Gadgetory

Amazon's tackled ear eaters and tablets and now the company is going after your living room with the new fire TV streaming box with voice search superfast load times in gaming this clearly isn't just another me to streaming box and it's already a best-seller on amazon.com the day after its release hey I'm Matthew Muscovy ak from C net and Amazon's first livingroom device isn't quite what everyone was expecting it's not a chromecast I'll stick and it's also not aggressively priced coming in at $99 which puts it in competition with premium streaming boxes like the Roku 3 and the Apple TV the hardware feels first-class it looks like a thinner more square Apple TV and it blends nicely into a typical TV cabinet around back is a solid connection of ports you've got HDMI optical audio Ethernet and USB although the USB port isn't used for anything yet the included remote is excellent with the shape that's easy to hold in a simple button layout that's not too cluttered at the top there's a small microphone built into the remote and that's for one of the fire TVs signature features voice search hold down the button say a TV show movie or actor you're looking for and the fire TV will find the content it actually works pretty well in our tests except that the search mostly only works with Amazon Instant content occasionally I saw results for Hulu Plus but it won't show you what's available on Netflix or other services which really limits its usefulness now that emphasis on Amazon Instant Content carries over strongly to the user interface nearly all the menus on the left-hand side lead you only to Amazon content and even on the home screen there's no ability to customize it so you can't put say the Netflix app right at the top the interface itself looks really good and it's very responsive as you scroll up and down through the menus but it's really best if you primarily stream Amazon content otherwise you have to hunt a bit to find the other apps as for third-party apps the fire TVs initial selection is good but it's not great there's some solid ones like Netflix YouTube Hulu Plus and Pandora but it's also missing HBO Go Spotify Vudu and PBS what the fire TV is missing and entertainment apps it makes up in gaming the fire TV software is based on Android and Amazon has poured it over some popular games like Riptide gp2 bad land Minecraft Pocket Edition and The Walking Dead the fire TV also worked with Amazon's new fire game controller which is sold separately for $40 the game controller itself is a solid piece of hardware and it makes the gaming experience pretty good the graphics are impressive for $100 bucks and the controls feel responsive the only slight issue is that the fire TV only has about five point three gigabytes available for installing apps so with some games coming in at over a gigabyte you might run out of space quickly on the performance set the fire TV has a new feature called ASAP that's designed to load streaming videos faster the amazing thing is that it actually works Amazon Instant content loaded in a split second it's faster than any other streaming box I've tested however again the ASAP feature only works with Amazon Instant content so don't expect Netflix or Hulu Plus videos to load any faster so altogether the fire TV is an impressive living room debut for Amazon integrating some neat gaming functionality into a streaming box plus there's some standout features like the voice search and ASAP super fast loading times on the other hand the best features really only work with Amazon Instant and at $99 plus 40 for the game controller there's not quite enough there to push it past competitors like the Roku 3 or Apple TV so overall it's a solid first effort from Amazon but it will need some key updates before it could compete with the best streamers out there I'm Matthew Muscovy ak and this is the Amazon fire TV