Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote (includes TV controls) | HD streaming device | 2020 release

So worth the money. Basically it's virtually free cable tv. Prime video is awesome for on demand movies but the free plutotv and Tubi apps quadruple it's value. The tiny remote is perfect, it only has the buttons you need. It learned to control the tv no problem. Here is where we noticed possibly the only down side. So say you wanted to turn on the tv and play, say a workout video from your DVD player. When you hit power on your tv remote it also turns on the fire stick. Granted this is perfect for most people. Unless you've got a monthly cap on your internet. Unless you cycled through your tv inputs to see that the fire stick was on, you'd never know. So we plugged in the fire stick to a switched power strip. So we can just depower it if we wanted to play video games or DVDs and such.

The hook up is as quick as you can unbox the thing and connect the wires. Type in your wifi password then log into your Amazon account and you're all good. I really can't recommend this enough. It works perfectly and it's about as user friendly as anything I've ever tried. It will honestly take you longer to figure out your wifi and amazon passwords. Oh, and we had the apps already installed in the tv but they work and work and grind to buffer or play anything. The fire stick must have a much bigger memory in it that eliminates the painful buffering / loading process that chokes the tv down to unwatchable. The fire stick does all this effortlessly.

It works well, and provides a decent picture (improved somewhat when I supplied it a wired connection to my router). It is fairly easy to set up initially, recognizing your tv for the remote, etc. I may be missing something but I have another fire TV device in the house, with all of the passwords for the various streaming suppliers, and you still have to go through and set up each service individually. So far operation has been fairly flawless and any glitches has been in my data connection, not the stick. Only issue is so many of the Alexa enabled devices can only connect on a 2.4 Ghz connection, and this you want to set up on a 5.0 ghz (for speed of signal) Since I have this on my primary router, and all of my Alexa devices on a separate 2.4 ghz router, not all of the Alexa enabled devices are as integrated as they could be. This has become more of a problem, as most modems/routers use a combined signal system, automatically switching between 2.4 and 5 ghz depending on signal strength and such, where most Alexa enabled devices require a specific 2.4 channel. (this is changing as more of the accessories are becoming 5.0 capable) I fixed this by adding a second older router as a hub, that has separate addresses for each network speed. Maybe a dedicated hub might work better with integration.

I don't usually write reviews but I had to for this one. First off I seen a lot of one-star reviews and I wanted to touch base on those the back of the remote cover took me less than a second to take off it was easy no problem anybody that had a problem has difficulties with electronics period second it is mostly for subscription services it has some or very little free services YouTube Tubi TV etc. TV/cable is not free. Third it advertises if you actually read it it does not support 4K it says that in the description and fourth the person who had it in Spanish and couldn't switch it to English must have been inpatient and was just pressing buttons rapidly at the startup it gives you a language option and it does come with 2 AAA batteries in the description it says batteries sold separately but two AAA batteries came in the box so now that I got that out of the way my own review it works very well I have a smart Vizo TV for my room and we have a regular HDTV for the living room I have to say the fire stick works better and faster than my smart TV loads instantly within 2-3 seconds and there is no buffering of the Video quality the voice command is a cool feature and you can control your TV power on/off and turn the volume up/down with the fire stick remote and the cool part is I didn't have to put in any code for the TV I just had to select my brand of TV 😁 I can't find any downside to it if I do I'll be back to edit my review but so far it is a great product five stars out of five!

This thing is so easy to install and use that my 88-year old, admittedly technically challenged mom can now easily access Netflix, Amazon Prime and You Tube on her TV. We tried the google thing, but couldn't get past the technical issues. And forget the lack of search capabilities on it! The Amazon stick basically installs itself! She can switch the TV on and off, turn the volume up and down, and watch what she wants easily and quickly. For someone with arthritic fingers and mobility issues, this stick is a godsend! LOVE IT! If I had the power to make two changes, one would be to have some kind of finger indent to ensure the user has the stick pointing the right way. The other is to make it more transparent or "not-so-easy" when she accidentally adds a premium channel or service. She accidentally signed up for Starz and a couple of other channels without realizing that there was a cost involved. It was rather difficult to find the charges on her Amazon account, and I didn't like the extra step it took to undo what she accidentally did. Other than that, however, I'm ecstatic that she can enjoy The Crown, Mrs. Maisel and all the other great programming on Amazon and NetFlix, especially while she's stuck at home under the COVID restrictions. HOORAH FOR AMAZON!!!

Edit:

I managed to download the game by removing nearly every other app to free up the 2.5 GB required, but that somehow leaves me with just about 250+ MB of storage left over, which is not sufficient to download even Netflix, let alone anything else. An "insufficient storage" warning pops up if I try. All I have now are the stock apps (which you can't uninstall, not even the Kids channel), YouTube (and YouTube TV, which comes with it), and this game which is not that large in itself. I checked the storage and it does still note that there is no external storage detected...which means I CAN install an external storage device somehow, but I can't seem to find out how.

There is a spare USB port on my (non-smart) TV, but I've been told that the Firestick will not recognize it if you add a storage device there, so how do I do it? The Firestick wouldn't indicate that you can add external storage devices if you can't, right? That's just pure false advertising, so I'm sure there's a way to do it. If not, it was a COLLOSALLY stupid decision by Amazon to only add EIGHT GB of internal storage, of which the user gets about four-ish to play around with, which is not remotely sufficient for more than about four or five apps (or just two, if the other is a game more than about two gigabytes or so in size). I'm also a bit puzzled as to why I can't simply save these apps (Netflix and the rest) to the supposedly "unlimited Prime cloud storage" I have, as these are all purchased through Amazon anyway.... I haven't tried buying another movie or something since installing the game and subsequently running out of internal storage, so I hope those, at least, save to the cloud. :/

Frankly, I now give this device about a 3.2 out of 5 and am less than impressed by its capabilities. It does still play movies and TV shows well, though.

Original review:

Overall, this is a good purchase, but there are some questions I have. I purchased the 2020 Firestick and it's been doing its job for the most part. It plays movies and TV shows without a hitch (TV which has been bought and downloaded, but I've also watched a bit of live TV and that seems to work fine, as well). However, the volume control doesn't work at all, requiring me to use the actual TV's remote to change that (and the power button also does nothing, so I use the TV remote for that, too), so I'm not sure what's gone wrong there.

More importantly, however, the storage already appears to be full, as it won't let me download a game (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), saying there is no external storage detected and refusing to download it to the Stick itself or the cloud (where I'd assume everything else is already stored). I checked the Stick and there is no SD slot to expand storage. Would plugging a USB stick into the one USB port I have on my TV work? Would the Firestick detect that as a storage device?

I've already tried searching through the settings to find a way to switch over to cloud storage and bizarrely cannot find anything on the matter whatsoever. I also went online to check for a solution and can only find dodgy sites recommending VPNs to "illegally" download files to a device I already own...which I know can't be the right way to do it, as this very page claims that unlimited cloud storage is included in the purchase of the Stick! What's going on here?

How do I access the included cloud storage to be able to download the game I just bought? According to the storage settings, I still have nearly four or so GB left, as the device doesn't seem to save anything to it (movies and TV is saved to the cloud, I guess). If you can't download games and stuff to the device or anywhere else for that matter, why allow people to buy them??

We were very skeptical about leaving cable and trying this but I'm so happy we did! We had it hooked up in less then 5mins and were ready to go, it was that easy! We already had prime so it gave us a code to go online and connect it to our account which was quick and easy. It loaded everything right from there so our library and likes were loaded automatically. We did choose to sign up for youtube tv so we'd have the closest cable experience that we were used to and we love it! The only downside is just like with all Amazon devices you can't use google, just bing or Firefox which does suck if you want to download a search engine as well. We use our phone/tablet for that so we're fine but I wanted to mention it so anybody else is aware beforehand. We love the fact that everything is at our fingertips with this and we're saving over $120 a month! It also let's you record your favorite shows so you're not losing out on cable dvr convenience. I'm also happy to have my ID channel back as there was a financial disagreement between them and my cable company so they took it out of their line up. I really like that I am able to pick which channels work for me rather than having alot of international channels and tons of sports channels forced on you costing you a fortune just to get your normal channels! This allows you to be in control of what works for you and your family without paying a fortune for some "package" someone else decided you have to buy. There is also parental controls as well as setups for you to give separate accounts to different family members so whoever is watching has everything setup just the way they like it. This way you don't have to scroll through looking for your favs and you don't have to keep approving everything if you setup parental controls, just give them a kids account and everything is automatically separated. Definitely wish we did this sooner!

This is a great product, easy to use and to install. I have been an avid Apple fan since G-5 computers and have been reluctant to part from their eco system (I have over 1,100 movies and over 10,000 TV shows). This comes with an Apple TV app that actually works better then an Apple TV itself, plus it has more free content — you can buy almost 4 of these for a basic version of Apple TV. No contest, if the price was reverse I would still recommend Amazon Fire hands down.

Netflix app works much better as does YouTube (haven’t tried much else yet). If you purchase the usb power option this entire unit hides behind TV so you do not need to hide a power cord or HDMA cord which is great especially if your TV is mount on wall

I can not believe I waited so long to try. I am throwing away my other Apple TV’s (6) and replacing with Amazon Fire. I will update this if I experience any hardware or other issues in the future but for now I am extremely pleased (and surprised) with Amazon Fire

If you're like me, you had a rude awakening to the new tricks TV makers are pulling now. The smart TV you bought three or more years ago is no longer getting app updates. So if you want to get content from newer services like Disney Plus or HBO Max, you are out of luck if you stick with your old TV, which might otherwise be a perfectly good TV still and still has a nice picture.

I suppose with TVs becoming computers, I shouldn't be surprised by the fact that the makers are treating them as such, and expecting you to upgrade every few years. But when you spend a big bucks on a big TV, it's a bummer to know that in a couple years it is no longer supported.

Amazon to the rescue. These handy HDMI sticks will revitalize an old TV. I had recently repaired an old LG a friend donated to me. It's a big beautiful TV and I just couldn't throw it out even though it wasn't showing a picture anymore. So I fixed it, but being from 2013, it didn't have built-in Wi-Fi, the apps were old, and you couldn't get newer apps for it. The Fire TV Stick 2020 for standard HD was the perfect solution for every single issue I just mentioned.

First, it provides Wi-Fi connectivity. And it works pretty well. My comparisons from experience are the Boxee Box (a failure: the developers abandoned everyone after taking their money), and the Tivo 4K Stream. The Tivo is actually really nice, when it works. It has problems with consistent performance and buffers a lot (possibly my Wi-Fi's fault) and its apps crash a LOT (not my fault).

So far the Amazon Fire TV Stick blows them all away. I have to admit the Boxee remote with the integrated keyboard on back was nice, but in every other respect Fire TV blows the others away. It's super affordable, compact, performs well, has a great remote, gets plenty of the apps, has voice support, and you can find lots of useful accessories for it.

My Fire TV Stick is running on the same Wi-Fi as the Tivo 4K Stream and rarely buffers and I've not had app crashes. Since the TV I have it on is regular HD, it's a perfect match. Amazon does have a 4K Fire TV Stick if your TV supports the higher resolution.

I really want to support competition, but so far the Amazon competitors aren't being competitive! If you have an older TV like mine with an HDMI port, but doesn't have Wi-Fi or can't get the newer apps, this is the answer.

So konnte ich für meine Eltern aus einem alten Fernseher einen Smart-TV machen.

Läuft flüssig und so viele Möglichkeiten nun damit. Kinderleichte Bedienung auch durch Alexa.

Excelente dispositivo, muy contento y posee gran variedad de cosas

La Firestick è una garanzia. Rende le TV smart e quelle che sono già smart più smart. È fluida e veloce nell'utilizzo.

. Me ha encantado la rapidez y calidad

Maybe the best stick or media device on the market…