I got a bit upset with Apple TV over the remote and decided to switch away from Apple TV completely — vote with your dollars, as they say. I’ve seen Fire TV on multiple occasions and figured that for the discounted price of $50 Canadian dollars, I should give it a go.
Now, I really don’t need much — Netflix, Discovery, YouTube, and something that can play video files off my NAS. Fire TV has all of those apps, including a pretty nice Nova Video Player that isn’t perfect but sure isn’t far from Infuse (on Apple TV). After about a week of using Fire TV, I’m ready to pass my judgment.
Short and sweet: Fire TV performs pretty well. Cold start is fairly fast (same or faster than Apple TV), and warm start is almost instant. Apps seem to work well, the menu is smooth, apps start fast, and overall I don’t see any difference between the two in terms of performance.
The big difference comes from setup, ads, and probably privacy. Setup is different — Fire TV is hands-on. It must be configured for a particular TV, which involves following a setup wizard. I wish it was as brain-dead simple as Apple TV, but it isn’t complicated — just needs a bit of patience.
Once setup is done, the very noticeable difference comes in the form of ads. By default, Fire TV plays ads for Amazon shows, games, and other things. That comes down to personal taste — it doesn’t bother me. I don’t watch TV or shop much, so seeing ads for movies and TV shows is actually kind of nice; I get to see what’s new out there. However, I can see how ads could become really old, really fast. If you tinker a bit with settings you can disable ad autoplay (which I did), but you can’t get rid of ads completely. I’m sure you can block them via a firewall or by tinkering with the OS internals, but I haven’t explored that option yet.
Now, Amazon isn’t known for its strong user privacy stance, so in that department you get what you pay for. If privacy is at the top of your list, perhaps give it another thought. Otherwise, you’ve got yourself a smart TV experience at a very cheap price.
Overall, Fire TV feels solid and very competitive. I’d recommend it — unless you’re concerned about privacy, hate ads, or simply prefer to stay in the Apple ecosystem.