The addition of six user profiles per household – each with its own preferences, apps, permissions, watchlists and settings – is also welcome.Īll the major apps are present here, apart from Google Play Movies & TV and Rakuten. Like all current Fire TV devices, Alexa is along for the ride and makes an easy way to navigate around the OS. The only thing to watch out for is that the UI still encourages you to buy and rent 4K content, even if the Stick won’t allow you to play it back at UHD resolution. It also directs you to free versions on apps you might not already own, including those available through free trials. If you have the right to watch a piece of content for free, the Fire TV OS will let you know. Fancy comedy horrors, action dramas or trending documentaries? This is the place to look. The ‘Find’ section of the experience is far better, as it seems to give a more balanced approach, as well as plenty of handy suggestions of genres and sub-genres to drill down into. It’s also still too Prime Video-heavy as we scroll down the page with the rows dedicated to other services swamped by too much of what’s on Amazon. ![]() It tends to start with too big a burst from a single source, whether that’s a few screens of animated Disney content or a slew of Amazon Originals. That first row of content on the new Fire TV experience never seems to be as much of a mix as it could be. It’s certainly an improvement on the previous iteration of the Fire TV OS, but still isn’t a match for what Google has done with the Google TV UI on Chromecast. The top row on the Home page is itself a mixture of content from your subscriptions, followed by lines of film and TV suggestions dedicated to what’s on specific services such as Netflix and iPlayer. The end result is less of a shop window for Amazon and a more useful quick hit of recommendations from across the board instead. The platform pulls in content from other streaming services, including Netflix, Disney+ and iPlayer, and sits those suggestions alongside TV and films available on Prime Video. ![]() The reimagined UI design pares everything down to four main screens, Home, Find, Library and Live, for a more holistic approach to your entertainment. The headline addition, though, is the updated Amazon Fire TV Experience. Dolby Vision isn’t supported, though Dolby Atmos is. The Amazon Fire TV Stick (3rd Generation) maxes out at 1080p HD, but can still process HDR metadata in the shape of HDR10, HLG and even Samsung’s HDR10+. Those looking for 4K and Dolby Vision support will have to look elsewhere. There are volume buttons that will work for your TV, playback controls and general navigation, plus a button at the top that turns the remote into an Alexa microphone for voice search. It’s the same second-generation Fire TV remote that comes with the 4K Stick. The included remote is as handy and compact as ever. Bluetooth 5.0 and BLE are onboard for pairing with Bluetooth speakers, headphones or video game controllers, and there’s the standard 8GB of internal storage for your app collection. The Stick itself is a little shorter than the 4K model but houses the same 1.7GHz quad-core chip. ![]() There’s a good chance that the power cable or simply the stick's girth will get in the way of your TV’s other HDMI sockets, so, as ever, Amazon has included an HDMI extender to take your stick clear of the rest of the ports. It’s a gunmetal grey rectangular prism with an HDMI plug on the end and a micro-USB power socket halfway up one side. ![]() From a design perspective, the Fire TV Stick (3rd Gen) is hardly a departure for Amazon.
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