Roku recently updated its entire lineup of streaming media players and Amazon now wants you to keep in mind that it’s in this market as well. The company today announced its new Amazon Fire TV Stick which comes with a new Alexa-enabled remote. Improvements have been made under the hood as well, the new Fire TV Stick is faster than its predecessor and more powerful than ever before.
The new Amazon Fire TV Stick features a quadcore processor as opposed to the dualcore processor found in its predecessor. It also has support for faster 802.11ac MIMO Wi-Fi and comes with an Alexa remote right out of the box.
Alexa is Amazon’s personal digital assistant that was first introduced with the Echo smart speaker. It’s slowly making its way to other Amazon devices and even third-party devices like smartwatches. On the Fire TV Stick, Alexa enable users to search for stuff they want to watch.
There are quite a few streaming media players out there that are capable of streaming 4K video, even Google’s upcoming Chromecast is expected to be capable of this, but the new Fire TV Stick isn’t. If you buy this you can’t stream content in 4K UHD. Amazon does sell a Fire TV set-top box that can stream 4K content.
Amazon’s new Fire TV Stick costs the same as before – $40 – and it’s a better deal now since it comes bundled with the Alexa remote which costs $10 on its own. Customers who activate their new sticks before the end of October will receive a $65 media buying credit from Amazon.
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