Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite Review: Probably The Most Affordable Amazon Streaming Stick
To assist us give you free impartial advice, we could earn a fee if you buy via hyperlinks on our site. Amazon’s former CEO may be preoccupied with assembly the demands of his budding billionaire house membership but, thankfully, the corporate itself remains to be pondering in regards to the needs of the patron on a budget. Year after 12 months, the all-conquering e-commerce big cranks out shiny new upgrades to its affordable lineup of personal-brand tech merchandise, be they e-readers, smart audio system or tablets for teenagers. This time around we’re wanting on the Fire TV Stick Lite, the most affordable streaming stick in Amazon’s range of streaming merchandise. The Fire TV Stick is Amazon’s starter mannequin Flixy streaming stick and it competes with fashionable price range streamers from the likes of Roku and Google. As with the common Fire TV Stick, the Fire TV Stick Lite runs Fire OS, a UI that offers viewers access to a smorgasbord of streaming platforms including Disney Plus, Now, Netflix and (obviously) Amazon Prime Video.
HLG - pretty superior stuff for such an affordable machine. As nicely because the streaming stick and mains adapter, the box includes a basic distant control with a voice search button that wields Amazon’s Alexa sensible assistant to assist you find content and execute commands as quickly as potential. The Fire TV Stick Lite additionally has Dolby Atmos support, but it’s not fairly the identical as on other Amazon streamers and only affords passthrough over HDMI. In layman’s terms this implies it can not transcode multichannel audio; if your Tv or your receiver can not decode the audio stream out of your chosen streaming service, you could find yourself solely listening to stereo rather than Atmos or, for that matter, some other multichannel audio stream. At £30, the Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite prices £10 lower than the usual Amazon Fire TV Stick (2021). What’s the difference between the two? Frankly, there’s not much in it. Both can play Full HD content material at as much as 60fps, supply the identical range of apps and streaming platforms and assist the identical HDR formats.
However, the £40 Fire Tv Stick’s remote allows you to control the TV’s power and quantity functions the place the Fire TV Stick Lite’s distant doesn’t. They each assist Dolby Atmos Audio, however the Fire TV Stick Lite solely does so by way of HDMI passthrough. Fork out an additional £20 and you may get your palms on the £50 Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K. Along with the Tv controls, Dolby Atmos audio and HDR formats provided by the usual Fire TV Stick, it provides 4K/UHD playback and Dolby Vision assist to the combo. For sure, there’s not a lot point buying it in case you don’t have a 4K Tv. As far as non-Amazon merchandise go, customers are spoiled for alternative. US streaming large Roku has one of the best selection: its £25 Full HD mannequin, the Roku Express, undercuts the Fire TV Stick Lite by £5, and its £40 Roku Express 4K is currently one of the best-worth 4K streaming stick available on the market. Unfortunately, neither of those fashions has a voice-management remote, however the devices do work with a free Roku app that permits you to control the Roku OS and execute voice commands from your smartphone.
Alternatively, you could choose up a Google Chromecast for £30. It’s not your typical streamer, as it has no physical remote or UI of its personal, but it’s suitable with many apps and it integrates well with different Google Home merchandise. The Fire TV Stick Lite appears to be like identical to Amazon’s other streaming sticks: it’s small, black, rectangular and fabricated from plastic. The dongle, which measures 3cm vast and Flixy streaming 8cm lengthy, slots immediately into one in all your TV’s HDMI ports and is powered with a mains charger that connects to the Fire TV Stick Lite via a micro-USB cable. On my take a look at Tv, the three HDMI ports are all pretty close to each other and I used to be unable to attach my soundbar, Fire TV Stick Lite and Xbox cables at the same time due to the width of the Amazon dongle. Luckily, Amazon additionally throws in an HDMI extender that solves this problem.
The downside of using the extender is that the dongle then pokes out from the aspect of the Tv in an unsightly trend, though you could stick it in place with tape or Blu Tack to keep things looking tidy. Setup is about as easy as it will get if you have already got an Amazon account. Once you’ve plugged every part in, select the correct HDMI supply on your Tv, then follow the onscreen steerage. In no time in any respect you’ll have the system synced with the remote management, connected to your Wi-Fi community (it supports dual-band, dual-antenna 802.Eleven a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi) and registered to your Amazon account. From there you may get proper into choosing your apps and streaming content on all of the platforms for which you could have subscriptions. Running the newest model of Fire OS (version 7.2.4.9 on the time of writing), the Fire TV Stick Lite’s interface is fairly slick and user-friendly, if a bit heavy on the Amazon-produced content promotion.