Gadgetory

as TVs get bigger and better so must our content can Amazon stoke those flames I'm our first enema TechnoBuffalo and this is the Amazon fire TV with 4k those of you who have seen my videos know that I'm a chromecast enthusiast the fire TV has some pretty big shoes to fill in my living room then so let's start with the flagship feature of the fire TV 4k video the options for finding 4k video are still pretty slim unfortunately so for now if you're looking for feature-length films on the fire TV your only option is going to be Amazon Prime video according to Netflix they only support 4k on the TiVo bolt for now but amazon said that it does work on the fire TV but we weren't able to get it working on the one that we had here in the office in fact we weren't able to get any 4k content working on that fire TV on any of the 4k displays that we have here in the office in order to output 4k video your 4k display and anything that you're running your video through like a sound bar have to all be hdcp 2.2 compatible most modern 4k displays do support at least one HDMI port with hdcp 2.2 compatibility so that part should be too difficult to task the fire TV was connected to a 50/50 fiber connection on a 5 gigahertz wireless network unfortunately even after confirming that our TV that we were testing with does indeed support 2.2 on all three of its HDMI ports we were still totally unable to get any Amazon video to playback in 4k in fact every single video that I played on Amazon video had a hard time even keeping up with 1080p after leaving hitch great movie playing for 20 minutes or so it still hadn't even managed to make it up to 720p which is seriously seriously disappointing we worked with Amazon to try and get it working but they continuously deemed our network to be the issue despite not having any issues whatsoever with any other device here in the office even if our network here were too congested with devices how much of an echo chamber does this thing really need to work after five days of attempts we gave up try the Amazon video app on the network enable TV that we were testing on and it worked like a charm gorgeous 4k content on a 4k display is just great unfortunately the fire TV just is the device that's gonna get it for you Amazon did say that they haven't this issue with any other customers but really ought to be all you need to know about the fire TV it just it doesn't do what it says on the Box 4k content doesn't work unless you're under pristine network conditions with that big knock against it out of the way let's talk about the UI and the rest of the experience the UI itself is fine it's relatively inoffensive and it's easy enough to navigate but the selection of apps is pretty subpar there's some games Crossy road candy crush that normal stuff the YouTube app is the same web app they're gonna find on network enabled TVs and for example on the ps4 if you have one of those Alexa works ok she definitely does the things that she says she can do but she's not terribly helpful and she has a pretty hard time understanding more complex commands she'll just say I don't know what you want me to do with this the mic itself isn't great either you really have to speak deliberately on some words to ensure that you're heard correctly on top of that the search function only searches a few services with an obvious strong emphasis on Amazon video across the board the fire TV experience is definitely quite a few rungs down from for example the new Apple TV which only comes in at 40 dollars more the hardware isn't really all that much better I had more than one fries that require a full-on reboot of the device so if you have a full TV cabinet you know exactly how big of a pain that is the remote is less than responsive too it works but it frequently needs multiple clicks to get it to register and the input lag does make playing timing based games like Crossy Road pretty tough on paper the new fire TV seems like a great device at a reasonable price but in practice it's little more than unimpressive I really can't in good conscience recommend the fire TV to anyone even those of you who are already knee-deep in Amazon's ecosystem the flagship feature here is 4k video and we were unable to get it working even once and this is our first rodeo guys this is a resounding don't buy that's it guys that's what I think about the Amazon fire TV with 4k without 4k gotta be real with you guys was not a fun experience I have I haven't worked with a product that's frustrating me quite that much in quite some time so resounding don't buy let me know what you guys think let me know if you have where the old fire TV is if you've had any of these issues with those as well and let me know in the comments if there's any other streaming devices that you want me to take a quick look at of course you can hit that like button if you enjoyed the video the subscribe button for your convenience down below and as always thank you guys for watching be kind to one another and I'll see you in the next video