The Amazon Fire TV Cube, you might have heard, has had issues. Introduced in the summer, the Fire TV Cube—a hybrid of Amazon’s phenomenally successful Echo and its Fire TV streaming player—was marketed as the device that would replace your remote control. A few short months later, the Cube was “re-released” with the updated Alexa Voice Remote which features power, volume and mute buttons… probably because Cube owners got tired of shouting at it to turn up the volume, then waiting for it to hear the command (which paused the picture), then hearing the volume go up (but not enough) and repeating the process… well you get the picture.

Is the Cube really that bad? Read on to find out…

What’s the Deal with the Remotes?

Old Remote (l.) and New Remote (r.)

The unit I reviewed is the summer 2018 model, i.e. the one with the remote without the volume buttons. Aside from the remote, it’s identical in every way to the fall 2018 model. People stuck with the “1st gen” model can buy the remote with volume buttons for an extra $30. You can also just use the free Amazon Fire TV app which has volume buttons, but why bother when you can use your voice! Oh, right, about that…

Actually, all owners of a Fire TV Cube registered before October 2 can purchase the new remote for half off. Contact Amazon customer service to inquire about the promotion. (You may have also received an email about it.)

If you’re lucky, you might find remaining stock of those summer models still floating around at a cheap price, like $60 or less. Amazon dropped the fall model to $60 for Black Friday and it’s currently at $70, which is $50 under its original asking price. That puts the Fire TV Cube much closer to the price of the Fire TV Stick 4K ($35 to $50), and you might even rationalize the purchase because it’s not only a Fire TV 4K, it’s an Echo! Oh, right, about that…

Do I Hear an Echo?

If you already have an Echo, the Fire TV Cube might seem a bit redundant… especially when they’re in the same room together and start interrupting each other. I already had an Echo in the living room about 8 feet away, so saying “Alexa” to the Fire TV Cube awakened both devices. Sometimes the Echo stole the command and vice versa—never mind that the Fire TV Cube has a “priority” setting on by default, which means it’s supposed to hear commands first over other Alexa devices.

There is a simple solution. You can either turn off the mic on your Echo, or change the wake word for one of the devices in the Alexa app settings. You only get four choices for wake words: Alexa, Amazon, computer, or Echo. “Echo” didn’t sound right for the Cube, so I chose “Amazon.” Calling the Cube “Amazon” seemed like sad defeat, but the show must go on!

Hey, at least Alexa wasn’t interrupting herself anymore. Er, Amazon.

It’s Magic!

Inside the box, you get an optional IR extender cable for controlling devices that are in closed cabinets, plus an optional ethernet adapter. You don’t need these accessories to operate the Cube, but Amazon included them, which is nice. What you do need is an HDMI cable to hook up to your TV.

That’s not included. Oops.

The real magic of the Cube really occurs during setup, which takes about 10 minutes. After you download the updates and go through the registration, the Cube will guide you through a series of steps where it turns on and off your TV—and soundbar if you have one—without you having to do much beyond entering the brand name. (Okay, it’s not really magic but a thing called HDMI-CEC that a lot of electronics use to communicate with each other. The Cube adds voice control to the mix.)

It’s fun to say, “Alexa, turn on the TV,” and it just works. That might be the only thing that works well, but the Cube really gets that right.

By the way, before you move on, I recommend going to Settings > Preferences > Privacy Settings. Data collection is on by default, but you probably don’t want that.

Fire TV Cube: Beta

Unfortunately, the Fire TV Cube has a lot of quirks that get in the way of smooth operation. It’s simply not as intuitive as the Echo which, to be fair, is not going to be asked to do the same kinds of things a Cube will be asked to do.

It all boils down to the way people are used to navigating around their TV and media player menus. Telling Alexa to “scroll down,” “scroll right,” “select number 1” or “play number 1” is a lot slower (and buggier) than pressing those buttons on a remote. Being able to tell Alexa to play “Stranger Things” sounds great in theory, but this is not what people really do. What they really do is pick up on Season 2, Episode 2 and resume from where they left off. It’s just way faster to do that by remote.

Besides, the Cube has so many false starts with navigation commands, it quickly becomes frustrating. Unlike with the Echo and music, the Cube has trouble understanding what it is you want to resume or play or pause or find. Want to go to the main menu? Alexa has no clue. (You have to say “Go to home.”)

Here’s a case in point. I was preparing to watch The Incredibles 2. The screen displayed two buttons: “Watch Now” or “Watch Later.” Should’ve been simple to tell Alexa to play the video. But no. After over 20 different combinations of commands involving “watch now,” “watch later,” “press button,” “play Incredibles 2” and various angry invocations, I finally had to resort to (gasp) pressing a button on the remote. With my finger.

Scrolling the menu vertically and horizontally is a painful process. Imagine scrolling with an arrow key on a web page but instead having to shout a command for each button press. And this is just in the Amazon video app!

Works just fine in the TV cabinet

The Fire TV Cube can also switch to your other connected devices, like a Roku, Xbox or Blu-ray player, on voice command. And…that’s where it ends. You’ve got to pick up your remote to actually operate those devices. What, you didn’t think Alexa would help out with those, did you?

Although you can fiddle with the default equipment control settings, Alexa sometimes randomly speaks via the Cube’s internal speakers rather than the sound bar (or TV), which can be off-putting. Or goes completely silent when it’s confused as to which audio output to use.

The Cube won’t play music like an Echo, either. It will turn the TV on whether you want it on or not, so you’ll see oversized cover art and occasional lyrics (when available). It does give you the weather report without turning the TV on, so there’s that. (If you do have the TV on already, you’ll see some snappy weather graphics.)

Because it’s technically “not an Echo,” you also can’t add the Cube to a group for multi-room music.

Who’s It For?

Voice control, sadly, does not work on cats

You might be wondering then if anyone might want the Fire TV Cube, given its many shortcomings. Well, if you happen  to find the Cube on sale, and are fine using it with the remote as a standard streaming media player, it’s a very good one with 4K, Dolby Atmos and HDR10 support plus a  fast quad-core processor. (Note: it does not have Dolby Vision compatibility like the new Fire Stick 4K.)

For tinkerers, the Cube has a micro USB port which is useful for hooking up an external drive, USB hub, or keyboards and mice. Like other Fire TV devices, you can still sideload third-party apps like Kodi via Settings > System > Developer Options.

If you simply like the idea of turning on your TV by voice command, the Cube will do that pretty well. Of course, there are a lot of TVs coming out now that have this feature built-in, which makes the Cube look more and more like the one-trick pony that it is, but YMMV as Amazon continues to update the firmware.

For me, I just use the Cube to turn on the TV. Alexa—I mean, Amazon—turn on the TV!

Amazon Fire TV Cube Review: Well, It Can Turn On Your TV

Three-and-a-half years after the previous generation’s release—an eternity in the tech world—the 4th generation Apple TV set-top box was announced with typical Apple fanfare back in early September and then appeared on store shelves in late October 2015.

Apple TV 4 ($149 for 32GB; $199 for 64GB) has all the things you might expect from a 3+ year wait: a flashier platform (aka tvOS), installable apps, a more powerful dual-core A8 processor (vs. the old single-core A5), faster Wi-Fi (802.11ac), more storage (32GB and 64GB options) and a souped-up, Lightning-rechargeable remote dubbed the Siri remote which features a clickable glass touchpad and a voice control button a la Roku or Amazon.

3rd Gen (l.) meet 4th Gen (r.)

Apple stuck with the same basic look of the device, all black with the Apple TV logo on the top and nearly the same dimensions: an identical 3.9-inch x 3.9-inch square but slightly taller at 1.3 inches vs. 0.9 inches of the ATV3. Like Amazon did with its 2015 Fire TV (5/10), Amazon has also discarded the optical output from the previous generation, but the rest of the connections in the back are the same.

This all sounds like a recipe for another runaway Apple success, and yet something’s just not quite right about the end product. What went wrong? It has to do with expectations.

Our Expections

The changes above are evolutionary. We expected those. But we thought we’d see a couple notable upgrades:

Cable TV+Broadcast Networks Subscription App

Even as late as a couple years ago, the new Apple TV was actually supposed to be, well, a TV. Okay, we get it, it’s not, but then we were promised cable a la carte, plus broadcast networks. Okay, we get it, the cable companies are being difficult. So what about a Sling TV app? No?

The rumors now say 2016. So we wait.

[pullquote]This all sounds like a recipe for another runaway Apple success… What went wrong? It has to do with expectations….[/pullquote]

4K Ultra HDTV Support

Yeah, 4K support will be in the next one. But what about now? 4K isn’t pie in the sky or Blu-ray. It’s here, and it’s getting pretty cheap (just watch the Black Friday sales this year). And worse yet, those other guys have 4K.

Big whoop, you say? Maybe. If you’re betting on potential, then Apple hits it out of the ballpark. The new platform, tvOS, looks like it can grow exponentially beyond what its competitors have to offer. The gaming aspect of the Apple TV looks like it could revolutionize the gaming industry, especially if Apple is willing to take feedback from the gaming world.

But right here, right now? It’s not better than the Roku 4 (8/10) and only marginally better than the 2015 Fire TV (5/10), but costs more than both and doesn’t have Amazon Instant Video or 4K.

tvOS: The Good and the Bad

tvOS is flashy in a good way. It’s awesome to look at. Apple does eye candy better than anyone right now.

Did I say flashy? Apple dispensed with that hideous old-school tiled screensaver of the previous generation and cooked up a super-fancy animated 3D landscape screensaver called Aerial that totally outdoes the screensavers on the Chromecast and Fire TV.

Press the Menu button twice and you can instantly gaze at the awesome screensaver whenever your heart desires.

App Switching Just Like the iPhone

You can also do cool things such as app switching (like on iOS) by double-pressing the Home button. Also like iOS, you can swipe up to close an open app.

The Home Sharing app (aka “Computers”) has a much improved cosmetic experience, as images of your music and movie collection scroll past the screen.

Hey, there’s an App Store! Roku’s had this for a while, but Apple’s does look so much better. Plus, previously purchased universal iOS apps that are compatible with tvOS actually do appear under the “Purchased” tab, which is cool.

That’s the good. Now here’s the bad.

Everything is a joy to look at, but it’s not a joy to use. And we expect only joy from Apple.

Your nightmare: the onscreen keyboard

When you set up an app, entering email addresses and passwords is heart-wrenchingly bad. Instead of the old, mildly frustrating grid featured on ATV3, you now have the Sisyphean task of scrolling across a single row of letters to input characters.

It follows Apple’s design principle of simplicity. And yet it’s terrible. It’s so pokey you may lose the stomach to install more apps because then you know you have to painfully enter your log-in credentials.

Roku’s on-screen QWERTY keyboard may not look simple, but it gets the job done.

Well, you say, why not just use Apple’s Remote app or Bluetooth keyboard, like you could with the old Apple TV?

Good idea, except you can’t. Not yet, anyway. (You can use Bluetooth headphones now, which you couldn’t before.)

Maybe it’s all a ploy to get us to use voice control. Surely good ol’ Siri can do it. Nope, sorry. She won’t enter letters for you, email addresses or anything that might make entering text without a keyboard easier.

App Store on Apple TV

Speaking of installing apps, the Apple TV 4 comes with only iTunes, Music and Photos apps installed. You have to manually install old standbys like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube. It just seems like it would have been easier to remove them, if you really didn’t want them there.

By the way, it would have been nice if Apple had figured out a way to stop this whole authenticating apps business that some apps have (Hulu, PBS). It’s on other set-top boxes, too. And it’s annoying. For the love of streaming, there must be a better way.

As for the App Store, the pickings are slim right now, and that’s understandable given how early it is. In the category section, there are only “Games” and “Entertainment.” But after the hoopla surrounding shopping apps during the September product announcement, you still have to wonder what happened (especially since shopping is a new category on iOS). The only high profile shopping app that I saw was Gilt, the same one demonstrated at Apple’s Special Event back in September.

Maybe we’ll see some more shopping apps in the near future, but the holiday shopping season has already arrived.

Siri, Why So Quiet?

Apple TV 4 now has universal search, a welcome improvement that has been a mainstay of Roku set-top boxes for a while. Universal is relative, though, since it currently only scans Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Showtime and of course iTunes.

Siri, where is… Oh, I give up.

Siri’s voice search does a good job, but I didn’t find it any better than Roku’s or Amazon’s. You must perform universal search from the home screen because searching within an app is app-only.

You can’t use Siri to search for apps in the App Store, which seems like a missed opportunity. Instead, you have to use the dreaded on-screen “keyboard.” Oh, no.

One welcome development at the time of this review is Siri support for Apple Music searches as of tvOS 9.1 Beta.

With a clickable glass trackpad and Apple’s intuitive design phliosophy, the new Siri remote sounds cool in theory. Personally, I found the trackpad fickle at times and mostly frustrating. From a tactile standpoint (in a darkened room), you can’t tell which end is up, and it’s still too light and easily misplaced. However, the remote can now learn to control the power and volume on your TV. Still, I’ll probably just continue to use my old universal remote.

You can charge the remote overnight with any USB port using the included Lightning cable. But since there’s no charging port on the Apple TV, you have to take the remote somewhere else, which just seems an unnecessary inconvenience in service of Simplicity (i.e. less ports to mar the design).

Most of all I just wanted Siri to talk. Please, Siri, just talk to us. This is not the Apple Watch. At least allow us to make it an option. Instead Siri has been rendered silent for the second straight major Apple product. Did the actress who plays Siri demand too much money?

I disappoint.

Gaming

Gaming is where Apple TV 4 can really distance itself from the Rokus and Fire TVs. The Nvidia Shield offers Android gaming and 4K, but at $199 and with a much lower mainstream consumer profile, it’s at a decided disadvantage to Apple.

I had fun playing old iPhone favorite Asphalt 8 on the Apple TV 4, although gaming with the Siri remote does take some getting used to. The remote uses an accelerometer and gyroscope motion controls like a Wiimote, and can be used vertically or horizontally depending on the game.

Right now, Apple requires that all Apple TV games support the Siri remote, although that will probably change (see next paragraph). Up to two Bluetooth MFi (Made for iPod/iPad) controllers are compatible with Apple TV 4 and some games will support an iPhone or iPad as a controller.

The new Guitar Hero Live for Apple TV 4 will require the guitar controller (which is $100 by the way), so it already looks like Apple may be loosening up the Siri remote requirement, which has been controversial with gamers. However, Apple likes to go its own way, so we’ll see.

To me, there’s a bigger stumbling block for Apple TV 4 catching on as a mainstream gaming device a la the Nintendo Wii. (No, it’s not hard-core enough to compete with the likes of PS4 or Xbox One, and doesn’t need to be.) Right now, you can find mostly iOS games blown up to tvOS proportions, as expected. But seriously, AirDisplay could already do that on the old Apple TV. So the real question is whether console quality games will find their way to the Apple TV.

Disney Infinity 3.0 for Apple TV

The release of Disney’s Infinity 3.0 Star Wars Starter Pack for the Apple TV ($100) hints at a very positive development in console gaming coming to the Apple TV. The game’s producer, Sean Patton, told GameSpot:

The platform itself [Apple TV] is actually really powerful… So we look at opportunities to bring things to the visual quality we want, starting with PS4, and then look at the performance and kind of dial it back. So it’s somewhere between Xbox 360 and PS4 currently.

Here’s the big “if”: if Apple can lure big studios to develop console quality games for the Apple TV—and it does seem technically possible—then Apple has an iPhone-level smash success. If it can’t, or it’s extremely limited and all you can play is Angry Birds, then it becomes the Nvidia Shield.

Conclusion

Apple TV 4 is a beautiful product, but somewhere along the line, user-centered design was sacrificed for design for design’s sake. I think this is a critical error that’s very much noticeable in the practical day-to-day usage of this device.

The latest Apple TV promises a lot in the future, but for consumers trying to save money, it’s not a better product right now for a higher price. The majority of users simply want to stream movies and TV, and even the old Apple TV did a good job of that.

In a year, the Apple TV will likely be a success, but I believe gaming will have to save it, and that won’t entirely be up to Apple.

Apple TV 4 Review: We Expected More

The arrival of Amazon’s shiny new streaming toy, the Fire TV Stick ($39), came at a convenient time for me. My 3rd Gen Apple TV (2012) had suddenly gone on the fritz (stuck on activation after an update — there are plenty of threads on the Google).

So maybe I was just looking for a media player pick-me-up or the Fire TV Stick was really just that good, because I had a great time using the Fire TV Stick.

It’s not like Amazon reinvented the wheel or anything. The Fire TV Stick is a streaming media player. There are millions of those out there. It’s a thumb-drive form factor just like last year’s Google Chromecast (7/10) and the Roku Streaming Stick (8/10), which I reviewed earlier this summer.

Not only is the Fire TV Stick on par with both of those devices, it exceeds them in some areas. Let’s see why.

Starting Out

The Fire TV Stick comes in a slick, minimalist eco-friendly slipcover box—pretty much what you expect these days from high-profile tech companies.

A couple things stood out about the stick itself: one, the placement of the microUSB port is odd. It’s not at the end of the stick but on the side which could cause issues with other cables depending on how the HDMI ports on your TV are aligned. An HDMI extender cable is included for such situations.

Two, the power adapter is square-shaped with the prongs centered on the underside, which means plugging it in makes for an awkward fit with other plugs on a power strip.

Beyond those minor design issues, the Fire TV Stick looks like your standard media streaming dongle, measuring 3.3 inches x 1.0 inches x 0.5 inches.

On the inside, however, it’s more robust than its nearest competitors. It’s got a dual-core processor, 8GB storage, 1GB memory and dual-band Wi-Fi compared to the single-core processor, 2GB storage, 512MB memory and single-band Wi-Fi on the Chromecast and single-core processor, 256MB storage, 512MB memory and single-band Wi-Fi on the Roku Streaming Stick.

After you connect to your Wi-Fi network, you will be prompted to download the latest software, which took about 5 to 7 minutes. (Oddly, I had to rejoin the network after the update.) Like other Kindle products, the Fire TV Stick is already registered under your Amazon user account.

To get you started, Amazon gives you an animated Fire TV Stick introduction which lays out all the features and functions of the product. It’s a good touch that shows Amazon has thought about the details.

Like other media players, you’ll want your computer or phone with you to activate certain apps (like the Hulu Plus or PBS app) after you’ve installed them.

Speed and Navigation

On paper, the Fire TV Stick outshines its rivals. In practice, it’s very zippy—maybe not in the same league as the full-sized players out there, but often smoother than the Roku stick. I found the remote control surprisingly responsive, and scrolling through the tile-based menus, after getting used to the remote, was mostly painless.

HD video playback was instant and flawless on Amazon’s video app with zero buffering. There was, however, some video buffering on HD video playback when I sampled the YouTube app, and the Hulu Plus app seemed more sluggish than the version on the Roku stick. Hopefully, that will improve soon with a software update.

There’s no HBO Go app at launch which Chromecast and the Roku Stick both have. Otherwise, all major third-party services are represented, including Netflix, Hulu Plus, Showtime, Pandora, Disney Channel, WatchESPN and Twitch.

The layout of the menus is not surprisingly centered around Amazon’s Instant Video service, and there’s access to Prime Music as well the Amazon Cloud Drive where you can view your pictures and videos. The tile layout and app menus are reminiscent of both Xbox One and Roku.

I liked one cool feature in Prime Music where on-screen lyrics were highlighted as the song played. It’s available on some tracks, but not all.

If you poke around settings, you’ll see that there’s a sleep button, which is a nice feature that the Roku doesn’t have. You can also fine-tune privacy settings like app collection data, manage your app storage space, turn on developer options and watch help videos.

Voice Search and Games

The full-sized Fire TV ($99) that launched earlier this year was promoted heavily for its great voice search feature by the inimitable Gary Busey. The Fire TV Stick doesn’t have this feature built-in, but a separate voice remote is available for $29.

That’s a bummer, but fear not, voice search fans! You can use voice search on the Fire TV Remote App (Stick Only Edition), which is totally free and currently available on Android (through Amazon’s App Store). It will be available for iOS, but there’s no ETA at this time.

I downloaded the app and found it very simple and easy to use. For voice search, you just drag down and hold the mic button, say the words, and let go of the button. Voice search was very quick and responsive. Navigating with the app was also very easy and fast.

I think the biggest advantage the Fire TV Stick has over its competitors is the emphasis on (Android-based) games. There are over 200 games at launch, many of which are free or 99 cents. Admittedly, some of these games look lame.

While you can play plenty of the games with the included remote, some do require the $40 Bluetooth Game Controller. These games include Terraria, Virtua Tennis. Reaper and Sonic the Hedghog.

Bargain Price

In October, we saw Amazon offer Prime customers the Fire TV Stick at an introductory bargain-basement price of $19 for pre-orders. Even at $39 retail, the Fire TV Stick is competitively priced with the $35 Google Chromecast and $50 Roku Streaming Stick and arguably offers more.

Amazon said the Fire TV Stick is its “fastest-selling Amazon device ever,” and it will be a very hot—and hard to find—item this holiday season. Shipping times have been pushed back to January 15, 2015, a full two months from the time of this review.

That’s a long time to wait when the Roku Streaming Stick and Chromecast are both readily available. Practically speaking, you can’t really go wrong with the similar Roku Streaming Stick. But if you decide to wait it out, you won’t be disappointed.

Amazon Fire TV Stick Review: The Little Stick That Could