Amazon’s Fire TV lineup has gone from a perfectly simple concept—a stick that streams video—to a corporate naming convention nightmare.
There’s the HD, the 4K Select, the 4K Plus, the 4K Max, and the Cube. Clear as mud.
Let’s try to make sense of this lineup, shall we?
The Budget Basement: Fire TV Stick HD
The Fire TV Stick HD is your entry point. It handles 1080p, and that’s pretty much the whole story. It works fine for an older TV—the kind you put in the guest room or the garage.
At $25, it’s cheap, it’s simple, and it’s a little slow, both performance-wise and thanks to its aging Wi-Fi 5 chipset.
If you have a 4K television, walk past this one and don’t look back. If you insist on buying it, wait for a sale. They happen often.
The New Low-End: Fire TV Stick 4K Select
Ah, the “Select.” This is Amazon’s latest attempt to offer a budget 4K option.
Yes, it does 4K, and yes, at $40, it’s reasonably cheap. But you need to know what you’re losing.
For starters, it skimps on internal memory (1GB of RAM), meaning it’ll feel a bit sluggish. Like the HD, it’s hamstrung with Wi-Fi 5. And perhaps more importantly, it skips Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Those two formats are crucial for getting the best picture and sound out of a modern 4K TV and sound system.
The lag you’ll feel is a constant reminder that you saved a few bucks. If the price doesn’t drop ludicrously low, proceed with caution.
Middle Road Mastery: Fire TV Stick 4K Plus
The Fire TV Stick 4K Plus is the renamed and now slightly easier-to-understand mid-tier offering (it was the Fire TV Stick 4K). For most people, this is the smart, safe purchase.
For just $10 more than the Select, it brings back the crucial features the Select is missing: a full 2GB of RAM for snappy performance, full support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, and Wi-Fi 6 for more stable streaming. Ironically, at the time of this writing, it’s actually on sale for $10 less than the Select, making it a total no-brainer.
It’s the baseline where your 4K TV finally gets to stretch its legs and deliver the visual punch it was designed for. When in doubt, start here.
Performance King: Fire TV Stick 4K Max
The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is the stick for the enthusiast, the gamer, and the person who simply hates waiting for stuff to load.
The $60 4K Max takes the “Plus” model and stuffs it with extra muscle: a faster processor, 16GB of storage (double the others for more apps), and, most critically, Wi-Fi 6E.
If you have a compatible router, Wi-Fi 6E gives you a dedicated, fast lane for streaming, virtually eliminating buffering and lag, especially when the rest of the house is clogging the network.
If you plan on doing any cloud gaming, or just want the smoothest, most responsive experience without buying a whole cube, the 4K Max is the clear winner.
The All-Powerful Hub: Fire TV Cube
While the Fire TV Cube is not stick-shaped, it’s the big dog here, a streaming box that makes even the 4K Max look like child’s play.
Its processor is the fastest of the bunch and includes an integrated Ethernet port for a rock-solid wired connection.
Its main party trick is hands-free Alexa control. You can tell your TV to switch inputs, turn on the lights, and launch a show without ever touching the remote.
This is a powerful, top-tier device built for the smart home fanatic, with a $140 price tag. If your entertainment center is your smart home control panel, and money is less of an object, the Cube is your choice. For everyone else, it’s probably overkill.
The bottom line
- Skip the HD unless you have an HD-only TV
- Be wary of the 4K Select; it strips out too many key premium features to justify the small savings
- The 4K Plus is a solid, well-rounded performer
- If you want the best performance for your dollar—the perfect balance of speed, features, and future-proofing—it’s the Fire TV Stick 4K Max
- If you want it all and then some, the Cube is for you
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