Amazon made big announcements on the occasion of its Amazon Fall Hardware Event which was held on 24th September 2020. One of those announcements was introduction of Fire TV Sticks and Fire TV Stick Lite and redesigning of Amazon’s popular Fire TV.
Due to coronavirus outbreak people are restricted to their homes and spending more time in front of TVs than ever before and TV is kind of the center of the household, Amazon took this as opportunity to improve its popular Fire TV and introduce new TV gadgets to its users. In January Amazon said that number of active Fire TV accounts is currently over 40 million which is indeed a great competition to Amazon’s market competitors; Roku and Apple TV.
Redesigned Fire TV:
In this redesigned version of Fire TV, Amazon simplified main menu for it users. Users can personalize homepage as per their liking and ease of use. New menu displays all of popular features of Fire TV like Find, Live TV, Library, and pinned apps, through which users can easily get to shows and movies of their choice within no time.
The updated Fire TV software supports up to six personalized users profiles which is really nice that you will not end up scrolling the suggested list for your other family members. Users can setup personalized accounts and can find all of their favorite content in one place without interfering in choice list of other users. Keeping Fire TV a family friendly device, Amazon allows users to setup Kids Profile, helping parents to keep a check on their Kids and ensure that they are watching Quality content.
Along with other updates Alexa has also been updated with new improved voice controls. Users can now jump between categories using Alexa simply by giving commands like” Alexa, go to Find”. New update has optional Alexa Voice Profile feature, through which you can add your voice profile and Alexa recognizes your voice and you can easily switch to your profile by command “Alexa, switch to my profile”.
Marc Whitten said that people are watching billions of hours of entertainment a months and they’re also been using televisions for new and different things that they hadn’t done before, he was talking about increased number of video calls and online conferences during this pandemic. In this regard, Amazon introduced Video Calling with Fire TV. With this new feature users can use biggest screen at home for better experience of video calling. Initially, Amazon is allowing customers to connect Logitech USB webcam with their Fire TV Cube for video calling. But in the fact of the light that Zoom became a need of the time, Zoom support will also be added. Fire TV don’t have built-in camera, but we can expect them any time in future due to this new video calling feature.
Good news for Fire TV users is that Amazon announced that this new interface of Fire TV will be available on its entire new device and will roll-out to some of the older versions too.
Other than redesigned Fire TV, Amazon introduced two streaming devices; Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick Lite in its annual September gadget showcase event.
Fire TV Stick:
New 3rd generation Fire TV Stick is updated with 50% more powerful processor and consumes 50% less power than its predecessor .Reason behind this powerful processor is enhanced 1.7GHz quad-core processor.
Fire TV Stick is capable of streaming 1080p video at 60fps with HDR compatibility. New dual-band, dual-antenna design supports 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks. The core design of Fire TV Sticks is still the same, with HDMI port connecting it to a television or monitor.
Amazon claimed it to provide users more stable streaming experience ensuring lessened connection drop. Along with the hardware updates, Dolby Atmos audio support is incorporated for better than before audio experience with compatible speakers. Fire TV Stick is shipped with 2x AAA batteries, HDMI extender, USB cable and power supply and Alexa Voice Remote with dedicated buttons i.e. power, volume, and mute button. 8GB of internal storage is available for apps and app data.
The starting price of new Fire TV Stick is $39.99. Its shipping will start in selective countries from next week. Pre Ordering is available for customers from selective countries like Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Fire TV Stick Lite:
With Fire TV Stick, its more affordable version is also announced named the Fire TV Stick Lite. Despite the ‘Lite’ version, it is equally powerful as the new Fire TV Stick, both of them support full-HD with expanded HDR streaming, and are shipped with Alexa Voice Remote lite. The only major difference observed is that lite version comes with Alexa-enabled Voice Remote without any control button for power and volume. However, it still supports for voice commands.
Fire TV Stick Lite is also 50% more powerful than its predecessor Fire TV Sticks and Amazon is claiming it to be the most powerful streaming device under $30.
The Fire TV Stick Lite is starting at $29.99 and Amazon seems to be aggressive about its pricing. Like its other version; shipping will start in selective countries from next week, most probably 30th September. Rest of the customers from Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States can pre-order the Fire TV Stick Lite.
Both the Fire TV Stick Lite and Fire TV Stick have same 3.4 x 1.2 x 0.5-inch design, and both share same weight of 1.1 ounces. Both of the sticks deliver Full HD 1080p video output. Similarly, both of them support HDR, HDR 10, HDR10+ and HLG video standards. So if you’re low on budget, we prefer you Lite Version.
