One of the new pieces of Amazon tech we saw at the company’s annual product launch event was a new Fire TV stick – but this small device might bring big changes for Fire TV users.
This new Amazon Fire TV Stick for 2020 brings loads of features including HD streaming, HDR, Dolby Atmos audio, reduced power consumption, and the ability to control your audio-visual equipment using your voice. This brings some impressive improvements over the existing Amazon Fire TV Stick, though it’s not quite the high-res streaming of the Fire TV Stick 4K.
It’s worth noting it also streams at 60fps, which suggests it could be designed with Amazon Luna in mind. Luna is a new games streaming service from Amazon which likely would work best with 1080p 60fps streaming.
There was also an Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite announced, offering HD streaming and a simplified Alexa voice remote for only $29.99, for people who don’t think they need all the features of the full-fat device.
However the biggest change these dongles bring isn’t in specs, though, but the UI overhaul that came alongside them.
Fire TV UI is better than ever
The Amazon Fire TV UI is getting some big improvements which should make using it easier and more enjoyable than before, with some extra features too.
Now, there are profiles for every member of your family, which can be customized to each viewer. There’s also a new navigation bar which includes the favored apps of each profile, making getting around the UI much quicker.
A feature Amazon showed off was Picture in Picture mode, so when you’re watching something you can watch a separate video in the corner. This might sound quite hectic, but an example used was that you could view a delivery coming through your Ring doorbell while you’re watching something else, giving you the peace of mind that a parcel arrived without having to go answer the door.
In addition, when you ask Alexa a question, answers will now be displayed in small visual cards which won’t take over the whole screen, which is another feature which will let you continue watching TV despite what’s going on around you.
Finally, there’s a new Alexa hub, making it easier to understand, control and personalize your virtual assistant.
It sounds as though the new Amazon Fire TV UI will roll out to pre-existing Amazon TV products too, not just the new one, so long-suffering users of these products will get to enjoy the changes too.