![]() The point is those are important and obvious updates, but also certainly not something that’ll change the way you watch TV on Amazon Fire TV. If it’s the sort of thing you think you can notice over the older Fire TV Stick 4K, you’re probably lying, are an engineer, or are running the two devices side by side. If that’s the sort of thing you care about, good on ya. And the processor has been updated, too, to a quad-core Mediatek MT8696 at 1.8GHz. Not that 2 gigabytes is a lot, and it’s only a half-gig more than the Fire TV Stick 4K. The Max also has a little more RAM, which is important because it’s an Android-based device, and Android still needs all the RAM it can get. It’s plenty good.Įlsewhere, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max ships with the latest Alexa Voice Remote, which came out in April 2021 and has been redesigned ever so slightly, with a few extra buttons and features. In other words, stick to the Wi-Fi 6 built into the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. And in my case, that means getting around half the speed as I was seeing on Wi-Fi, to say nothing of not getting close to taking advantage of my true-Gigabit fiber connection. That adapter - which provides power as well as the wired network connection - is a 10/100 device, meaning it’s actually going to top out at a 100Mbps connection anyway. You’re almost certainly going to want to just go ahead and use Wi-Fi with the Fire TV Stick 4K Max over Amazon’s own Ethernet adapter, which isn’t included in the box anyway. By comparison, the previous-generation Fire TV Stick 4K got about 200Mbps downstream on Wi-Fi 5, with similar pings.įor those who are saying “Just grab the Ethernet adapter!” - let me stop you there. Connected wirelessly to an Eero Pro 6 (conveniently, another Amazon-owned product), I was pulling upward of 250Mbps downstream, with ping times between 20ms and 25ms. You shouldn’t necessarily expect warp-speed Wi-Fi, but you’ll have more than enough bandwidth to get the job done. That means it’ll take advantage of the latest wireless standards if you’ve got a Wi-Fi 6 router, or be ready for when you do. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is the first in the Amazon lineup to sport Wi-Fi 6, aka 802.11ax. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max ticks a couple more boxes than the Fire TV Stick 4K, which at this point is three years old. More on that below.Īmazon’s own comparison chart spells it out quite well. You have certain features at certain price points, so you’re guaranteed to make money no matter what. ![]() It’s a silly suffix tacked on to a product that itself mostly is an iteration on an iteration. ![]() This one is Max, which we can only assume is a step above Plus but still below Extreme. ![]() And if you want to save money, go with the Fire TV Lite.This isn’t just the Fire TV Stick. As it is, if you have a decent 4K TV then you should get a real 4K streamer like the Roku Express 4K Plus. Dolby Atmos and HDR are weird add-ons for 1080p devices, and if Amazon wanted to offer something unique at the price it should have included full 4K support. If you already have a Fire Stick, there's absolutely no reason for you to buy the 2020 version. If you're familiar with Roku's simple menu design the number of tiles and options on the Fire TV Stick's home page can be overwhelming. ![]() If you're in the market for a new $30 or $40 streamer it comes down to a choice between Fire TV's content-first approach versus Roku app-first one. In short, I don't consider this feature difference a big deal because most people with decent Atmos setups should (once again) be using a bona fide 4K streamer. Also, in my testing I've found many services - including Prime Video and Disney Plus - require a 4K TV for Atmos to work anyway. ![]()
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