Around the time Google’s Chromecast launched two years back, I found the device to be an affordable streaming option. Google promised more apps for the device. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, none ever came. The only thing the Chromecast supported right out of the box was Netflix. At the time, that was fine. Since then however, I’ve come to find Chromecast’s performance to be spotty, if not completely unreliable. The Netflix app for tablets and phones often doesn’t work. And let’s be honest, if I want to stream from my computer (which you can via Google Chrome), I’ll often simply watch whatever the hell I want to stream on my computer rather than my t.v. or other device.
Long and short, Chromecast has been a huge disappointment for me.
Enter Amazon.
For $40.00 USD (ten bucks more than Chromecast as of this writing) you get the stick and a remote. If you’re an Amazon Prime member, your device will be automatically be setup and linked to your account upon delivery. This threw me off as the only setup I had to do was scan for networks when I plugged the device into my t.v. It was actually kind of hilarious, as I expected a little more legwork (something the Chromecast requires). I can honestly say that was the biggest (and most pleasant) surprise regarding the Fire TV stick… you simply hook it up to power, pop it in an HDMI port and it works. In a world of updates, tweaks and configuring things (regardless of your device, console or PC) I was really amazed how simple it was to get the Fire TV stick up and running.
Even better though, is that once you launch the device, you’ll find Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Crackle are already installed as apps. You can add other apps, like YouTube, with a simple click. If you’ve got apps from any Amazon tablet, they’ll also be on your Fire TV at launch, as again, all items are linked from your Amazon account. It really is slick. And incredibly easy to use.
Flipping between apps is reminiscent of Apple TV. The interface is clean and simple. You’ll quickly ind yourself navigating between apps with ease, finding your favorite shows and series wherever they’re available. You can even play games on the Fire TV stick, though I didn’t have a controller and didn’t see anything I really liked. Regardless, it’s a cool feature. You can use the remote in your gaming endeavors or nab one of Amazon’s controllers for the device.
All in all, the Fire TV stick is a pretty slick piece of hardware.
At the moment, I haven’t seen an app for Xfinity or HBO Go. We have the former on my wife’s Amazon tablet, so I imagine it should be there somewhere, but I haven’t seen Xfinity on the app store. Regardless, I hope to see more streaming apps and services come to the platform but only time will tell as it’s still fairly new. Performance-wise, I’ve only had issues with the Fire TV stick once, but the issue was with our wi-fi at the time rather than the device itself.
I’d also add that navigating their app store is a bit of a pain as you can only scroll to the side when selecting apps to download. I’d like to see them listed on a page where I could navigate up, down, left or right and choose what I want. I found this a bit odd that the designers didn’t choose to do this as the main menu offers a function similar to the one I described. Sure, it’s not a big deal, but you can only scroll so fast through the available apps. You can look them up by name, but it’s a little bit of pain to do so as you punch in letters with a single-button.
Despite all that, the Fire TV stick is pretty solid, and certainly worth your money. It’s what I had hoped the Chromecast had been. As I mentioned above, the Fire TV stick isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty damn good, especially for the price. So if you’re looking for a device to stream your favorite shows from, look no further as the Fire TV is just what the doctor ordered.
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