Those tied into Amazon’s Alexa ecosystem will want to take notice. If you’ve got a 4K TV but don’t have a streaming device capable of streaming 4K, you’re missing out on the reason you got that 4K TV in the first place.
Is Fire TV my favorite 4K streaming device? No, that honor would go to the Roku Ultra 4K, with the Apple TV 4K as a runner-up due to its speed (and high price). But I was more impressed when testing the Fire TV 4K Max recently for my streaming device guide than I’d expected.
Here’s what I said about the Amazon device, and why I still recommend it even though it didn’t win top billing:
It’s slightly faster than the Roku Streaming Stick 4K. One big leg up on the Roku is that while they’re both compatible with Dolby Vision, the Roku lacks Dolby Atmos, which the Amazon stick has. Yet, I just don’t like the remote’s too-small buttons or the user interface as much as Roku’s.
Recently, Amazon removed your ability to delete certain unwanted, first-party apps from the Fire TV UI. Amazon has a history of being pushy with controlling what you see and don’t see on its devices, more so than Roku and Apple. If you’re scratching your head, let me direct you to the recent past, when Amazon wedged annoying advertisements into its Echo devices.
The built-in Alexa voice assistant works quite well, though, and Fire TV ties into so many smart home hubs and devices that there’s real value to somebody who already has an Alexa ecosystem integrated inside their home.
Amazon has been engaging in some funny shenanigans with the pricing of the Fire TV 4K Max over the past year, ever since this 2nd generation—the most current—came out in September 2023.
Looking at the pricing history, the Fire TV 4K Max was frequently on sale for $40 throughout most of last year. Constantly. It’d bounce back up to its retail price of $60 briefly and then sink down to $40.
And then after the Christmas sales of 2024, the price rose back up to $60, with a few sales that weren’t as good as what we saw for all of 2024. Normally I wouldn’t feature a sale where the sale price was so easily found all year long, but since this is the first time all year the Fire TV 4K Max has been $40, it’s worth sending up the flag to alert people that it’s once again on a killer sale.
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The TIE Fighter stand with an Echo Dot in it – Credit: Amazon -
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