One of the biggest advantages of the Fire TV stick, however, is its ability to breathe life into older TVs without smart features. For those who don't have a high-end Smart TV with access to all sorts of streaming services, the Fire TV stick provides a convenient solution - simply plug it in, and you're good to go! While it's worth noting that 4K or HDR content is currently not supported on this device (unlike its more powerful Fire TV box cousin), the ability to stream 1080p content at high speeds makes it an excellent option for those looking for a hassle-free streaming experience.

The question of whether or not to upgrade to the new Fire TV stick, however, largely depends on your individual circumstances. If you already have a high-end TV with access to all sorts of streaming services, then you may not need this device at all - and it's certainly not necessary to upgrade if you're happy with your current setup. On the other hand, for those who don't have any smart TVs or are looking for a convenient solution for accessing on-demand content, the Fire TV stick is an excellent option.

In terms of gaming, one thing that stood out about the new Fire TV stick was its slightly laggy performance when playing Crossy Road - which made it feel less than smooth. However, this issue may be mitigated by upgrading to the more powerful Fire TV box, which costs £80 or $80 and provides a significant boost in performance.

Overall, the Fire TV stick is an excellent option for anyone looking to take their streaming experience to the next level. While it may not offer anything fundamentally new or groundbreaking, its improved performance, sleek design, and convenient Alexa integration make it a worthwhile upgrade - especially at its affordable price point of £40.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eninside this very snazzy very Orange Box is the brand new Amazon Fire TV stick well I say brand new it's been out in the US for a few months but it's just come to the UK and this is it this is the Fire TV stick all you do is plug this into the back of your TV through the HDMI port if you will Mount your TV you can always use the HDMI extender which comes in the box so you can go around corners and things which is quite helpful so with this in the HDMI port you then need to power it using this cable not all TVs have USB ports and those that do not all of them have the power output needed to power this so give it a go if you have a USB port in your TV but it's not guaranteed to power it uh you may need to plug this into a Main's charger and then put that into you know the wall once this thing is powered up you just connected to the Wi-Fi and then sign into your Amazon account and Bubbles your uncle there you have it you've got access to pretty much all the best streaming services catop players and apps for just £40 or $40 this thing is ridiculously good value for money so the us and the UK versions are similar but you do get access to different services so for example we both get Netflix YouTube Amazon Spotify twitch and Plex whereas the UK gets the likes of I player ITV and 4 whereas the US gets things like HBO now showtime and ESPN so with this one here in the UK I could stream some medical soul on Netflix watch uh some YouTube videos or maybe even catch up on the gra Norton Show on I player now streaming sticks aren't exactly new but what makes this really stand out is simply how fast and responsive it is until now I was using the most recent Roku stick and it took such a long time to start up and navigating between apps was just painful sometimes this Amazon Fire stick feels as fast and as fluid as swiping through apps on an iPad or a smartphone the interface is really easy to use though it's really straightforward and it's just generally a pleasure to use and it's a lot faster than the old Fire Sticks but as well as all that one of the big new features is the fire stick support for Amazon's Alexa Voice Assistant with access to over 7,000 of her skills just tap the mic button on the remote and you can say launch I player play music for my Spotify or maybe even search YouTube for tech chat videos cuz obviously everyone wants to do that so if you've ever used an Amazon Echo or dot you pretty much know how Alexa works but if you want to find out more you can click up here for my full review of the Echo and also versus the Google home if you want to find out more but as cool as Alexa is the voice recognition doesn't work every time and there's also a fair few services that Alexa just doesn't work with on the TV stick it's really tailored to Amazon's own video services for example you can't ask Alexa to search for a specific show within say I player but while Alexa is a nice addition you don't have to use it and sometimes it's easy just to use the remote it's great not having a billion buttons to over complicate things so the main differences between the new Fire TV stick and the older ones is that this as I say includes Alexa voice support as well as a faster quad core processor up from dual core on the last one it's also got Bluetooth 4.1 versus three on the old one and it's also much faster at streaming thanks to the new dual antenna 80211 AC Wi-Fi so performance is a lot better everything just feels faster and also you're spending less time waiting for things to buffer because of the faster Wi-Fi so really the main reason you want one of these is if you say have an old crappy TV without any smart features plug this thing and you're good to go assuming of course you have fast enough Wi-Fi to stream the stuff maybe it's worth checking if you can play a full HD YouTube video I player on your laptop first just to make sure your house Wi-Fi is up to it but assuming that works fine you know all you need is an Amazon account you don't even need to uh subscribe to the Prime membership to use the stick although of course you won't then have access to any of the free TV and movies on the Amazon video app but this will work with a free Amazon account but then of course what if you already have a fancy Smart TV well it becomes a bit less useful then because most of those apps will be available to you on the TV although to be fair 4 for example in the UK isn't actually available on my fairly new Samsung TV which is where I guess a Fire TV stick could come in handy now unfortunately the Fire TV stick does not support 4K or HDR content it's limited to 1080p so if you do want to stream Ultra HD content or play more demanding games you'll want to go with a more powerful Amazon 5 TV box which costs £80 or $80 twice as much as the stick I did notice on the 5 TV stick that when I played crossy Road the frame rate wasn't great it was a bit laggy it wasn't really smooth enough to enjoy or play properly so if you do want to do gaming I would recommend paying that extra for the Fire TV box so there aren't really any downsides to this the only issue may be that you just don't need one because perhaps you have a high-end TV with access to most of the apps or you have a PS4 or Xbox and you can stream apps that way so some people aren't going to need this it really is for those who don't have any other sort of boxes or high-end TVs it's just a great way to access all the best on demand content if you own one of the older Fire TV sticks it's not necessary to upgrade you're not getting anything fundamentally better but it is a lot faster and it's a lot nicer to use so if you do use it a lot again £40 40 it really is not going to break the bank so I would recommend upgrading because it's just a lot nicer experience so yeah it's just a straightforward little TV dongle that goes into the HDMI port on your TV and gives you access to lots of smart TV features it's pretty neat and as I say for £40 you really can't go wrong and a lot of people I've spoke to think this is a great way of getting say your parents or as I say less techy people into the wonderful world of streaming and on demand TV and movies so if you want to find out more about the Fire TV stick or maybe even buy one you can find links in the description below and if you have any questions at all let me know in the comments thank you very much for watching guys do make sure you like share and subscribe if you enjoyed the video and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chatinside this very snazzy very Orange Box is the brand new Amazon Fire TV stick well I say brand new it's been out in the US for a few months but it's just come to the UK and this is it this is the Fire TV stick all you do is plug this into the back of your TV through the HDMI port if you will Mount your TV you can always use the HDMI extender which comes in the box so you can go around corners and things which is quite helpful so with this in the HDMI port you then need to power it using this cable not all TVs have USB ports and those that do not all of them have the power output needed to power this so give it a go if you have a USB port in your TV but it's not guaranteed to power it uh you may need to plug this into a Main's charger and then put that into you know the wall once this thing is powered up you just connected to the Wi-Fi and then sign into your Amazon account and Bubbles your uncle there you have it you've got access to pretty much all the best streaming services catop players and apps for just £40 or $40 this thing is ridiculously good value for money so the us and the UK versions are similar but you do get access to different services so for example we both get Netflix YouTube Amazon Spotify twitch and Plex whereas the UK gets the likes of I player ITV and 4 whereas the US gets things like HBO now showtime and ESPN so with this one here in the UK I could stream some medical soul on Netflix watch uh some YouTube videos or maybe even catch up on the gra Norton Show on I player now streaming sticks aren't exactly new but what makes this really stand out is simply how fast and responsive it is until now I was using the most recent Roku stick and it took such a long time to start up and navigating between apps was just painful sometimes this Amazon Fire stick feels as fast and as fluid as swiping through apps on an iPad or a smartphone the interface is really easy to use though it's really straightforward and it's just generally a pleasure to use and it's a lot faster than the old Fire Sticks but as well as all that one of the big new features is the fire stick support for Amazon's Alexa Voice Assistant with access to over 7,000 of her skills just tap the mic button on the remote and you can say launch I player play music for my Spotify or maybe even search YouTube for tech chat videos cuz obviously everyone wants to do that so if you've ever used an Amazon Echo or dot you pretty much know how Alexa works but if you want to find out more you can click up here for my full review of the Echo and also versus the Google home if you want to find out more but as cool as Alexa is the voice recognition doesn't work every time and there's also a fair few services that Alexa just doesn't work with on the TV stick it's really tailored to Amazon's own video services for example you can't ask Alexa to search for a specific show within say I player but while Alexa is a nice addition you don't have to use it and sometimes it's easy just to use the remote it's great not having a billion buttons to over complicate things so the main differences between the new Fire TV stick and the older ones is that this as I say includes Alexa voice support as well as a faster quad core processor up from dual core on the last one it's also got Bluetooth 4.1 versus three on the old one and it's also much faster at streaming thanks to the new dual antenna 80211 AC Wi-Fi so performance is a lot better everything just feels faster and also you're spending less time waiting for things to buffer because of the faster Wi-Fi so really the main reason you want one of these is if you say have an old crappy TV without any smart features plug this thing and you're good to go assuming of course you have fast enough Wi-Fi to stream the stuff maybe it's worth checking if you can play a full HD YouTube video I player on your laptop first just to make sure your house Wi-Fi is up to it but assuming that works fine you know all you need is an Amazon account you don't even need to uh subscribe to the Prime membership to use the stick although of course you won't then have access to any of the free TV and movies on the Amazon video app but this will work with a free Amazon account but then of course what if you already have a fancy Smart TV well it becomes a bit less useful then because most of those apps will be available to you on the TV although to be fair 4 for example in the UK isn't actually available on my fairly new Samsung TV which is where I guess a Fire TV stick could come in handy now unfortunately the Fire TV stick does not support 4K or HDR content it's limited to 1080p so if you do want to stream Ultra HD content or play more demanding games you'll want to go with a more powerful Amazon 5 TV box which costs £80 or $80 twice as much as the stick I did notice on the 5 TV stick that when I played crossy Road the frame rate wasn't great it was a bit laggy it wasn't really smooth enough to enjoy or play properly so if you do want to do gaming I would recommend paying that extra for the Fire TV box so there aren't really any downsides to this the only issue may be that you just don't need one because perhaps you have a high-end TV with access to most of the apps or you have a PS4 or Xbox and you can stream apps that way so some people aren't going to need this it really is for those who don't have any other sort of boxes or high-end TVs it's just a great way to access all the best on demand content if you own one of the older Fire TV sticks it's not necessary to upgrade you're not getting anything fundamentally better but it is a lot faster and it's a lot nicer to use so if you do use it a lot again £40 40 it really is not going to break the bank so I would recommend upgrading because it's just a lot nicer experience so yeah it's just a straightforward little TV dongle that goes into the HDMI port on your TV and gives you access to lots of smart TV features it's pretty neat and as I say for £40 you really can't go wrong and a lot of people I've spoke to think this is a great way of getting say your parents or as I say less techy people into the wonderful world of streaming and on demand TV and movies so if you want to find out more about the Fire TV stick or maybe even buy one you can find links in the description below and if you have any questions at all let me know in the comments thank you very much for watching guys do make sure you like share and subscribe if you enjoyed the video and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chat\n"