Amazon - Fire TV Cube 4K Streaming Media Player with Alexa and All-New Alexa Voice Remote - Black

I was excited to get the new fire TV cube as it combined two of my favorite devices - Fire TV stick and Echo dot, but was a bit disappointed with the result. Don't get me wrong, the device is a capable 4K streaming device - it is just that it cannot provide you complete voice control on your TV. The reason is two fold - (1) Some controls are just not supported (e.g., powering on or off your cable set top box - it can only control boxes that are already on), and (2) it is just easier, and faster to get certain things done with the remotes. Now however, the one great thing is commanding Alexa across the room to get something started and to see it few moments letter - makes you feel like you're living in the future. If you don't care about your power bills or environment - switch off "auto power off/power save" on your cable set top box and let it always remain on. Fire TV cube can work well then. The other great thing is that the cube knows when to use its own speakers, and when to turn on the TV and use that. But unlike echo dot - you cannot ask it to pair bluetooth speakers or call your family! Also, when you use echo dot to control your fire TV stick, that works quite well too - so really, you could, in theory - buy the latest echo dot 3rd get ($ 49.99) and Echo fire TV stick with new report ($ 49.99) combined for about $ 20 cheaper than this device and have more capability and flexibility overall. The new remote of the new Fire TV stick 4K is the same as this item, so you can still power on your TV with it. What you cannot do is should across the room to control your TV. So, there you have it - you can combine two AMAZING 5***** products but the result can be average, but then again, amazon has brought about many new features using over the air software upgrades. So you never know, this may become more capable in future. A feature, that amazon should consider via software update is the ability to teach IR commands - like you can do with "Pronto Peel" and "Logitech Harmony" devices. That would make it more compatible with additional devices. Another thing that amazon can do is somehow make the device more zippy, faster, more responsive. It is not as quick on its feet as echo dot, and the performance seems at par with a cheaper fire TV stick 4K.

My house is filled with numerous Alexa devices ranging from a couple of 2nd generation Echos, an Echo Spot, and two Sonos One speakers. Adding the Fire TV Cube was a natural fit as I could now use Alexa to control my TV, cable box, and even music throughout my home Sonos setup. Did it work like I expected? Well, yes and no. I'll go over the positives and negatives of the Fire TV Cube. First and foremost, if you have a Fire TV device, you'll be familiar with the interface. It's the same old grid you get with every device. Amazon really needs to clean this up and separate everything out to different tabs or have a grid of apps. Navigating videos available for Prime Video streaming is a pain yet the Prime Video app takes you to videos Amazon wants you to buy/rent. Instead, the Prime Video app should have to tabs: one for free Prime streaming and another for renting/purchasing. The idea is to just use Alexa to queue things up but it's not perfect. Just last night I said "Alexa, I want to watch Doctor Who." The entire series is available to stream for free for Prime subscribers yet Alexa's first result was to buy the series on Prime Video, the second result was to install the BBC app and pay for their streaming option. Everything after that was either a documentary about the series or one off specials that I could stream, buy, and/or rent. I have never been a fan of the Fire TV interface and the Fire TV Cube doesn't do anything to better that. I also still have issues with streaming over wi-fi. I had a Fire TV stick years ago hooked up to a different router and ISP. It would constantly buffer and stream in 480p despite being inches away from the router and me having a 50Mbps connection (tested on my phone). Now I have a mesh network with 200Mbps throughout my home and, when using wi-fi, the Fire TV Cube would often just play HD or 1080p HD despite my Apple TV 4K playing 4K HDR Netflix content without issues. I had to wire my Fire TV Cube to one of my routers and it works a lot better but still prefers to play 1080p versions of 4K content. The main positive of the Fire TV Cube is being able to use Alexa to playback music throughout my house, control my smart devices, and control my living room entertainment setup. Alexa does a pretty good job at this, better than I thought. I still need a remote from time-to-time but Alexa does a good job with turning on my TV, controlling my cable box, and music (to an extent). I subscribe to Apple Music and Amazon Music. Right now, the Fire TV Cube only works with Amazon Music (also Pandora, Sirius XM, Spotify, Tidal, and Deezer). Apple Music was just added to Echo devices so it's probably only a matter of time but the Fire TV Cube perfectly controls Amazon Music and understand every command. The control of smart devices is no different than an Echo speaker but it's nice that the Cube will mute my TV speakers (which is actually a Sonos PlayBase) when I'm giving a command or asking a question. Alexa can easily change channels on my cable receiver. I can either belt out the exact channel name "Alexa, turn the cable to channel 847" or I can simply say "Alexa, turn the cable to HBO." That part really surprised me with how well it works. The Fire TV Cube was also easy to setup. It discovered my TV, Apple TV 4K, and cable receiver (and appropriate company) without issues. The only thing it didn't discover automatically was my Nintendo Switch. It even knew my TV was outputting audio via digital coaxial to my Sonos PlayBase. I'm not sure if this was due to the Cube or my TV (a 2018 Samsung QN65QF), or communication between both, but it was nice. Aside from the Fire TV UI, using the Cube was a breeze and anyone who has ever use an Alexa device will be able to use it just fine. All-in-all, I was pleasantly surprised by the controlling capabilities of the Cube. It automatically discovered my TV, Sonos PlayBase, and other media/cable devices hooked up to my TV. It knows my cable provider and which networks are on which channels. It can provide basic controls for my cable box (like play/pause) and gives my TV access to all of my smart devices. I'm not a fan of the Fire TV interface and it still feels like Amazon uses cheap networking hardware in their Fire devices. I would have given this a higher score had Amazon not made me plug the Ethernet adapter into the Cube and if Amazon updated the old Fire interface (which is showing its age). I would still recommend this for people who want to control their TV's with their voice without having to hold a remote up. I liked it enough that I purchased a second one for my bedroom.

This was purchased to replace a different streamer that I had to get repaired under warranty. ( I got a replacement for it ) My criteria for a streamer is 1 picture and sound quality 2 reliability of connection to the various streaming services and the apps offered 3 ease of setup and general usability. For item 1 I give this streamer the Cube a 7 overall (the other streamer was 9 overall ) Part of the problem appears to be the WiFi but is better with direct Ethernet cable to router (the other streamer is better on WiFi, WiFi issue- Picture: is mostly ok to good but for darker scenes seems to blur to a dark undefined area with no or little shadow detail.(black crush?) Direct Ethernet cable this problem is not present or very minimized. Sound: I don’t seem to be able to find any Dolby Atmos movies or content. The other streamer would always present Atmos to my Yamaha receiver. Costs: I picked this up on Labor Day sale so it’s definitely a good deal. I think PRIME is the better deal since we have a Prime account which provide Amazon Music, Prime books/ Kindle and shopping. ( Netflix raised prices again so ended my membership) Item 2: Connectivity. WiFi I give an 8 rating . Generally the connections have been flawless. A specific app I use for News ( News 12 on Optimum on LI NY) though the stream is terrible when it starts but cleans up after about a minute. The other streamer I have is flawless for the News 12 app. Possibly the streamer is doing optimizing as a stream starts ? Then the Cube or app will finally settle for good enough? My average network speed is 60Mbps on my internal 5g WiFi, 80 Mbps on a PC with wired nic I should note these issues are not seen on the other Streamer (fruit name) Note: On direct Ethernet cable the Cube behaves better overall. Item 3: Usability I give this a 7. Set up was easy. Alexa is ok but control of the TV and Reciever and other inputs on the reciever is odd. It took 3 attempts of using the wizard to get Alexa to control everything by voice. The remote is OK, pausing, ff, few and X-ray work nicely. Captions are paint to get to. The overall interface on the Cube though does not segregate the PRIME only programming from everything else making for tedious selection of programming. I don’t understand why PRIME subscribers don’t have a single point of entry to see their Prime programming? The other streamer has the Amazon app and the Prime programming separated so I don’t by accident select something that I have to pay for. Fire TV app on a tablet i give a 4. The screen area that is like a touch pad is WAY too sensitive, If i move a finger just a little bit the list of programming flies by. Alexa is new to us so still getting used to it. Overall this a good streamer and worth getting.

I purchased this on sale, it only cost a bit more than a 4K Roku stick. At first I regretted purchasing it, and wanted to exchange it for a Roku; but, ended up keeping it in hopes that Amazon will release updates to make it better. I had hoped that the Cube would serve as a media player; but, also be able to replace the Echo Dot that’s in the bedroom; but, it sort of can’t replace an Echo. I usually ask my Echo to play music for sleep at night, and it plays music through its built in speaker; where the Cube has a built in speaker; but, it can’t stream music without turning on the TV, which creates annoying light that I don’t want while trying to fall asleep. It’s also not smart enough to be able to turn the TV off in x-minutes or x-hours. I wish the Cube didn’t want to use the TV for almost everything, and that it were able to use its built in speaker for more things. I did end up keeping it, and it’s pretty useful for some things, like I can ask it to play a certain show, and it will turn on the TV and play the show, and then when done I can ask it to turn off the TV. With that said, it does some annoying things, like I might ask it to pause the show while I step away for a bit, and it does; but, if asked to continue playing, it’ll either switch to read a Kindle ebook, or stream music; so it’s touchy on how it wants certain commands. The remote that it came with is great, and works nicely - unlike the older remotes that shipped with the Firestick’s, this one actually has built in volume and power buttons. Voice commands work nicely with Amazon apps; but, in apps like PS Vue, not so well - like I can;t ask it to stream X-show on PS Vue; I can just ask it to open PS Vue. The nice thing is that Amazon allows for different names on their devices, so I kept the Echo in the room and call her “Alexa”, which the Cube is “Echo”.

I bought this under the promotion for $79. I was expecting this to help me to use less all of the remotes I have. And I was also expecting to be a more rounding and better then previous models. Not so much. The good: - quality of the product is good. Picture quality too. - works very good within Amazon prime ecosystem - Better remote control with volume included. - Kind of neat that you can control several things with voice command. What still need work in my opinion:: - Wired connection is 10/100Mbps. If your internet is anything higher than 100Mbps it will not make any difference. Most likely 100Mbps is enough for now, but should be future proof. Roku has the same specs/issue by the way. Apple TV 4K has better ethernet wired connection with faster internet speed. - Sometime gets slow, not sure why. Take a while to respond to commands. So slow that I switch to Apple TV. - In a few occasions it starts to talk alone or perform actions that were not requested. - Performance wise not better than other Fire TV's I have (old models). Not bad but I was expecting much better. All in all, not bad but still not the best streaming device. I still find the Apple TV to be a better round solution and even better quality. I still recommend it, specially if you are a prime member and can get it under promotion.

Got this for my parents (in their 60's) as a Christmas gift so they could start watching Netflix and Amazon Prime since they don't have a smart TV. The setup isn't terrible if your used to learning tech like smart phones and computers. However, if you haven't familiarized yourself with the now standard ways of setting up technology, it may be somewhat confusing. Once on, the simplicity of the remote is great if your used to that. But if you're used to always having numbers and multiple functions on your remote, there's definitely a learning curve to using the remote to control the Cube (going back, pausing and playing shows, searching, etc.). The user interface is pretty slick, however I'm not a huge fan of how it defaults to trying to get you to use Amazon Prime as your first source to find entertainment. I'd like to see it default to a general search or recommendations across all services you're signed in to, like Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, Amazon, etc. I tried using the voice function and getting my parents to use it, but I don't think that is really as much of a selling point to them as I'd hope it would be. Overall, it's a great device that turns any TV in to a smart TV, plus an Alexa device.

Great at voice commands and you have the ability to play and control music via your soundbar or home entertainment/theater system is seamless. However I could not access the TV Cubes Dolby Atmos feature. Despite it stating Dolby Atmos clearly on the Box. Which is the only reason I bought the Cube. I Made a call to Amazon Tech Support and they couldn’t activate the Cubes Dolby Atmos feature either.., Long story short I returned it. But only because I have a Fire TV Stick. If you want Dolby Atmos then I wouldn’t recommend buying the TV Cube. However if you don’t want or need Dolby Atmos then I would highly recommend The Amazon Fire TV Cube. After all who doesn’t want to control things with your voice. I was able to turn the TV off and On, control the volume and change the channel all with my voice. I was even able to Control Netflix, Amazon Video, Music Apps and my Xbox all with my voice. How cool is that...!!!

Having owned or currently own roku, playstation, and apple TV devices, as well as a regular amazon firestick, I will say this is my favorite. You can watch all your favorite web based video providers that the firestick and roku etc bring to you, but now with Alexa controls. It is not perfect, but it is SO handy when my toddler is running around with the remotes to be able to tell Alexa what I need done! We use Amazon music a lot at my house, and this device makes the experience that much better. It's awesome to be in the kitchen and just ask Alexa to turn music up or down, or skip a song. The Alexa inabled remote with a firestick is great, but you still have to have the remote and press a button to use it. And even then it only controls the firestick, while the cube will operate the streaming service as well, but your TV and soundbar too, with just the use of your voice. Well worth the price difference from the firestick!