This holiday season is shaping up to be a slugfest between Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet’s (GOOG, GOOGL) Google for control of your TV.
With the release of the second-generation Fire TV, Amazon has a key technical advantage over the other two in that its streamer is the only one that supports 4K Ultra HD video.
While Apple is coming back swinging with a new game-playing, Siri-powered Apple TV, the latest Fire TV counters those features with game-playing capability of its own and Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa on board.
It’s also priced $50 less than the base model of the new Apple TV.
Will the new Amazon Fire TV be good enough to maintain AMZN’s recent surge past Apple TV as the third most popular TV streamer? Does it have what it takes to claw its way to the top during the critical holiday shopping frenzy?
Read our Amazon Fire TV review to find out.
Amazon Fire TV (2015) Review: Faster, Smarter and Higher Resolution
While the 2015 edition of the Fire TV looks identical to the original, Amazon has made major changes under the hood.
Gone is the Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon CPU, replaced by a more powerful quad-core 64-bit processor made by MediaTek. 1080p video has been upgraded to the 8 million pixels of 4K Ultra HD video. And while the original Amazon Fire TV introduced voice search, the new version gets Alexa virtual assistance.
As a result, the new Fire TV is much faster, offers much higher resolution video (with the processing power to ensure that 4K video doesn’t stutter) and super-charged voice search and control, along with the ability to ask questions about the weather or add items to your Amazon shopping cart.
Unlike other streamers, Amazon Fire TV also offers cheap storage upgrades (just pop in a microSD card), its games library is already established with over 800 titles, and Amazon Prime members get unlimited access to Prime Video and Prime Music.
Amazon Fire TV (2015) Review: Good, But the Future Looks Brighter
Here’s the thing, though. A lot of what the Amazon Fire TV offers is in a somewhat raw state.
Take 4K video, for example. Yes, it can look stunning. But, 4K content is still tough to come by (and can do a number on your Internet download cap), not a lot of people own 4K Ultra HD TVs to take advantage of this capability, and it appears that not all 4K TVs will be compatible (they must support HDCP 2.2 HDMI).
Alexa voice search isn’t quite universal — it doesn’t return Netflix (NFLX) results, for example (you have to search manually within the Netflix app) — and the Fire TV’s visual interface can be confusing.
Sound quality is also a sore point, with Dolby Digital 5.1 supported only for Prime video and downgraded for other services (although Amazon is promising an update for this in the next few months).
If you check Amazon for the customer ratings on the new Fire TV, 15% of users give it just two stars and a whopping 28% — over one quarter of all buyers — give it just a single star.
Fortunately, many of the issues will be addressed with time. 4K content access (and the TVs to play it on) will grow, software patches (like the one to fix the Dolby audio) will undoubtedly continue to address many of the technical pain points, and Amazon will have the opportunity to tweak both the UI and Alexa’s performance through software updates.
Amazon Fire TV (2015) Review: Specs
- MediaTek quad-core, 64-bit CPU with 2GB RAM
- 8 GB built-in storage, microSD card slot
- Dual-band, dual-antenna (MIMO) 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi
- Bluetooth 4.1
- HDMI, 10/100 Ethernet, USB 2.0
- 4K video support (HDCP 2.2 support required)
- Alexa voice control
- Includes Fire TV Voice Remote with microphone
- Optional Amazon Fire TV Game Controller
- 4.5 x 4.5 x 0.7-inches, 9.5 oz
- MSRP $99.99
Amazon Fire TV (2015) Review: Conclusion
The original Fire TV was huge success for Amazon, vaulting it from a dead start to surpassing Apple TV for U.S. market share in only one year.
The 2015 edition of the Amazon Fire TV offers a slew of improvements and tops the new offerings from Apple and Google in its support for 4K video.
That 4K support, the addition of Alexa, and the price advantage over the Apple TV should help the Fire TV to hold its own over the holiday season.
Amazon faces an uphill battle in marketing the new Fire TV, given the challenges around 4K content and some of the rough edges found on its video streamer. The company will have to push the future experience and prove that it’s addressing the technical and UI sore points through software updates if it’s going to move the sales needle significantly and climb beyond third place in the living room.
Regardless of the issues, for Prime members the Amazon Fire TV is good deal. For everyone else, things get a little murkier. At least for now.
As of this writing, Robert Martin did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
