Shut Up and Take My Money: FireTV HDMI Stick

After Google carved out a new market segment in the home theater space with the Chromecast, the rest of the industry has rushed to create similar devices for anyone that was interested in easily converting any Internet-challenged TV into a smart TV. Enter the Amazon FireTV Stick, a tiny HDMI dongle that provides all the functionality of the Fire TV media player at a fraction of the cost.

Introduced at the $19 price point to entice Prime users to preorder (through the end of 10/28/14), the regular price of the FireTV stick is still reasonable at $39. A competing product, like the Roku Stick, is priced at $49 and the Chromecast is still regularly priced at $35 (however it goes sale often in the $25 range).

The HDMI dongle also comes with a remote control, ideal for flipping between apps. Conversely, the Chromecast requires the user to use a mobile device as the remote to switch between apps and select content to watch. Interstingly, Amazon is including the voice search option that’s standard on the $99 FireTV media player, but it requires an additional $30 upgrade to buy the remote with built-in microphone. (Or you can use the mobile app for free)

If you like to download tons of apps and games, the FireTV stick is a much better option for you than competitors. In line with the FireTV media player, the user gets 8GB of storage in that tiny stick. Alternatively, the Chromecast offers 2GB and the Roku Streaming Stick offers 256MB. You are also getting a faster processor in the FireTV Stick (although not as fast at the FireTV media player) as well as more internal memory. It’s one of the only sticks that have been certified for Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 as well.

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All in all, the FireTV HDMI Stick is one of the better buys this holiday season as well as the fastest HDMI dongles on the home theater market. Is the FireTV media player more powerful? Absolutely. However, it’s also 2.5x the price of the FireTV Stick. You can read more about Amazon’s new home theater dongle here as well as check out more pictures of the device below:

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