Amazon entered the battle for the living room when it launched its Fire TV set-top box earlier this year. More recently it expanded its attack with the launch of the Fire TV Stick that competes with the Chromecast and the Roku Streaming Stick. Here's our hands-on look at how it performs and how it stacks up against the competitors.
- The Fire TV Stick is the most powerful of these types of devices currently on the market, being powered by a Broadcom Capri 28155, dual-core 2xARM A9 processor clocked at 1 GHz, VideoCore4 GPU, and 1 GB of RAM. It also includes 8 GB of internal storage (same as Fire TV) for apps and games, which is much more than either the Chromecast (2 GB) or Roku Streaming Stick (512 MB). There's a dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi (MIMO) with support for 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 3.0 for the remote and optional game controller. It has support for Dolby 7.1 surround sound, and provides resolution of up to 1080p at 60 fps.
Setting up the Fire TV Stick is straight-forward. Just connect it to a free HDMI port on your TV or stereo receiver and plug in the power. One annoyance I noticed right away is the MicroUSB port for the power is located in the middle side of the stick and not at the end like the Chromecast and Roku Streaming Stick. Because of this I wasn't able to connect it directly to my stereo receiver, but thankfully an HDMI extender cable is included with the device, which did give me enough space for the connection.
Another thing to consider with these "stick" devices is they are Wi-Fi only, which might cause connection issues on a busy home network. On the other hand, set-top boxes like Roku and Fire TV offer Ethernet connectivity, which is more reliable.
When the Fire TV Stick starts up, it will pair with the remote, have you connect it to your Wi-Fi network, and download the latest software updates. After it's updated, a four minute video tutorial plays that explains the basic ins-and-outs for using it, which can be handy for new users, but if you're experienced with these types of devices, you'll be annoyed at not being able to skip the video.
The Fire TV Stick shares the same operating system as the Fire TV, which includes Amazon's exclusive features such as Amazon's Advanced Streaming and Prediction (ASAP) caching technology that preloads videos from Amazon automatically to help alleviate buffering and long loading times. The interface is virtually identical to the Fire TV and is generally intuitive and responsive, but not as fast as its big brother. There's a bit of lag and hesitation while switching apps and working your way around and selecting items. But if you haven't experienced the speed of the Fire TV, you'll barely notice it.
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