Amazon's last major living room device, the Amazon Fire TV, tried to stand out among the expanding streaming-box ecosystem in a few major ways. You could do better with an Android-based TV box than what had already come, the company said, which is why it advertised its first-ever streaming device as a gaming powerhouse, a voice-searching marvel, and a super-fast streaming machine. But really, the Fire OS-powered device was none of those things—or at least not so much better that we felt compelled to dump our current rigs.

A year and a half later, well after the launch of the simpler, cheaper, and more modest Fire TV Stick, the Amazon Fire TV returns with new hardware and new features. And the whole package once again revolves around the same trifecta of promises: voice, power, and gaming. This time, at least, two of those promised boosts are backed by more than numbers, with the "voice" part receiving some Alexa-flavored love and the "power" part being proven by some incredible streaming-content speeds, not to mention 4K compatibility. These boosts all come for the same price as last year's model: $99.

Still, any Fire-branded device comes with the caveat of Amazon's weird app universe and Fire OS' interface design. This year's Fire TV is no exception, but for once, something with the "Fire" brand finally offers some clear advantages compared to the competition. Are its interface and connectivity tradeoffs worth it?

13 subcategories? Really?

Sam Machkovech



Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech

Sorry to anybody who had hoped to impress friends with a wildly different-looking Fire TV model. This year's version looks almost exactly the same as last year's, meaning it's small, black, and square—meant to melt into your average, black entertainment center—with the sole addition of a very welcome micro-SD card slot, which supports cards up to 128GB. With that addition comes a subtraction, meaning no more optical-out, sadly. The rest of the ports remain the same—HDMI, power, and Ethernet—and even the front power light remains unchanged. There's a little added heft to the device as well.

Same goes for the remote control, except that it now happens to be the slightest bit longer. Amazon told Ars that this is because the remote now uses a custom Wi-Fi protocol instead of Bluetooth, which the company has advertised as having "20 percent less latency" and better battery life. However, I actually found in my testing that the new remote sometimes resulted in more latency issues, thanks to my entertainment center having a router and a ton of Wi-Fi-using devices packed into it (though none of those struggle with Wi-Fi performance). Once I moved the Fire TV box an extra foot from the entertainment center, the remote connectivity issues stopped, so I was left with some cable-dangling.

The remote's array of buttons otherwise remains unchanged—voice search, the default action/"confirm" button, a four-direction circle pad, back, home, menu, rewind, play/pause, and fast forward. The circle pad makes some of these buttons pretty redundant, but, hey, the remote has room for them.

We've yet to get our hands on the optional Amazon Fire game controller, but based on mere glances, it has to be superior to last year's cheapo-feeling version. The new controller will come with an embedded microphone—a welcome feature for any bluetooth, Xbox-styled pad—and a headphone jack. It also ditches the uncomfortably placed play/rewind/forward control buttons from last year's game controller. (We'll update this paragraph with controller impressions once we get our hands on one.)

Plug everything in, and your setup should begin just like with other Fire TV devices. Your credentials will be preloaded onto the device, assuming you ordered it from Amazon, and you'll be forced to watch an unrealistically chipper cartoon man tell you how to use your remote and navigate through menus.

Sam Machkovech



































After that, you'll be dumped into a similar ho-hum Fire TV interface as last year's model. The primary sidebar is made up of a whopping 13 options, and each subscreen is broken down into a bunch of left-to-right-scrolling fields. Some of the other primary sidebar options are pretty redundant. In particular, "Watchlist" and "Video Library" exist as separate tabs next to "Movies," "TV," and "Prime Video." Considering the list is so long that "Music" and "Photos" require thumb-straining tapping to even show on the screen, let alone view, some restraint on Amazon's part would have helped.

Most of this might be forgivable if you could pin a few of your favorite series or apps to any of the subscreens, but Amazon would still rather have its users peck and peck to find content. The "Recent" tab can rack up a lot of choices, especially since it treats individual Amazon pieces of content the same as an entire third-party app or game, so it's not an ideal, super-fast way to return to a beloved media app that you haven't used in a while.

In very good news, one of our biggest complaints about the last version has been remedied in the form of a dedicated "Prime Video" tab. No longer do you have to guess what content is included in your annual subscription fee; any series and films that appear in this tab are definitely, totally free to watch for Amazon Prime viewers—which is one of the clear bonuses of buying an Amazon-branded device.

Should you flip through Amazon-specific videos outside of that Prime ecosystem—or even click through, for example, a TV series whose seasons are broken up into Prime and non-Prime content—you'll still get a Prime option as your first "play" choice for a video should it be free, and that fact will be labeled ("watch now—included with Prime") next to both the primary "play" button on the interface and the "buy" options that ostensibly show up. Prime away to your heart's content; if you go so far as to accidentally click a "buy" button, you'll get a clear warning before accidentally shelling out $3 for a single episode of Spongebob Squarepants.

Fast, fast, fast

And holy cow, do those Spongebob episodes load quickly. In some instances, video might require a "one-Mississippi" wait before playing, but typically, video content starts playing more quickly than the time it takes to cough once. More impressively, if you fast forward as much as two minutes, or rewind as much as 30 seconds, then hit "play," the content will load instantly—and usually at least in an apparent HD resolution and crispness, if not full 1080p. Rewinding or fast-forwarding more than that will result in one of those insufferable less-than-a-cough pauses.

Amazon Fire TV's souped up specs aren't just locked away for first-party fare, either. HBO Go, Hulu, Netflix, and others all benefit from much faster content loads. Some apps' interfaces load faster than on other dedicated set-top boxes, but all Amazon Fire TV video turns on almost as quickly as you click to play—not just at a video's launch but also when you rewind and fast forward (though sometimes audio will start playing for a full second before video catches up). Every once in a while, Netflix quick-loads content with fuzzy visual quality, but for the most part, its content launches at what appears to be peak 1080p fidelity.

Netflix's app gave the most grief. One time, when I clicked to watch certain films or series, the app would instead load a description of whatever "featured" video was already hogging half of the screen with no "play" option. Other times, the app simply wouldn't load any Netflix content, even though its diagnostics indicated that the Fire TV had rock-solid connectivity established. In the latter case, I had to "reset" the app and re-enter my username and password—all while hunting and pecking through the awful Fire TV password interface once again. No other apps had these issues, save some rare video stuttering in Hulu and Sling, and I couldn't replicate Netflix's errors consistently, so I note them for posterity's sake, not as a major condemnation.

Chances are, if it's a video app you're interested in, Amazon Fire TV has it ready to download and play, including both HBO streaming apps, Showtime, WatchESPN, Plex, and FXNow; these are all robust-looking apps for the most part, as opposed to sloppy smartphone ports. However, you won't currently find most dedicated "season pass" sports league apps (MLB's was uploaded as the article was being completed), nor anything from Viacom's family of networks (CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, et al). The Amazon app ecosystem is certainly more robust than it was nearly two years ago, but it's no Google Play; at the very least, pushing apps' APK files directly to the Fire TV is a cinch thanks to free apps like AGK Fire, should you wish to sideload favorite apps and games of your own.

Our Amazon Fire TV testing didn't include a 4K monitor, meaning I can't remark on how quickly or crisply it displayed 4K content—of which there still isn't much yet. That being said, Amazon has made a big deal about filming its exclusive series in 4K, and compatible sets don't always come with Amazon's app as an option, so you may be looking at either this or Roku's upcoming Roku 4 model as a way to see the crispest version of Emmy-winning series Transparent possible. Just be warned: Your 4K screen better be compatible with the HDCP 2.2 DRM standard (and connect to the Fire TV with an HDMI 2.0 cable), or else you'll be stuck watching 4K-rated content in 1080p resolution.

Listing image by Sam Machkovech