Amazon Fire TV Stick review

Google kick-started a media streaming revolution with Chromecast, which launched at a very reasonable price and transformed how we shared content from our smartphones to the big screen. It was swiftly followed by the Roku Streaming Stick, which had similar capabilities. Now Amazon has thrown its hat into the ring with a discrete media streaming stick of its own.

DESIGN AND REMOTE

Much like Chromecast, the Fire TV Stick is a media streamer no larger than the average USB flash drive. It has an HDMI connection on one end for plugging into your TV, and a microUSB port on the other for power.

Unlike the Chromecast and Roku Streaming Stick, however, the Fire TV Stick has too high a power draw to run off your television's USB ports, so a USB wall adapter is included. You may be able to use basic features like on-demand streaming when connected to your TV, but games may refuse to play without the extra power a mains socket can provide.

A HDMI extender is also included, which could be useful if your TV's HDMI ports are packed closely together or if you struggle for a consistent Wi-Fi connection. We had no issues with wireless connectivity during our testing but you may find the extender cuts down on interference from your television.

The Fire TV set-top box had an optical S/PDIF audio output for soundbars and surround sound systems, but this is missing from the much smaller Fire TV Stick. It’s still capable of up to 7.1 channel audio, however, and outputs a 1080p resolution image.

Much like the Fire TV and the similarly competing Roku Streaming Stick, the Fire TV Stick includes a dedicated remote control in the box. It has all the media and navigation controls you would expect, is well-built and delightfully compact. However, the Fire TV Stick's remote lacks the voice recognition functionality that made navigating and searching for content on its bigger brother a breeze.

If you want the missing voice search functionality, you can install the free Fire TV Remote App available for iOS or Android. This emulates the physical remote control’s inputs and restores the missing voice search as well. Rather than having directional controls, as on the physical remote, you use swipe and tap motions for navigate on an onscreen touchpad, which worked well. You can also use your connected device’s keyboard, which is much better than using the physical remote to enter text.

INTERFACE AND PRIME INSTANT VIDEO

The Fire TV Stick interface is mostly unchanged from the vanilla Fire TV. A vertical list branches into a horizontal carousel of tiles based on different categories, such as Movies and Music. Unsurprisingly, Amazon's Instant Video service gets prime placement. Instant Video is a major part of Amazon's Prime service, which costs £79 per year and includes free next day delivery on Amazon purchases, among other perks. It's also available by itself for £5.99 a month.

Amazon has done a great job bolstering its content catalogue over the past twelve months with some exclusive shows that aren't available to stream elsewhere, and also has extra premium content available to rent for an additional fee.

ADVANCED STREAMING AND PREDICTION

The Fire TV Stick uses Amazon’s Advanced Streaming and Prediction (ASAP) functionality that is supposed to predict content you’re likely to watch, pre-buffering it in the background. It worked reasonably well during our testing, beginning shows we'd watched previous episodes of almost instantly rather than after a few short seconds. Even when it hadn’t pre-buffered the wait to play Amazon Instant Video content wasn’t long.

However, ASAP doesn't tend to kick in as often when you flit between different films or shows as it does when watching consecutive episodes of the same TV series. It does at least pre-buffer content if you spend a few seconds reading a programme or movie description though, which is handy for anyone that can't decide what to watch.

CATCH UP TV AND APPS

Access to Amazon’s App Store means you can add extra on-demand and catch-up services to the Fire TV Stick's home screen. A lot of the big name apps are available, including Spotify Connect for music streaming, YouTube for watching web videos, Sky News and BBC Sport. You can also download games and play them using your remote, or the optional Fire TV games controller (£35 from Amazon). The Fire TV Stick isn't quite as powerful as the Fire TV set-top box, but you can still get away with playing the basic games you'd usually find on your smartphone.

If you have a Netflix subscription there’s also a Netflix app, meaning the Fire TV Stick can be your single hub for access two massive streaming catalogues. Apps were occasionally a little slow to load, however, with YouTube taking a few seconds.

Where it comes to catch up television, the Fire TV Stick falls a little short. There’s BBC iPlayer and Demand 5, but ITV Player and All4 are absent, meaning you only have half the roster of terrestrial UK channels. This is a little disappointing compared to Roku’s devices, which provide access to all of the terrestrial catch up services. You can always use the AllCast app to stream these missing services from a smartphone, but given the app store is a major reason to buy the Fire TV Stick over a Chromecast it's irritating to have to do so.

If you have a Kindle Fire tablet or smartphone you can mirror your screen without the need to install any third-party apps as they can communicate natively. Screen mirroring certainly isn’t as seamless or straightforward as on a Chromecast, however. The Fire TV Stick does support the Discovery and Launch (DIAL) protocol with certain apps, such as YouTube, that allows it to act much like a Chromecast, but this is on a per-app basis. You will also need to install the corresponding app on the Fire TV, whereas this isn’t a requirement with the Chromecast.

Finally, you can play your own content using apps such as Plex. You get access to Plex Cloud Sync servers through the dedicated Plex for Fire TV app as well, which isn’t always available through every version of Plex. DLNA servers and AirPlay streaming are technically supported too using third party apps such as AirPlay/DLNA Receiver, although we had issues trying to stream Full HD content from an iPhone over a wireless network, resulting in broken and distorted video.

CONCLUSION

The Amazon Fire TV Stick is great value at £35. It doesn’t quite emulate all of the functionality of a Chromecast, but it’s very close due to its support of the DIAL protocol. Even if you’re not an Amazon Prime Instant Video subscriber the low cost still makes it an enticing prospect for streaming local content such through apps like Plex.

The interface is mostly quick and responsive, save for the occasional slow app load, and the physical remote control adds an extra degree of convenience over Chromecast. You still have the option of using a smartphone or tablet as a remote as well. The Fire TV Stick is also cheaper than the Roku Streaming Stick, making it our new favourite discrete streaming device.