So, I'm updating my initial review from 1 star to 4 stars because a) the product support team reached out to me to help troubleshoot the issue, and b) one of their suggestions fixed the issue. I was having a very odd problem that older programs (shows in syndication like "Frasier") selected through Netflix, had no audio. Odd that any newer program like a Netflix series, did have audio. After support had me try various audio settings to no avail, it was finally suggested that I reboot the Fire TV Cube by unplugging it for 30 seconds... Guess what, it worked!
So while I'm very glad the issue's resolved, a) I guess I'm a little worried that it happened in the first place and b) wondering if it will happen again. I'm coming from a Roku3 that I've used for five years and never had any issues at all except for these last few months which is why I decided it was time to replace it and thought I'd give the Fire TV Cube a try.
Overall, I like it and am impressed that all the complicated stuff I thought it would have problems with, actually works! I'm using a Yamaha 5.1 4k receiver as the hub that all my media devices are connected to and use its sole HDMI output to a Samsung TV. Alexa will turn on any of the six media devices I have connected to it, and even more impressive, Alexa is intelligent enough to do "implied two-tiered” commands, i.e., if my entire system is shut down and I walk into the room and say, “Alexa, play the ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’”, it knows that it must first powerup my Yamaha receiver and Samsung TV, open Amazon Prime Video, and then play “TMMM” – it also picks up where I left off. And on top of that, the first time I did it, I said the name of the show wrong, I called it “The Amazing Miss Maisel”, but Alexa corrected me by saying, “Ok, playing ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’” and starting the show anyway. Very cool! Keep in mind it’s always wise to tell Alexa the source of the content, e.g., “Alex, play ‘Forever’ on Amazon Prime Video”; otherwise, it will default to the song ‘Forever’ on Amazon Prime Music.
I’m a little disappointed in the home screen, in that it usually will feature what you previously watched, but if you then open an app like Netflix, and come back to the Home screen, it’s not where you previously left off – sometimes it’s really easy to lose your place and I have to resort to manually searching for content. I was also very surprised with a device that has 16GB of RAM, how laggy it can be, for, e.g., the Alexa commands to move the menu screens by “Alexa, scroll right… scroll up…”, etc. are not worth it because there’s such a delay - so just use the remote for navigation. Another little weird glitch I’ve noticed is that instead of asking Alex to turn on the TV, and I do it by hitting the Home button on the remote, both my TV and receiver correctly turn on, but the sound is now routed through the TV’s internal speakers instead of the Yamaha receiver and I have to go into the TV’s settings and tell it to use the Yamaha receiver for sound… so, I guess from now on I’ll stick to letting Alexa power up the system 😉 But overall, it’s a great product and getting better all the time.
Amazon support and development teams are the best! Thanks for all your help.
--- <original review --
Play a new Netflix series and no problems, select an older series, e.g., "Frasier" or "The Andy Griffith Show", and all you get is silence while the video plays. Went into Settings and Audio was set on "Best Available", so went through and tried all the others ending with the lowest setting of "Stereo", and still, no audio on older content, but newer content always works.
Ironically, all the complicated stuff that I was expecting problems on, works absolutely fine - how on earth did this amazing gaffe get through beta and gamma???
Also, the disappearing audio can occur while playing songs from Prime Music - some songs have audio, others are silent while you just watch the sound bars go up and down and the play-progress bar advance.
I'll give it a few days to see if a firmware update is released. If not, it goes back and the Roku3 comes back out.
This is both my first ever purchase of any type of Amazon Alexa device and submitting a written review, but after reading the majority of negative comments I felt the need to throw in my observations:
I pre- ordered the device and received it a day before it officially went on the market, which was a nice surprise. Set up was simple, quick, and straight- forward: I hooked up the HDMI cable between the device and my TV, downloaded the Alexa app, and linked the Fire TV Cube to my wi-fi. It took (without exaggeration) approximately five minutes.
I personally believe the Fire TV Cube is a sleek design and while the cables sticking out the back take a bit away from that, I don't think it warrants inclusion to an overall one star review like what others have written. I have placed it on the top of my TV stand and away from an enclosure like the instructions recommend, and have had no issue with voice recognition. I am able to call for Alexa from any part of my apartment and am heard easily. The speaker is also quite effective and gives a nice sound. I used to have a soundbar and honestly feel like there is not too big of a difference.
Some reviewers have also complained about the device not immediately finding what they requested a search for. I have experienced this as well but after a little trial and error found you have to make a 2 or 3 step request: 1) tell Alexa to turn on the TV, 2) tell Alexa to open the platform you want to watch it on (Netflix, Hulu, etc.), 3) tell Alexa to either a) resume or b) play X movie or TV show. It's a slightly tedious process and even then I'll admit at times I've had to repeat commands (and for that major reason I am giving it 4 stars) but overall it works well. Features such as the daily news briefing and weather reports are handy and an update I like having a voice command away when I start my morning.
I also just recently decided to purchase a smart plug for the first time. Linking it to both the internet and Alexa took only a couple of minutes, and works very easily in tandem with the device. Asking it to turn off/on lights does not cause the Fire TV Cube to turn on the TV or any other devices.
Overall I believe parts of the most negative reviews pick at some small and insignificant issues and weigh them a little more than is warranted. The search capacity can be improved, but overall a solid device that is worth the purchase.
geez, this thing is literally a defective outdated first generation fire stick hidden inside a cube. By far the worst Amazon fire family devices I have bought. Glitches here and there, voice recognition is a bit lackluster...maybe cause of the mic? Cause the echo dot is wonderful. And to top it off, it has wired Ethernet connection that makes my FiOS 100/100 seem like it's dialup. My fire stick in the other room operates smoother and faster...yet that's wireless and and older generation. Oh and did a mention it was like also 1/3 the price.
UPDATE:
Tech support contacted me and found out I indeed had a defective item -- now I have to figure out how I will return this thing...
So why rate it 5 star?? Cause I was going to update to 3-star but Paula A. was absolutely amazing! She's worth the additional stars :) Great customer support team! Thank you Paula wherever you are!
-S. Paul
Love the new remote, finally fire tv has a volume control, unit loads apps fast and downloading and installing is way faster than fire sticks by far, awesome streaming device, kodi works great, hard wired internet works great as well as Wi-Fi, I prefer the faster internet cable. not sure why other people in the reviews are have problems. Alex works great with my AV recover, just say Alexa tv on and reciver and tv turn on without issue. Best Fire TV box so far
Overall I’m happy with this buy, in fact, I’m excited, and this can only get better. I bought Alexa when it first came out and I’m still using it. This technology is pretty cool; you just have to be patient.
Feature Product
- Fire TV Cube is the first hands-free streaming media player with Alexa. From across the room, just ask Alexa to turn on the TV, dim the lights, and play what you want to watch.
- With far-field voice recognition, eight microphones, and beamforming technology, Fire TV Cube hears you from any direction. Enjoy hands-free voice control of content-search, play, pause, fast forward, and more. Plus control the power and volume on your TV, soundbar, and A/V receiver as well as change live cable or satellite channels with just your voice.
- Fire TV Cube has a built-in speaker that lets you check the weather, listen to the news, control compatible smart home devices, and more-even with the TV off. Fire TV Cube is always getting smarter with new Alexa skills and voice functionality.
- Experience true-to-life picture quality with access to vivid 4K Ultra HD up to 60 fps and HDR. Enjoy the audio clarity of Dolby Atmos on select Prime Video titles.
- Enjoy tens of thousands of channels, apps, and Alexa skills. Get over 500,000 movies and TV episodes from Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, HBO, SHOWTIME, NBC, and more.
- Access YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, and more websites with Silk and Firefox browsers.
- An Amazon Prime membership unlocks thousands of movies and TV episodes including "Thursday Night Football" and Prime Originals like "The Big Sick" and "Sneaky Pete".
- Launch and control content with the Alexa Voice Remote (2nd Gen). Watch favorites from Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, STARZ, SHOWTIME, or CBS All Access, plus stream for free with Pluto TV, IMDb Freedive, and others.
Description
Fire TV Cube is a hands-free 4K Ultra HD streaming media player with Alexa, allowing you to control your TV from across the room. Just ask Alexa to turn on the TV, dim the lights, and play what you want to watch from over 500,000 movies and TV episodes. With far field voice recognition, eight microphones, and a built-in speaker, Fire TV Cube hears you from any direction and allows you to control smart home devices and more with Alexa even when the TV is off.
I love the Fire TV Cube! Does everything I expected plus more. I have nothing bad to say about it. I guess you could say it can make you lazy lol. Just ask her to turn on/off the TV, surround sound, lights, stereo, heater, fan, change channels and she does it immediately. Wonderful quality video and sound. I just wish it could learn someone’s name and not respond to anyone else. Still love it. Now I can be the hermit I’ve always wanted to be!
I had the first Fire TV I ordered back in 2014, and it has done me well since then. I have a smart tv, and was using my vizio for most things (youtube, Netflix, and Amazon), just because having to click on 'input' on my remote and switch to the Amazon TV input, it just added additional steps when I could touch a single button the remote to pull up those apps. However, using ESPN, UFC, HBO Now, it worked perfectly.
When the Amazon Treasure Truck had this, and since it's been 4 years since the last fire tv, I pulled the trigger and purchased it. And it has been great. Being able to tell Alexza to pull up an app makes it so nice and does away with the need to hit several buttons on the remote. My only disappointment is the lack of the official YouTube app, so silly they don't have that... just seems like an ego thing that only impacts the actual customers.
I have an Echo in my kitchen (probably about 30 feet from my fire tv) and the fact that it seamlessly transitions between the 2 without causing issues is huge. I just bought a new macbook, and the 'siri' feature is frustrating because both my iphone and macbook want to pick it up and sometimes when I want my macbook to open a website, my phone takes control and it defeats the purpose. I actually disabled the siri feature on my phone, but then that is annoying when I'm in my truck and want to send a text via siri. So, it's enabled again, and I just don't use Siri on my macbook any longer.
I did have some major issues with the ESPN app while watching College Football this past Saturday, but I don't think that was Amazon. I switched to the DirectTV app and had no further issues. I even rebooted the fire tv at one point, but it made no difference. So, I'm confident it was not a firetv issue.
I also watched the past UFC ppv on the fire tv and it worked great.
So far, after a week of use (I set it up the very first day it was available, and I watch A LOT of tv), I'm extremely happy. I was happy with my initial fire tv, but this is definitely faster and having Alexza built in makes it even more likely I'll use this for all apps, instead of just the ones my Vizio SmartTV doesn't have.
The YouTube thing annoys me, so I'd probably give it 4 1/2 stars... but since my tv has that built-in and it works great, it doesn't impact me much.
I haven't really watched any 4k tv in the past week, but I do not believe the initial one had that, so that should be another benefit when I start to utilize that.
Edit: Just to add, I am running mine via wifi (Google WiFi), and it has been working perfectly. I average about 110 Mbps down, 10Mbps up. I also have the Sonos Playbar and sub, and it works perfectly with those and picked up on them without any manual intervention.
Besides recommending that you make sure that you CHECK to see if your tv is compatible - I say go for it. It didn't want to work right with my bedroom tv, so I moved it into my kid's room and took their box. It works fine with theirs, but some of the functions don't work. It's not the box; it's that I didn't check to see if it was compatible with ours and those features are not available for their tv model. It's not a huge thing, but it would have been nice. I hope this does as well as the first two models of the original fire tv box did. Those worked great, and we still use them.
I was super stoked that I got this on special. I wanted an Apple TV but they’re too expensive for me right now. I also wanted a universal remote control to be able to control most of my devices with one remote. I also wanted to be able to stream my music from my iPhone (Apple Music). Amazon’s Fire TV Cube was a great buy because I was able to do all that with it. I’ve used the original Echo for the last 2 years and I love it, one of my favorite gadgets. I started by controlling my lights and other items but with the Cube I can turn on my TV and switch to the any of my devices with Alexa. It took a while to setup (If you’ve ever set up universal remotes you know it’s a tedious process to get it right.) Once set up, it worked like a charm. Now Amazon is releasing an update where I’ll be able to play Apple Music natively without my iPhone, bad ass and I can also mirror my phone or Mac, though video is a little choppy. I still want my Apple TV one day but this, this was a great buy in my opinion. (One thing I do want Amazon to do is to enable the Fire TV Cube to stream music to all my Echo speakers, that would be cool. For some reason you can’t, only on my Echos.)
I got this for half price on either HSN or QVC (too lazy to look), but even for full price it's a pretty good deal.
I can get to Amazon Prime, Netflix, or YouTube in the following ways:
a) Via my SamSung TVs smart apps (the least satisfactory for being slow and for requiring the remote that ate batteries at an alarming rate until it died.) I stopped using the TV's own apps long ago -- sluggish, ugly, poorly supported.
b) Via my DVD, which works better than the TV does.
c) For Netflix and YouTube, via Cox which fairly recently made them available through its Contour DVR. For Amazon Prime it's been the DVD. This requires switching the input source to the TV which is done via the remote but which pretty much keeps my wife away from using it on her own. (She doesn't get the technology and never will.)
Moving from one source to another is often a matter of going from one remote to another and is a multiple step process. That doesn't bother me all that much except for one thing. When I switch to Amazon Prime via either the TV or the DVD, it is very slow and annoying. The screen blanks for about a minute with no reassuring sign that anything is taking place before, finally, Amazon Prime is ready to go.
Enter the fire cube. Say "Alexa, go home" and Amazon Prime, YouTube, Netflix, Hula, and several other options are all available. From the time you click on one to the time it is up and running is pretty quick.
Voice control is also an option but there it's a bit iffy. The box's hearing is not as good as the Amazon Echo's Sometimes it works the first time. Other times, not so much! Remarkably, switching from one input to another is as simple as saying, "Alexa, switch to cable" or "Alexa, go home (to get to the Fire's menu). Saying "Go to cable" instead of "switch to cable" doesn't work. Saying "Bring me to cable" brought up a picture of a car with lots of cables coming out of its engine -- funny but not what I was looking for.
Not infrequently, the Fire TV cube seems to be ignoring you. It may light up for a while but may simply turn off without providing any verbal clue that its confused -- except, of course, when it does provide one.
If you have an Echo in the same room, the chances are that the FireTV cube will defer to the Echo and not respond. The Echo doesn't have a clue what "Switch to cable" or "Go home" or "Switch to Netflix" means. So, if the Echo and the Fire TV cube are to share a room, you'll have to ask the Echo to switch its awake word from "Alexa" to either "Computer" or "Echo." The Fire TV Cube itself answers only to "Alexa" and cannot recognize the other two awake words."
Playing Jeopardy or asking the age of an actor (to see, for example, if he's still alive) or asking for weather info on the Fire TV Cube provides the advantage of seeing something on the screen -- which makes it better for those tasks (e.g., the Jeopardy questions in white on blue, the picture of the actor, seven days of weather across the screen with the high and low temperatures for each day(,
There is no faster way to bring up an Amazon Prime offering and its handling of other services is pretty good. Also, there are some free services you (and I) may never have heard of that will provide some options you weren't anticipating.
It's not perfection. But, it's a pretty darn good product that, if Amazon opts to update it, will only get better. Surprisingly good. I like it even though I haven't yet explored all of it.
On the downside, it doesn't appear to support sending sound to my 3-year old Denon receiver, but I haven't gone through the Denon manual yet to see if there is something I can do on that end. It MAY support the Infrared feed if I turn something on. I don't know yet. (I'm using the TV's speakers when I use the Fire TV Cube.)
Overall, it's surprisingly good. With all the options for navigating from one source to another that I already had, I didn't know if the Fire TV Cube would really provide anything further. It does. In the days ahead, I'll see whether I can get my DVD to respond to voice command to turn on or off. The TV will: a) turn on or off, b) switch from cable to the Fire TV cube and back, c) respond to vocal commands to raise or lower the voice, and -- when it wants to -- switch channels on command.
The number 1 improvement I'd like to see: Give the cube more flexibility. Let "bring me to cable" and "select cable" and "go to cable" all work. The guessing game as to what phrase is required is not a fun game. The developers need to invest a bit more time in a usability lab to expand the cube's ability to process commands. "
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