Amazon just announced a new Fire TV. It’s a dongle with a cable on one end and a black hunk of plastic on the other. For $70 it’s very reasonably priced, and you get a ton of features, too.
The new Fire TV works a lot like Google’s $70 Chromecast Ultra. The Amazon competitor is neat little dongle that supports 4K HDR at 60 fps and Dolby Atmos sound. It sports a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor, and 802.11ac wi-fi. The small square dongle also plugs right into your TV, so it can effectively disappear from view. There’s also a regular Alexa Voice Remote in case you want to talk to your Fire TV or smash buttons like a caveman.
In the past, Amazon offered a more traditional Fire TV set top box that could handle 4K Ultra HD content, and a Fire TV Stick that did 1080p content. The new Fire TV effectively merges those two gadgets into one with a new form factor and appealing price. It offers a lot of the same features as the new Apple TV 4K, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper. If it’s anything like the older Fire TV devices, we’re pretty sure the new Fire TV will be great!
Amazon announced the product on Wednesday at a big hardware event, but previous leaks from AFTVNews revealed at its existence a couple weeks ago. That leak also showed a new cube-shaped Fire TV that doubled as an Echo. One would think that would spoil Amazon’s big reveal, but in fact, Amazon let us down by only introducing the dongle-based Fire TV. Oh well.
