Side note: I have recently moved away from Firetv stick, because it was unreliable.
The product idea was great, a <$50 device that gave you access to all the media you could want. Bonus there were apps and games.
However in practice its a deeply unreliable product thats deeply frustrating to use. It appears that not even amazon targets the stick for optimisation, as even the home screen is exceptionally slow.
Moreover it looses network connection frequently, but doesn't tell you. So you need to reboot the stick, but that takes an age because often there is some sort of memory leak causing the whole device to crawl.
Updates appear to be optimised to happen during use of your apps.
The virtual remote is deeply unreliable (and has been for years)
I didn't realise how bad it was until I tried a friend's apple TV. Much as it annoys me to admit, the apple TV, whilst twice the price (although its now more expensive) is 8 times the product.
The Apple TV is an Apple product, with all the pros and cons that carries, but the Fire stick honestly feels like a low quality knockoff of a knockoff.
I bought a FireTV stick for the lesser-used TV, having been accustomed to the Apple TV in the main room. It was cheap, and seemed to do all the stuff
The software was horrible:
* Highlight a search field, think you can use Alexa to dictate text? No, it'll just do a regular Alexa query. AppleTV gets this right: if you're on a text field, the mic button will just activate dictation to enter text
* Screensaver comes on, exit screensaver, also exits currently playing show back to the screen where you have to hit resume
* Slow, janky UI built with zero love
I felt bad when I eventually gave it away to my mum, who had a very early gen AppleTV that could not run Disney+. I felt so bad about inflicting the FireTV experience on her that I soon bought her a new AppleTV to replace it
Reading this I'm glad having chosen Chromecast w Google TV last week for my new "dumb tv".
I didn't have the opportunity to try Fire stick but slowness and an unpolished UI what I was fearing. Google TV otoh has a polished interface, supports all streaming services and the remote can control your TV as well.
Can recommend.
Despite being an Apple user who bought into the ecosystem, I don't like any of their offerings in the media streaming space. Too expensive, too much lock-in, catalogues too small.
Just get a Roku and move on. Clean UI, the best remotes. I have Fire TVs and Chromecast with Google TV and Roku is just better. No nonsense. Apple TV is overpriced and does nothing I need.
The product idea was great, a <$50 device that gave you access to all the media you could want. Bonus there were apps and games.
However in practice its a deeply unreliable product thats deeply frustrating to use. It appears that not even amazon targets the stick for optimisation, as even the home screen is exceptionally slow.
Moreover it looses network connection frequently, but doesn't tell you. So you need to reboot the stick, but that takes an age because often there is some sort of memory leak causing the whole device to crawl.
Updates appear to be optimised to happen during use of your apps.
The virtual remote is deeply unreliable (and has been for years)
I didn't realise how bad it was until I tried a friend's apple TV. Much as it annoys me to admit, the apple TV, whilst twice the price (although its now more expensive) is 8 times the product.