Amazon Fire TV Cube (2nd Generation)

Amazon Fire TV Cube (2nd Generation)

OUR VERDICT

Finally, the new Fire TV Cube outperforms the Amazon Fire TV Cube (Amazon streaming device) released in 2017. The upgrade and inclusion of the Dolby Vision processor is a newly added feature that, despite some flaws, helps to better show the location of Cube, one of the best streaming players released this year.

Amazon Fire TV Cube (2019) Deals

Amazon has never been a leader in video player streaming, but the new Amazon Fire TV cubes have narrowed the gap. It's faster, supports advanced AV formats like Dolby Vision and Dolby At-mos, and YouTube.

This last piece is a pedestrian, but it's obvious, but for years the controversy between Amazon and Google doesn't make the world's largest streaming service appear as a native app on Amazon's streaming devices. In 2017, the device family was hit hard, and Amazon has put a lot of effort into solving the problem this time.

What you need to know about black Friday

To stay ahead of all discounts, Amazon Fire TV devices are more likely to receive discounts on other Amazon devices like Echo, Echo Dot, Eco Show, and Eco Show 5, as well as Black Friday and Cyber  Monday.Visit Amazon Black Friday. You have viewed the transaction page.

The new Amazon Fire TV Cube story is minimized in performance and allows voice control of your home theater and smart home.

Not only does it support 4K HDR, it also supports one of the best formats. Not only is Alexei built in, it's a secondary version that can show lyrics to your favorite songs and tell people on the screen during the movie. When it works, it feels like a free future; If not, it's disappointing, but there's always a remote that can fill the void of Alexei's technology.

For this, Alexei doesn't always work as an ad, but it's still Amazon's best player and should be a welcome addition to every home.

Release Date AND Price

The All-Amazon Fire TV Cube starts at $ 5 ($ 9, AU $ 160) on October 27.

The Roku Ultra is priced at $ 99 compared to other streaming boxes, and the Apple TV 4K currently sells for around $ 179 ($ 179).

If you want to save money, you can buy Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexei Remote. It's only $ 49.99 (£ 49.99, AU $ 70). It doesn't always sound the same as Amazon Fire TV Cube, but it offers 4K HDR streaming with its advanced remote. Both options are great.

Design

Amazon made some improvements to the software and internal hardware of the Amazon Fire TV cube, but not much to the external shell. It's still a slick black cube with an LED bar on top. Not as disappointing as the streaming video player hiding behind the TV, it gives the entertainment center a futuristic feel.

There are four control buttons needed to mute the top of the cube, increase or decrease the volume, and summon Alexei, but the latter is somewhat unnecessary.

Of course, the option to memorize voice commands on a small box-shaped player without a remote is the Amazon Fire TV Cube's unique sales center, and the Fire TV Cube with eight remote microphones can help you choose what's left, such as Amazon Echo Show or Amazon Echo Show. Very useful. Better or better than Amazon Echo.

Rotating the Fire TV cube back has an HDMI port, micro USB, IR extender and power connector. There's not much to say about micro USB or power connectors, but they both serve as ads, but nothing about how Fire TV Cube HDMI works.

Fire TV Cube HDMI comes with CEC so you can control your device with HDMI and IR commands. This allows you to use Amazon Fire TV Cube Remote to turn up the volume on your TV and use Alexei to turn all devices on or off in your entertainment center.

The bad news is that Amazon Fire TV Cube HDMI is not coming. This is cheaper than 100, which is cheap on all devices. Heck it's not too long, but it's ok. 35 The Roku Express comes with an HDMI cable, so it looks like a big miss pot missing here.

The only problem with HDMI CEC and IR control is that judgment is required when integrating the Fire TV Cube into your home theater setup. It's so close to the speakers that it can overwhelm the sound bar rather than the built-in microphone. , AVR and TV are still a few days, so you need perspective. Blaster and HDMI CEC can be controlled via infrared.

This may sound like a process to try, it can be done relatively quickly, and once passed, you have a proper control center for setting up your home entertainment. Alexei lets you change the TV input, turn up or down the volume of the sound bar, change the channels of your set-top box with just a voice command, and the Fire TV Cube can produce innovative results. As Alexei got smarter, I found a package and this is what we enjoy. Put it down

Amazon Fire TV Cube Content

Amazon Fire TV Cube is great if you don't mind being sent to Amazon content. The proposed content row is on the home screen. Suggested shows and movies that can be rented on Amazon, starting with Amazon Prime TV shows and movies. Yes. Now you see a row at the top of the home screen, an app in the second row, and content that is backed by row 3, but at the bottom of the first three rows, most of the home screen is dominated by Amazon's own content.

Of course, we can argue that it's reasonable for Fire TV Cube to focus on Amazon content because most people who want to buy already have an Amazon Prime subscription, but Amazon's intentional push of its own content to competitors like Apple TV Not true. .

Thankfully, the Amazon service actually has some award-winning shows and movies (see our list of the best Amazon Prime shows for recommendations!). Great Minimize and Mrs. Fleabag to justify every view pointed to by Amazon.

In addition, Amazon Fire TV Cube strongly supports Amazon's own streaming service, but you can get some streaming apps including Netflix, HBO, Starr, Hutu, PlayStation View, and Crackle, as well as CW, NFL Network, MAC and smaller services. Periodically

Speaking of regular connected services, the new addition to the Amazon Fire TV lineup is YouTube. YouTube came back a year later. Returning to YouTube means you have access to more service show libraries, more popular videos, streamers and clogs than you can grow sticks.

The page on the right side of the home screen is a new live section showing what's currently playing on Amazon Prime or Sling TV, PlayStation View, or YouTube TV using the appropriate cable options. Here, content such as the American PG Master or Thursday Night Football allows players to make something more valuable to Chord Cutter and Chord Never.

Another great feature of the code cutter is the addition of free IMDB TV content to the US home screen. You can't always find good or new content, but you can't complain too much because the ads are free.

In terms of audio streaming, Amazon Fire TV supports Cube Spottily, but you will be using Amazon Music or Amazon Music Unlimited. The former has a few million songs and is available in all Amazon Prime subscriptions, while the latter offers a few extra dollars a month, but instead millions of songs from more obscure artists.

Interestingly, Amazon Fire TV also supports cube casting, but it was no problem before I published a review. This will continue to be tested in the coming weeks and months.

After all, it's worth noting that the Amazon Fire TV Cube can also play light games. Games can generally be used like the App Store or Google Play Store (similar to Android's Fire TV OS), but Amazon's suggestion is low quality and low quality like Apple TV 4K or Dravidian Shield. (But still temporary) give the game.

Performance

Fire TV Cubes are always rugged in performance, but the latest version introduces several upgrades that are even faster.

For example, the original Fire TV used a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 1.5GHz CPU, Mali-450 MP3 and Ecologic S905Z SC to create amazing visual and fast load times across the Cube OS, but upgraded to powerful performance. Complete with a hex-core processor that can play up to 60 fps with Dolby Vision and 4K Ultra HD content.

From Netflix's show back to the home screen and back to Amazon's movies, it basically takes a few seconds without pop-in issues. In fact, videos with 802.11ac Wi-Fi antennas and connections above 15 Mbps do not need to be buffered. When selected, playback begins.

The result looks amazing, especially on TV shows and movies in 4K HDR. It will show you visually what the Fire TV Cube can do on Manchester City or Grand Tour. Grand Tour Shimmers' first trailer is Manchester City's screen jersey, a landscape and a million-dollar race car. Cerulean is confusing Blue Tune.

It's a bit hard to find, but the same is true for Dolby Vision content. Tom Clancy shows extended color film in formats, starting with Jack Ryan, from Amazon's Stranger Things and Netflix to Planet and Prime videos,

HDR and Dolby Vision deliver the brightest and brightest colors in your favorite shows and movies, so native 4K HDR is perfect for viewing content anywhere. For this purpose, the Amazon Fire TV home screen has a 4K HDR queue, so we recommend taking advantage of it.

What about HD / SDR content? Ok, Fire TV Cube is effective at encouraging higher resolutions on 4K TVs, but still makes a difference. In HD / SDR, the colors don't look vivid, and the black layer also has a problem.

In other words, if you want to see native 4K content, you really need to have a 4K HDR TV. Sounds silly, but many still buy Ultra, hoping for 4K HDR performance on 1080p TVs. Trust us. Viewing video in 4K HDR requires at least 15 Mbps. Scrap can be done in slightly less time than this, but if the Fire TV Cube detects a very slow connection speed it will not serve 4K content.

Aside from Caveats, it is one of the most dynamic and powerful players on the market and competes with top tier products from Apple and Roku.

Alexei AS A Amart Assistant

Just as important as video video playback technology is the ability to host Amazon with the smart assistant of Alexei-Amazon Fire TV Cuba. This feature surprised us in the original Fire TV cube, the cool look has just begun and we can see more clearly what it is: a versatile but uncomplicated personal assistant.

If you have a compatible smart camera, you can use the Amazon Fire TV Cube to display a live video stream of what you are seeing from the camera. If you want a restaurant recommendation or movie time, the rating and distance from home will appear on the screen. Alexei can do all this by voice, but having a screen that displays visual information improves the usability of the system.

If you have a drop-in or currency setting, you can now use these features with the Amazon Fire TV cube, and in cool cases you can display photos and item prices in the Amazon Amazon Store, a home shopping type.

Unfortunately, despite all the advances over the years, Alexei needs to run the right language. To ask Alexei to start the episode you have to say something like "start", "play" or "select" rather than "start". . This seems to be a specific, isolated issue, but these issues prevent the streaming device from becoming a hands free device. You need to tell Alexei speakers or choose a remote and do it yourself.

It may have been too bad that the voice assistant at the Amazon press conference on the new model still understood the command and tried several times to find a service or episode. (We've been treated with word of reassurance such as "this generally works")

All this happens above Alexei's common misconceptions and possibilities. Questions other than the basic trivial questions often lead to the dreaded response of "I still don't know how to help" and sometimes question the general direction. Amazon's competitors Google Assistant and Siri don't have these problems, but they look more obvious than other platforms.

Amazon has always worked with wise assistants, but some progress is needed before criticism comes out.

Final Verdict

Fire TV Cube is an Amazon streaming device released in 2017 in much more ways than the Amazon Fire TV dongle. Fire TV Cube not only provides hands-free control for video playback, but also handles all the heavy lifting of house control. Adding to the simple but smart visual cues that Amazon has added to Alexei's basic skill set, you can compete with the best streaming video players. Processor upgrades for the new models and the inclusion of Dolby Vision make it look much more visually appealing, plus an additional $ 20.

Yes, technically, Fire TV Cube can do almost anything with the Amazon Echo Dot and Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, but the Texaco processor powered box is quickly removed, causing frustration. Cliches, but more than the partial sum of the Fire TV Cube.