Amazon Fire TV (2015) review: The streamer your 4K TV has been waiting for

It’s been six months since I last watched proper, old-school TV. No, not Bergerac. I’m talking about TV signals that fly across the airwaves and through a television aerial. The last time I viewed a live broadcast, there wasn’t a TV aerial in sight: I was stood by the side of a road, the Tour of Britain peloton surging through the Strand, live race coverage simultaneously fed onto the screen of my iPhone 6 Plus. Like it or not, it’s increasingly clear that the future of entertainment is the internet, and the future of TV is 4K – and the Amazon Fire TV is now ready to ride the crest of both those waves.

Amazon Fire TV: 4K in the UK

The big news here is support for 4K playback, and this is thanks to the Fire TV’s newfound support for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). As the name suggests, HEVC (also known as H.265 or MPEG-H Part 2) is a highly efficient way of compressing and storing video. It’s so efficient, in fact, that it halves the amount of storage required compared with the current standard for HD video compression – H.264.

The key part of this, however, is less bandwidth is required to smoothly stream that video content (regardless of whether it’s 720p, 1080p or 4K programming), or that video can be of a higher quality for any given download size, as long as it’s encoded using the new compression algorithm.

This is very much A Good Thing, and Amazon states that the arrival of HEVC will allow it to deliver “more 1080p high-definition streams from Amazon Video than ever before” over the coming months. Of course, this won’t change the scarcity of true 4K content. Amazon touts hundreds of 4K titles among a catalogue of many thousands. But the reduced bandwidth required should have the added benefit of allowing even slower broadband connections to stream Full HD and/or Ultra HD titles.

It will take some time for HEVC to roll out across the Amazon library, but my subjective experience so far is that content looks very, very nice, even just in 1080p. Watching the recent Amazon series Hand of God, which was shot in 4K, the image quality viewed on my 90in projection screen wasn’t too far off what I’d expect from a Blu-ray disc.

Lots of fine detail, little in the way of compression artefacts, and rich, vibrant colours. There was precious little waiting around for programmes to buffer. I was able to simply hit play, dim the lights, and instantly enjoy the show. As streaming experiences go, this is exactly how it should be.

Amazon Fire TV: What’s new?

Despite the Fire TV’s newfound 4K talents, you’re unlikely to be able to tell the new model apart from the previous one. All the serious changes have taken place inside the square, flat glossy black plastic shell. Wi-Fi support now stretches up to 802.11ac speeds, which is helpful for maintaining a smooth, steady video stream if you have a compatible router, while internally the quad-core processor and GPU have both received an upgrade.

Amazon claims this the new pairing is 75% faster than the previous one, and that the new PowerVR GX6250 GPU is dramatically faster than last year’s Adreno 320, something that promises smoother frame rates across the variety of gaming titles in Amazon’s Appstore.

Otherwise, though, the specifications are much the same. There’s 8GB of storage, of which around 6GB is free for storing apps and downloads, a 10/100 Ethernet port, and a USB port that still does nothing of any use. Streaming content from mobile devices is still on the cards, with Bluetooth 4.1 allowing you to “throw” content from Fire OS and Android tablets using display mirroring, while iOS and Android devices alike can take advantage of the DIAL protocol – the wireless streaming standard pushed by Netflix and Amazon (and used by the original Chromecast) – which permits compatible apps to play back content on any compatible device on a home network.

Home theatre enthusiasts, myself included, won’t be especially pleased by some changes, though. If your home cinema amplifier doesn’t support 4K HDMI passthrough, then you’re out of luck: Amazon has dumped the optical S/PDIF output in favour of a microSD slot that accepts cards up to 128GB in size.

It’s also a touch disappointing that the HDMI port is only capable of delivering a 4K signal at a maximum of 30Hz. Sadly, if you want super-smooth 60Hz/60fps gaming, you’ll just have to switch display resolution to 1080p on your 4K TV. It’s also worth checking whether your TV supports HDCP 2.2, since without it your 4K TV will be limited to 1080p content, an issue that has already generated plenty of negative user reviews on Amazon’s website.

Amazon Fire TV: Remote control and game controller

Despite the niggles, there’s much to like about the Fire TV. The remote control is an exercise in simplicity. It’s compact without being uncomfortably small, and all the buttons respond with a firm, high-quality click: the four-way navigation ring works without hassle, and the layout makes it easy to memorise the location of the play/pause, rewind and fast-forward buttons. Best of all, because it uses Bluetooth, you can hide the Fire TV behind your TV or projection screen and it still works just fine.

The Fire TV’s remote also has another, handy trick up its sleeve. At the top of the remote is a microphone button that lets you carry out voice searches, and it’s darned quick too. It’s much, much quicker than typing out the name of a film or TV series, and only occasionally did I ever have to repeat myself – most of the time, it understood even my most half-asleep of mumblings. It’s great.

There is room for improvement, though. For instance, one quibble is that it only works for film and programme titles rather than actors and directors. Given the wealth of information available via Amazon’s IMDb-searching X-Ray feature, it’s a shame you can’t use voice control to search for content more creatively. Another annoying limitation is that it doesn’t work with the third-party streaming services: use the voice search function while you’re in the Netflix or the BBC iPlayer app, and you’re unceremoniously dumped out of that app and back into the Amazon front-end. Support will be coming sometime in the near-future, though.

And, while I’m being incredibly demanding, I wish it were possible to do a cross-service voice search, to check which movies are available on which service, and for how much. Currently, the process of checking whether movies are available on Amazon Prime or Netflix and whether they’re free or not, is aggravatingly clunky and time-consuming.

However, Amazon is keen to tout the Fire TV as one part media streamer and one-part lightweight gaming machine. We’re generally talking unchallenging gaming titles here – Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Grand Theft Auto III and the like – and you’ll need the optional £40 controller to play many of them. At half the price of the Fire TV again, you’d hope to get a premium controller – it’s the same price as a new PlayStation 4 or Xbox One controller – and we can only hope that Amazon has improved on last year’s plasticky, underwhelming effort. Due to be released on 22 October, we’ll be updating this review the moment we get some hands-on gaming time with it.

Amazon Fire TV: How it works and what you can watch

As with all its competitors, the Fire TV is dependent on an internet connection – it’s not like the media streamers of old that offered streaming principally over your local network and from local storage. In fact, the only time the Fire TV isn’t streaming from the internet is when its ASAP feature is at work – rather ingeniously, this uses predictive analytics to determine what you may want to watch next. For example, if you’re binge-watching a particular series, the Fire TV will download the next few episodes in the background, eliminating the threat of buffering.

If you’re hoping to play locally stored media, though, that’s a little trickier. As I’ve already mentioned, the USB port is as yet untapped – you can’t connect a local hard drive. And, as DLNA-networking isn’t on the cards, you’ll need to set up a Plex media server and use the Plex app if you want to stream from a NAS box or server. 

However, most people won’t give a stuff about such limitations: they’ll be quite happy to have their entertainment streaming direct from Amazon. You can rent or buy TV and movies directly on the Fire or, if you pay for Amazon Prime, enjoy unlimited access to the extensive Amazon Prime Instant Video film and TV library.

There’s also support for Amazon Digital and Prime Music, which means purchased MP3s and digital copies of most CDs you’ve bought through Amazon are available alongside Prime Music’s growing library of streaming music. Meanwhile, the infinite cloud storage means you can quickly access stored photos for viewing on your TV. Bear in mind, though, that you only get a free, 30-day Prime trial in the box; thereafter, it costs £79 per year – the same as buying a new Fire TV annually.

The Fire TV isn’t limited to only Amazon video and music, though, with third-party streaming services available via apps. The list has expanded a little since the box was first launched, with ITV Hub and All 4 joining Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Twitch, My5, Sky News, YouTube, Spotify Connect and Vimeo (for all versions of the box, not just the new one). At the time of writing, there’s no sign of Now TV, though, and, if I were a betting man, I’d say it’s unlikely that Sky’s video-streaming service will ever come to the Fire TV.

But wait! The Fire TV does gaming, too! Don’t get too excited, though. The gaming catalogue on Fire TV remains underwhelming. There are some great titles, including Crossy Road, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, plus stuff like indy hit Knock-knock, but there’s an awful lot of dross to wade through. A huge number of apps and games fall between the useless and ridiculous, including titles such as Kitten TV, Traktor TV and more aquarium simulations than you can shake a stick at.

Thankfully, the interface for navigating all this content – good and bad – is simple, user-friendly, and very responsive. A clearly laid-out tab-based menu runs down the left-hand side, and associated content is ranged in horizontal, scrolling carousels to the right. It’s slick, quick and minimal. Delve into each category and the content takes centre stage, huge squares of image underpinned with a quick text summary. It’s easy to get around, although on larger TVs it can feel like the screen space is rather underutilised. Having to scroll down to view the last couple of words of a programme summary isn’t the best example of sensible UI design.

Amazon Fire TV: Verdict

All in all, the Amazon Fire TV provides a refined, slick media-streaming experience. The presence of half-decent parental controls makes it a good choice for families, too, since you can restrict children from accessing apps, games, photos and music you feel may be unsuitable for them.

There are downsides: the fact that you need to buy a £40 peripheral to make the most of the limited selection of games grates, and it goes without saying that unless you’re one of those £79-per-year Amazon Prime customers, then the Fire TV is somewhat limited. Be in no doubt, the Fire TV is about making it easy to spend money on your Amazon account, buying movies and series with an all-too-easy click of the remote.

It all boils down to three simple questions: are you an Amazon Prime subscriber, do you want 4K video streaming, and are the gaming features important to you? If the answer to these is yes, yes and no, and you don’t have any compatibility issues (check the reviews on Amazon’s website to see what I’m talking about) then the Fire TV will make you very happy indeed. But if you’re hoping for the ultimate do-it-all TV streaming and gaming device, then I’m afraid to say this isn’t it – that’s something still no-one has managed to get right.

• See also: What’s the best TV streamer in the UK?