Amazon streamlines its streaming stick range with the Fire TV Stick HD
The new Amazon Fire TV Stick HD replaces the Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick Lite as the company’s entry-level media streamer
Tech giant Amazon unveiled a quartet of new Kindles last week, including the Amazon Kindle Coloursoft Signature Edition. That announcement came as a very welcome surprise; we’ve been hankering after an Amazon e-reader with a full-colour display for yonks.
Not content with shocking us once in a matter of days, the online retailer then stealth-launched a new streaming stick, the Amazon Fire TV Stick HD, without any fanfare or even a press release.
The new streamer replaces the basic Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick Lite and becomes the cheapest option in the brand’s range with a price of £40.
As you will no doubt have gathered from the product name, the Fire TV Stick HD is limited to a resolution of 1080p at up to 60fps with no support for 4K. It does, however, support HDR in the form of HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG. If you want 4K, you’ll need to fork out for the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K (£60) or the Fire TV Stick 4K Max (£70).
So, what’s new about the Fire TV Stick HD? To be honest, very little. It’s still a rectangular device you pop into an HDMI port on the back of your television and still requires mains power to run. Power is supplied via cable that connects to a micro-USB port on the stick, which feels very outdated in 2024 but is ultimately of little consequence.
Driving the Fire TV Stick HD is a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, and the stick comes with 8GB of internal storage and supports 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi networks. It can also be used with compatible speakers via Bluetooth 5.0.
The most exciting news is that the Fire TV Stick HD comes with an Alexa Voice Remote in the box. This enables you to control the power and volume of your TV, navigate the Fire TV interface, and issue voice commands to compatible smart home devices via a dedicated Amazon Alexa button.
There are also shortcut buttons for Netflix and Prime Video, two of the countless streaming services Fire TV supports. Favourites such as Disney+, YouTube and Apple TV+ are present and correct, as are all of the key UK TV catch-up services: BBC iPlayer, ITVX, All4 and My5.
Despite television manufacturers’ relentless drive to get consumers to move to 4K sets, there are still plenty of living rooms housing 1080p televisions without the smarts Fire TV offers. It’s great to see that Amazon has simplified the streaming stick choice for those with less advanced TVs and if its previous options are anything to go by, the Fire TV Stick HD will dominate the HD media streamer landscape for some time to come.
