Amazon Fire TV Cube release date and price: Amazon’s mysterious new streamer is officially unveiled

Victoria Woollaston April 30, 2018

Amazon has led the way in media streaming for years, having been among the first to offer a way to beam content to a TV and offering 4K content as far back as 2015, ahead of the likes of Roku, Apple and Google.

Amazon Fire TV Cube release date and price: Amazon's mysterious new streamer is officially unveiled

Now, it appears Jeff Bezos is at it again after the company announced its next Fire-branded TV streamer, called the Amazon Fire TV Cube.

READ NEXT: What is 4K?

It was teased on the US storefront in April and, at that point, the only thing we knew for definite was its name. There was then a handful of official teasers, as well as a number of leaks, none of which Amazon commented on directly until the streamer’s grand unveiling today.

Amazon Fire TV Cube: Everything you need to know

Amazon Fire TV Cube UK release date

Rumours about the Amazon Fire TV Cube surfaced in Autumn last year but remained relatively under the radar until Amazon itself confirmed the device’s existence in April. At that time, Amazon teased the Amazon Fire TV Cube with a holding page on its US storefront which simply said: “What is Amazon Fire TV Cube?” Below this question was a link for interested customers to sign up “to learn more”. The page added that details would be “coming soon.”

According to today’s official release, the Amazon Fire TV Cube will go on sale in the US on 21 June. We had been expecting the Amazon Fire TV Cube release date to coincide with Amazon Prime Day 2018, which is rumoured to be 11 July, and while that hasn’t exactly worked out, the streamer will at least be on sale for one of the retailer’s biggest sales days of the year.

READ NEXT: Amazon Prime Day 2018

There wasn’t a similar holding page on the UK site, sadly, and there is no mention of a UK release date on the press release. This is hardly surprising. As we’ve seen with its Echo devices, Amazon does tend to launch the majority of its products in the US, followed by a global launch for the UK and other locations a month of so later. With this in mind, we may need to wait a little longer in Blightly to pick up the Amazon Fire TV Cube.

Amazon Fire TV Cube UK price

In the US, the Amazon Fire TV Cube is now available for preorder for $119.99. The device itself will begin shipping on 21 June. As an introductory offer, Prime members can preorder Fire TV Cube on 7 June and 8 June for $89.99. Plus, for a limited time, customers can preorder the Fire TV Cube and Amazon Cloud Cam together $199.98 – a $40 saving – and any customers who purchases and registers their Fire TV Cube by 1 July will also get a $10 credit for Prime Video.

What’s more, starting on 21 June, all Fire TV devices will be eligible for unlimited access to tens of millions of songs with Amazon Music starting at just $3.99/month.

Using these US prices as a guide, and if we look at Amazon’s current media streamer offering, we can at least make an educated stab at what the Amazon Fire TV Cube could retail for when it arrives in the UK. For example, the Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote costs £40, while the Fire TV – which comes with 4K streaming – is a little pricier at £70. By comparison, Apple’s 4K TV box costs £179. The Amazon Fire TV Cube sits at the top end of this scale and we’d pitch the Fire TV Cube at around £120 in the UK.

Amazon Fire TV Cube features

Amazon Fire TV Cube uses far-field voice recognition with eight microphones. Added to this is advanced beamforming technology to combine signals from each of these microphones to suppress noise, reverberation, content currently playing, and other voices to make sure Alexa can hear your commands. This includes being able to use your voice to control streaming apps like Hulu and PlayStation Vue as well as HBO, SHOWTIME, and STARZ through Amazon Channels. Amazon gives the example of being able to say, “Alexa, switch to channel 31” or “Alexa, watch ESPN”.

You’ll also be able to use Alexa to find certain types of films, play trailers, search for particular actors and directors, and more.