Flagship Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED unleashed in UK alongside budget 2-Series and 4-Series sets
Amazon brings its flagship QLED TV to the UK alongside its cheaper TVs with prices starting from £230
Amazon has introduced a new series of its own-brand TVs to its Fire TV series in the UK, including a flagship model, already available in the US and Canada, a never-before released budget TV and a mid-range model.
The range is headed up by the Amazon Omni QLED model. This comes in 43in, 50in, 55in and 65in sizes, all with 4K resolution, up to 80 zones of local dimming, and prices that start at £550. The 65in model will ship from April 12 with an initial discount of £300 (RRP £1,000) while the rest of the range will arrive on 1 June.
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With a QLED panel at its heart, and support for the HLG, HDR10+ and HDR10+ Adaptive standards, plus Dolby Vision IQ, the Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED should offer decent picture quality, if not class leading. It only has a 60Hz panel so next-gen console owners may want to steer clear.
Despite that, the Omni QLED has been generally well received in the US and Canada since its first introduction theren and that may well be due to its Alexa features.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon was keen to talk up these aspects of the TV at the UK launch and the TV is packed with interesting features. There’s the Fire TV user interface built in, of course, and also Alexa voice remote support, but you also get also far-field microphone technology, enabling the Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED to act like a giant Echo Show and respond to “Alexa” wake words.
It even has a similar selection of Alexa widgets to the Echo Show, giving you quick access to smart home devices, notes, msic and your calender. The TV can even output music with the screen off, so you don’t have to have a static image on screen while listening to music. This works with third party music services such as Spotify – not just Amazon Music.
Aside from that, there’s a whole host of features that focus on something that Amazon is calling its “Ambient Experience”. As well as microphones, the Omni comes with presence and ambient light sensors so that it can tell whether you’re in the room and how dim the ambient light is, adapting its picture quality accordingly.
Moreover, when it senses you’re in the room, it will display a series of arty background paintings or photographs so you’ve got something to look at instead of a boring black rectangle. Some of the paintings, which even adapt and change depending on a number of different localised stimuli, including the weather and the time of day.
And if that sounds a bit out there, Amazon also showed us a beta of a feature you’ll soon be able to use to generate AI image for your TV background. This worked quite well in the demo, creating a convincing photo montage of the Northern Lights over Big Ben in the style of a Van Gogh painting.
READ NEXT: Our guide to the best TVs to buy today
Amazon Fire TV 4-Series
Next down the range is the, considerably less exciting, Amazon Fire TV Series-4. Like the Omni QLED, the Series-4 is a 4K TV although it isn’t quite as nice looking and it doesn’t come in the larger 65in size.
Instead, it’s available in 43in, 50in and 55in sizes and prices start at £430, rising to £500 and £550, while initial discounts reduce those prices to £269, £349 and £379. Like the Omni QLED, it comes with the Alexa Voice remote but not the far field voice tech and supports the HDR10 and HLG standard and Dolby Digital Plus for audio.
It can be pre-ordered today on Amazon.co.uk and will start shipping to customers from 12 April.
Amazon Fire TV 2-Series
The cheapest TV in the range is the Amazon Fire TV 2-Series a TV aimed more at use in bedrooms and kitchens instead of as a main TV in the living room.
It comes in smaller 32in and 40in sizes and isn’t up to much when it comes to resolution with the smaller set delivering only HD (1,280 x 720) and the larger one only Full HD (1,920 x ,1080). Prices for this cheaper mode start at £250 for the 32in with an initial discount taking the price down to £169, while the 40in will cost £300 with an initial discount reducing this to £209.
Like the 4-Series, the Amazon Fire TV 2-Series sets are available to pre-order now and will ship from 12 April. We’ll be testing the TVs as soon as we can get our hands on samples so watch this space.
