But in a world of Fire TV-equipped Smart TVs, and other TVs that have all of the streaming apps, does the Fire TV Cube make a strong case for buying one more thing? We think so, but there’s still room to improve, not only in Super Resolution Upscaling, but in the Fire TV’s ad-heavy interface. The Fire TV Cube’s upper-side shows off the primary reason some will buy it: this Fire TV device is a full-on Alexa speaker, as evidenced by its blue light bar and four Alexa buttons (trigger, mute, volume up and volume down). Still not technically a cube, the new Fire TV Cube 2022 (3.4 x 3.4 x 3.0 inches) is the same size as the 2019 model. The Roku Ultra 2020 (4.9 x 4.9 x 0.9 inches) and Apple TV 4K (3.7 x 3.7 x 1.2 inches for 2022, 3.9 x 3.9 x 1.4 inches for 2021) are wider and shorter. The sides of the Fire TV Cube 3rd Gen, however, are wrapped in mesh fabric instead of glossy plastic. This doesn’t just allow it to actually look more like an Alexa speaker, but it enables front and side-facing Alexa speakers (the 2019 model’s speakers were downward-firing). The Fire TV Cube 2022 remote gets menu and content navigation right, with both a directional pad, all the standard buttons to let you play/pause, fast forward, rewind, go home and go back by one screen. Then, you’ve got volume and channel controls, along with the Live TV menu button. Those channel controls might not make sense to cord-cutters, but they work with connected cable boxes. The Apple TV 4K remote is smaller and has far fewer buttons, but at least it doesn’t have the Fire TV Cube’s hard-encoded app buttons (Prime Video, Netflix, Disney Plus and Hulu). The Roku Ultra has the best remote of the group, the Roku Voice Remote Pro, which has a headphone jack for private listening (and comes with free headphones for that), programmable buttons and a rechargeable battery. Thanks to a new octa-core processor, the Fire TV Cube is one of the fastest streaming devices there is. Navigating menus, opening apps and streaming on the Fire TV Cube (2022), my first reaction was “this is fast.” But while the Fire TV Cube 2022 has speedy performance, its speed isn’t outperforming its $139 price tag — especially when we already thought the $129 Fire TV Cube (2019, 2nd Gen) was also fast. If you’re paying $40 more than you would for the Roku Ultra, you should have YouTube open in 4 seconds, nearly a third of the 11 second time the $99 Roku posted. The Apple TV 4K 2021 took 3 seconds, which is what I’d call within the margin of error when I’m using my phone’s stopwatch. Disney Plus opened in 5 seconds (1 shy of Apple TV’s 6 seconds and 4 shy of the Roku’s 9 seconds), while Peacock opened in six seconds (Apple TV: 6 seconds, Roku Ultra: 9 seconds). The Fire TV Cube (2022) produces crisp and beautiful video, or at least it will enable your TV to reach its potential. The Cube supports all of the top audio (Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Atmos) and video (Dolby Vision, HDR 10, HDR10+, HLG) standards. Testing the Fire TV Cube on my 4K LG TV (model number OLED55C7P), I saw nothing at all wrong, though TV shows have that little moment of all-black with a simple logo that helps them preload the next scene. But picture quality stayed super-crisp as I fast-forwarded around the first episode of Bad Sisters on Apple TV Plus. From the fuzz of Becka (Eve Hewson)’s pink sweater to the texture of the gravel that a reckless biker took a spill on, and when I fast-forwarded to the insurance office scene, I could clearly see a lotto ticket barcode behind Tom Claffin (Brian Gleeson). And that’s all without the Ethernet cable plugged in. The only slowness-to-4K I saw came when loading up the start of a House of the Dragon episode, and the granite in the opening credits looked quite soft for a second or two. The Dolby Vision support complemented For All Mankind’s scenes on the moon well, with the black skies looking especially inky. Dolby Atmos ensures that the sound surrounds you, but since I don’t have a soundbar, I can only speak to the fact that the Game of Thrones House of the Dragon theme song had all the bravura and power that you’d normally expect. For example, the 720p DVD of The Big Lebowski, skipped ahead to the “over the line” scene where John Goodman’s Walter Sobcheck pulls a gun on Smokey the hippie looked as grainy as the day I bought it, and I didn’t see much improvement when Super Resolution Upscaling was turned on, maybe a little smoothing of skin tones. Testing that same scene out on the Blu-ray of the same movie, it seemed like some smaller details like Smokey’s salt and pepper hair, The Dude’s mop of hair, and floral print pants, looked slightly crisper — but not by a huge margin. Below that, you have a thin row that users can control over half of, the portion where you see six of your apps. Six is a small amount, as Apple TV has upwards of 20 and Roku shows you nine (and half of three more below). You may only have six apps, but even if that’s the case, Fire TV shouldn’t be hiding them in that thin sliver of the home screen. Below that, a neat slightly-smart row (or two) of content related to whatever your cursor has selected appears. That row often includes content directly from your live TV service of choice, and that’s a great move. I wish Roku and Apple had this level of integration with paid live TV services. Oh, and any time you’re using the Fire TV or the device connected via HDMI, you can still see Alexa overlays, such as the local weather forecast. And you don’t even see any interface if your TV is off when you simply ask Alexa a question it can answer verbally, such as “Alexa, what’s today’s date?” When I got tired of rewatching a House of the Dragon episode, I decided to use Alexa to search for Jordan Peele’s movies. I simply said “Hey Alexa, Jordan Peele.” And then the device searched that query in HBO Max. That wasn’t what I expected — the Key & Peele show, and Space Jam (because Michael Jordan) showed up — but it was a neat trick. So, I navigated to the home screen, and said “Hey Alexa, Jordan Peele.” Up came a grid starting with the most relevant answers: Nope, Us and Get Out (the movies he’s directed), then — questionably — Antebellum, which he does not have any role in, but is often compared to his work, followed by his Twilight Zone, then Key & Peele, Candyman (2021), which he produced, and then movies and shows that are similar-ish (American Horror Stories, Ma and Bodies Bodies Bodies), with his under-seen Keanu mixed in. The Apple TV 4K’s Siri produces a similar set of results for the actor/director’s name. Roku’s voice search for Jordan Peele also pulls up YouTube results for the actor, but doesn’t surface similar movies nor does it bring up Key & Peele. When I selected Us on the Fire TV Cube, it offered buy and rental options with the FXNOW app as a secondary option — though I didn’t have the app installed (nor do I have a subscription that supports FXM. Roku only recommended Spectrum (an app Fire TV doesn’t have). Using Alexa to search for the movie “It” (which I knew is on Netflix, which I had installed), the Fire TV had the 2017 movie as the first result, and showed “Watch Now with Netflix” as the first option after opening the movie. Clicking said button brought me to the Netflix app, where one more click started the film. Searching for the same movie on Roku showed me I could watch the modern horror adaptation on either Netflix or HBO Max (an option hidden in menus on Fire TV), and searching “It” with Siri on the Apple TV 4K got the right result, but only showed HBO Max — because Apple doesn’t tie into Netflix. Overall, using Alexa for Search works well, but I wish the results screen was a little more like Roku’s. At least Fire TV can work with Netflix, which Apple can’t say. Using Alexa to open specific apps is really easy, I just say “Alexa, open YouTube, and it’s there. Even if the TV was off — the Fire TV turns on the TV and boots up the app you want. Using Alexa to control a cable box, one of the Fire TV Cube’s original use-cases, works really well. With everything plugged in and connected, I said “Alexa, tune to the Travel Channel on Cable,” switched the input and the channel, and I was watching some version of Ghost Hunters that I immediately turned off once I realized that the Travel Channel isn’t about travel anymore. Thankfully, Alexa’s also ready for the post-cable life, working with some of the best cable TV alternatives including Sling TV. So, when I say “Alexa, tune to TBS on Sling,” that works too. At some points throughout this, these commands didn’t work exactly right, but after I reset some settings, it all worked itself out. I’m not especially fond of using voice assistants, but I have to admit that I warmed up when it worked right. To enter my living room, speak “Alexa, open Peacock,” and to have the TV turn on and open the Peacock app on the Fire TV? It’s neat. Testing Luna Plus (for an extra $9.99 per month you get more games than with Prime membership) out, I found that it’s better for some games than others. Tetris Effect Connected, a joyous music-infused take on the brick-shifting classic, played smoothly. Spooky third-person shooter Control, however, had a weird audio sync issue when you fired your weapon, a common limit of cloud gaming. Annoyingly, Luna’s menus didn’t always work right, as it took multiple attempts to merely exit a game page. The 3rd Generation Fire TV Cube is the best Fire TV yet, combining best-in-class speed with a new remote and an extra HDMI port for all of us device-jugglers. And now that the Fire TV Cube’s Ethernet port is built right in, steady streaming is even easier than before. That said, it’s still pricey, and I am not seeing the value in Super Resolution Upscaling. Hopefully that gets fixed soon. But for anyone who wants to upgrade their Smart TV and cable (or cord-cutter app) life with a streaming device that’s also a full-fledged Alexa speaker? The Fire TV Cube may be $10 more than before, but it’s also better than ever.
title: “Amazon Fire Tv Cube 2022 Review” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-18” author: “Margaret Burns”
But in a world of Fire TV-equipped Smart TVs, and other TVs that have all of the streaming apps, does the Fire TV Cube make a strong case for buying one more thing? We think so, but there’s still room to improve, not only in Super Resolution Upscaling, but in the Fire TV’s ad-heavy interface. The Fire TV Cube’s upper-side shows off the primary reason some will buy it: this Fire TV device is a full-on Alexa speaker, as evidenced by its blue light bar and four Alexa buttons (trigger, mute, volume up and volume down). Still not technically a cube, the new Fire TV Cube 2022 (3.4 x 3.4 x 3.0 inches) is the same size as the 2019 model. The Roku Ultra 2020 (4.9 x 4.9 x 0.9 inches) and Apple TV 4K (3.7 x 3.7 x 1.2 inches for 2022, 3.9 x 3.9 x 1.4 inches for 2021) are wider and shorter. The sides of the Fire TV Cube 3rd Gen, however, are wrapped in mesh fabric instead of glossy plastic. This doesn’t just allow it to actually look more like an Alexa speaker, but it enables front and side-facing Alexa speakers (the 2019 model’s speakers were downward-firing). The Fire TV Cube 2022 remote gets menu and content navigation right, with both a directional pad, all the standard buttons to let you play/pause, fast forward, rewind, go home and go back by one screen. Then, you’ve got volume and channel controls, along with the Live TV menu button. Those channel controls might not make sense to cord-cutters, but they work with connected cable boxes. The Apple TV 4K remote is smaller and has far fewer buttons, but at least it doesn’t have the Fire TV Cube’s hard-encoded app buttons (Prime Video, Netflix, Disney Plus and Hulu). The Roku Ultra has the best remote of the group, the Roku Voice Remote Pro, which has a headphone jack for private listening (and comes with free headphones for that), programmable buttons and a rechargeable battery. Thanks to a new octa-core processor, the Fire TV Cube is one of the fastest streaming devices there is. Navigating menus, opening apps and streaming on the Fire TV Cube (2022), my first reaction was “this is fast.” But while the Fire TV Cube 2022 has speedy performance, its speed isn’t outperforming its $139 price tag — especially when we already thought the $129 Fire TV Cube (2019, 2nd Gen) was also fast. If you’re paying $40 more than you would for the Roku Ultra, you should have YouTube open in 4 seconds, nearly a third of the 11 second time the $99 Roku posted. The Apple TV 4K 2021 took 3 seconds, which is what I’d call within the margin of error when I’m using my phone’s stopwatch. Disney Plus opened in 5 seconds (1 shy of Apple TV’s 6 seconds and 4 shy of the Roku’s 9 seconds), while Peacock opened in six seconds (Apple TV: 6 seconds, Roku Ultra: 9 seconds). The Fire TV Cube (2022) produces crisp and beautiful video, or at least it will enable your TV to reach its potential. The Cube supports all of the top audio (Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Atmos) and video (Dolby Vision, HDR 10, HDR10+, HLG) standards. Testing the Fire TV Cube on my 4K LG TV (model number OLED55C7P), I saw nothing at all wrong, though TV shows have that little moment of all-black with a simple logo that helps them preload the next scene. But picture quality stayed super-crisp as I fast-forwarded around the first episode of Bad Sisters on Apple TV Plus. From the fuzz of Becka (Eve Hewson)’s pink sweater to the texture of the gravel that a reckless biker took a spill on, and when I fast-forwarded to the insurance office scene, I could clearly see a lotto ticket barcode behind Tom Claffin (Brian Gleeson). And that’s all without the Ethernet cable plugged in. The only slowness-to-4K I saw came when loading up the start of a House of the Dragon episode, and the granite in the opening credits looked quite soft for a second or two. The Dolby Vision support complemented For All Mankind’s scenes on the moon well, with the black skies looking especially inky. Dolby Atmos ensures that the sound surrounds you, but since I don’t have a soundbar, I can only speak to the fact that the Game of Thrones House of the Dragon theme song had all the bravura and power that you’d normally expect. For example, the 720p DVD of The Big Lebowski, skipped ahead to the “over the line” scene where John Goodman’s Walter Sobcheck pulls a gun on Smokey the hippie looked as grainy as the day I bought it, and I didn’t see much improvement when Super Resolution Upscaling was turned on, maybe a little smoothing of skin tones. Testing that same scene out on the Blu-ray of the same movie, it seemed like some smaller details like Smokey’s salt and pepper hair, The Dude’s mop of hair, and floral print pants, looked slightly crisper — but not by a huge margin. Below that, you have a thin row that users can control over half of, the portion where you see six of your apps. Six is a small amount, as Apple TV has upwards of 20 and Roku shows you nine (and half of three more below). You may only have six apps, but even if that’s the case, Fire TV shouldn’t be hiding them in that thin sliver of the home screen. Below that, a neat slightly-smart row (or two) of content related to whatever your cursor has selected appears. That row often includes content directly from your live TV service of choice, and that’s a great move. I wish Roku and Apple had this level of integration with paid live TV services. Oh, and any time you’re using the Fire TV or the device connected via HDMI, you can still see Alexa overlays, such as the local weather forecast. And you don’t even see any interface if your TV is off when you simply ask Alexa a question it can answer verbally, such as “Alexa, what’s today’s date?” When I got tired of rewatching a House of the Dragon episode, I decided to use Alexa to search for Jordan Peele’s movies. I simply said “Hey Alexa, Jordan Peele.” And then the device searched that query in HBO Max. That wasn’t what I expected — the Key & Peele show, and Space Jam (because Michael Jordan) showed up — but it was a neat trick. So, I navigated to the home screen, and said “Hey Alexa, Jordan Peele.” Up came a grid starting with the most relevant answers: Nope, Us and Get Out (the movies he’s directed), then — questionably — Antebellum, which he does not have any role in, but is often compared to his work, followed by his Twilight Zone, then Key & Peele, Candyman (2021), which he produced, and then movies and shows that are similar-ish (American Horror Stories, Ma and Bodies Bodies Bodies), with his under-seen Keanu mixed in. The Apple TV 4K’s Siri produces a similar set of results for the actor/director’s name. Roku’s voice search for Jordan Peele also pulls up YouTube results for the actor, but doesn’t surface similar movies nor does it bring up Key & Peele. When I selected Us on the Fire TV Cube, it offered buy and rental options with the FXNOW app as a secondary option — though I didn’t have the app installed (nor do I have a subscription that supports FXM. Roku only recommended Spectrum (an app Fire TV doesn’t have). Using Alexa to search for the movie “It” (which I knew is on Netflix, which I had installed), the Fire TV had the 2017 movie as the first result, and showed “Watch Now with Netflix” as the first option after opening the movie. Clicking said button brought me to the Netflix app, where one more click started the film. Searching for the same movie on Roku showed me I could watch the modern horror adaptation on either Netflix or HBO Max (an option hidden in menus on Fire TV), and searching “It” with Siri on the Apple TV 4K got the right result, but only showed HBO Max — because Apple doesn’t tie into Netflix. Overall, using Alexa for Search works well, but I wish the results screen was a little more like Roku’s. At least Fire TV can work with Netflix, which Apple can’t say. Using Alexa to open specific apps is really easy, I just say “Alexa, open YouTube, and it’s there. Even if the TV was off — the Fire TV turns on the TV and boots up the app you want. Using Alexa to control a cable box, one of the Fire TV Cube’s original use-cases, works really well. With everything plugged in and connected, I said “Alexa, tune to the Travel Channel on Cable,” switched the input and the channel, and I was watching some version of Ghost Hunters that I immediately turned off once I realized that the Travel Channel isn’t about travel anymore. Thankfully, Alexa’s also ready for the post-cable life, working with some of the best cable TV alternatives including Sling TV. So, when I say “Alexa, tune to TBS on Sling,” that works too. At some points throughout this, these commands didn’t work exactly right, but after I reset some settings, it all worked itself out. I’m not especially fond of using voice assistants, but I have to admit that I warmed up when it worked right. To enter my living room, speak “Alexa, open Peacock,” and to have the TV turn on and open the Peacock app on the Fire TV? It’s neat. Testing Luna Plus (for an extra $9.99 per month you get more games than with Prime membership) out, I found that it’s better for some games than others. Tetris Effect Connected, a joyous music-infused take on the brick-shifting classic, played smoothly. Spooky third-person shooter Control, however, had a weird audio sync issue when you fired your weapon, a common limit of cloud gaming. Annoyingly, Luna’s menus didn’t always work right, as it took multiple attempts to merely exit a game page. The 3rd Generation Fire TV Cube is the best Fire TV yet, combining best-in-class speed with a new remote and an extra HDMI port for all of us device-jugglers. And now that the Fire TV Cube’s Ethernet port is built right in, steady streaming is even easier than before. That said, it’s still pricey, and I am not seeing the value in Super Resolution Upscaling. Hopefully that gets fixed soon. But for anyone who wants to upgrade their Smart TV and cable (or cord-cutter app) life with a streaming device that’s also a full-fledged Alexa speaker? The Fire TV Cube may be $10 more than before, but it’s also better than ever.
