A friend of mine got one of these (from his wife) for Christmas, and we spent a few hours playing with it. Fire TV is pretty awesome, so I just had to post a review and recommend it for those of you who’re looking for an alternative to other set-top platforms like Roku, Apple TV, and Chromecast.
Note that I haven’t included any links in this post. This isn’t a promotion, just an honest-to-goodness recommendation!
The one strange thing missing, as the video points out, is that you can’t actually shop Amazon from the Fire. Perhaps this is a security issue that hasn’t been ironed out yet because it uses bluetooth and you can easy connect your smartphone or tablet to it remotely and control the device.
Fire’s price is right in line with Apple TV and the Roku 3 set-tops, but it has 4x the RAM and a quad-core processor (Roku has a dual; Apple only a single core). This thing is fast! What’s really awesome is the ability to connect your phone via bluetooth and have everything you’re doing mirrored on a big wide screen. There’s zero lag when moving through menu options and different screens and applications.
Key Features of Amazon Kindle Fire TV:
- Massive selection—Over 200,000 TV episodes and movies, millions of songs, and hundreds of games. Show me
- Free 30-day Prime trial—Unlimited access to thousands of popular movies and TV shows including award-winning series from HBO and exclusive titles like Downton Abbey. Learn more
- Voice search that actually works—Simply say the name of what you want to watch and start enjoying in seconds
- Tiny box, huge specs—3x the processing power of Roku and Apple TV. Fast quad-core processor, 2 GB of memory, and dedicated GPU, plus Dolby Digital Plus surround sound and optical audio out
- Easy to set up and use—Pre-registered to your Amazon account so you can enjoy favorite titles and personalized recommendations
- Instant streaming—Exclusive new feature ASAP predicts what movies and TV episodes you’ll want to watch and buffers them for playback before you hit play
- Connect your small screen to your big screen—Fire TV lets you fling your favorite apps to your TV to free up your small screen for other uses. Or mirror your phone or tablet to your TV. Learn more
- Perfect for parents—Amazon FreeTime lets you easily limit screen time and create personalized profiles just for kids
- Great for gaming—Play blockbuster titles like Minecraft-Pocket Edition, The Walking Dead, and Monsters University, plus free games and Amazon exclusives. Paid games start from just 99 cents
Give it a try if you’re looking for something to spice up your home entertainment and workflow in 2015.
