- This month,
the second generation Fire TV Cube turns two years old.
Well, last week I took a look at the Firestick 4K Max,
the newest in the Fire TV line.
And that got me to thinking,
is the Fire TV Cube even still worth it now two years later?
Or should we all just wait
for the next generation of Fire Cube?
Well, that's what we're gonna find out,
so let's dive in.
(techno music)
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All right, getting to the very, very basics.
What is the Fire TV Cube?
Essentially, this is a Fire TV device,
Amazon's device that rolls together a Fire TV Stick,
a streaming device but with an Echo Dot.
It kind of just mashes them together
into this cube that sits on your shelf.
And you can use that to, well, you can use it to watch TV
and control your smart home stuff.
If it's a combo of two devices that you can already get,
what's the point of the Cube?
Well, I'll get to that a little bit later
when we talk about price.
For now, let's stick with the Cube and what it can do,
especially compared to the Firestick 4K Max.
First, we'll take a look at what comes in the box.
You get the Cube itself of course,
you also get the first-generation remote,
it still ships with the first-gen remote.
There's a power cable and an IR receiver extender,
that way if you need to use your remote,
you need to point to remote to control your TV,
and your Cube is in a cupboard or something.
You can still use the extender
to receive that signal from the remote,
so that's what that does.
There's also an ethernet adapter in the box.
One thing it is missing is the HDMI cable,
that's the cable that actually connects it to your TV.
So because it's not in the box,
you'll have to come up with one of your own.
Setup is really simple and very quick,
especially if you have an Amazon account already,
and bonus points if you already have
a Fire TV device of some kind.
It'll just bring over all of your apps
and settings from the old device,
once you sign in using the same email address
that you have on your Amazon account.
I'm not really going to go into set up much,
and I'm not going to talk much about the interface
because I've done that in other videos here on this channel.
In fact, I'll try to remember to link to one right here,
so you can go watch my thoughts
and feelings on the interface.
But what I am interested in exploring is how it performs,
does it perform as advertised?
How does it do versus the New Firestick 4K Max?
It's a name that's really hard to remember.
Anyway, it performs great.
It does exactly as advertised.
Yeah, it's an echo dot with a Firestick put into one.
If we're talking about differences between this
and other Fire TV devices,
there is one major difference and that storage space.
The Fire TV Cube comes with 16 gigabytes of storage space
versus the eight that you would get
on the Firestick 4K or 4K Max.
Now, whether that is going to be a big deal to you.
Well, that's kinda down to your viewing habits,
how you're going to use your Firestick or Fire Cube.
Are you going to be using game emulators?
Or putting outside media onto your device?
If so, then your storage space
is going to fill up pretty quickly.
If not, if you're really
just using this to scroll through Netflix,
to play Prime Video titles, you know,
whatever the basic streaming stuff, cord cutting stuff.
Then, eight gigs is pretty much okay, it's fine.
But if you are doing any power user stuff,
then that extra eight gigs of storage space,
it does come in handy.
As far as speed, this is the area where I was really
interested to test between the two devices,
the Fire TV Cube and the Fire TV Stick 4K Max.
Yeah, I think I got that right.
The first thing I tested was restart speed.
How long does it take this device to restart, to boot up?
I go into the settings menu,
I hit the restart button and I start my timer,
and it took the Firestick 4K Max
about 47 seconds to restart,
to get all the way back to that home menu.
The Fire TV Cube only took about 36 seconds,
so a little more than 10 seconds quicker than the stick,
that's good news already.
Next up was testing how long it would take to play a title.
Using the voice command on the remote,
I told it to play the next episode of the show
that I've been watching recently,
and I did this three different times and took the average.
And it took the Fire Stick 4K Max,
just under eight seconds to do it.
On the Cube, it took about 8.5 seconds.
So yeah, it took the cube a little bit longer in this case,
but honestly, it's kind of a wash, they're really close.
Yeah, the cube was a little bit slower,
but not enough that I feel like it was statistically
significant,
or that you're going to see much of a difference
in your daily usage.
And the last thing I had it do was open up an app.
Again, using the voice command,
I had it open up an app in this case, Twitch,
just to see how long it would take to go from the home menu
to the fully functional Twitch menu.
And again, they were very close,
just under six seconds for the stick,
and just under five seconds for the cube.
All in all, yeah,
the Cube did perform just a little bit better
than the brand new Firestick 4K Max.
Was it enough better for me to say,
hey, it blows it out of the water.
No, the new Stick is actually really, really good,
and you can check out my review of that.
But it would be unfair if I didn't say that the Cube,
it did perform a little bit faster,
a little bit better in that arena.
All right, now let's talk about price.
And let me caveat this first by saying
that these things are always shifting.
You know Amazon, they're constantly doing deals,
maybe it's a holiday deal, maybe it's prime day,
maybe it's Thursday and they're just always doing deals,
so this could fluctuate.
But at the time that I was recording this,
the Fire TV Cube is going for 90 bucks.
That's quite a bit less than it was retailing
for when they released it, it used to go for 120.
But as I said before,
this thing is basically a Fire TV Stick 4K
plus an Echo Dot put together.
So, what would it cost you
if you just bought those instead?
Well, the Fire TV Stick 4K right now is going for 35 bucks,
and the Echo Dot is going for 30.
You could save quite a bit of money
if you just bought those two devices instead of the Cube.
If you wanted to bump it up
to the brand new Firestick 4K Max, that one's going for $55.
If you add those two together, then it's a wash.
In both cases, you're paying about 90 bucks.
Which one should you get?
Well, the Firestick 4K Max does come with some new features
that the Cube lacks.
For one thing, it's got the new gen-two remote.
Now, how big a deal is that going to be?
Maybe not such a huge deal.
I mean, this is the old one, they're pretty much identical.
But the new remote has some app buttons down here,
which you may or may not like.
Some people find them annoying,
some people think that they're fantastic.
It turned this button blue, oh!
The biggest change on here honestly
is this button right here, it's a live TV button.
You can still get there without it,
but it is kinda nice to have just a single button.
Anyway, the Firestick 4K Max does come with the new remote,
which is nice,
it also has wifi six compatibility.
If you have a newer router that's capable of wifi six,
and the accompanying efficiencies
and speeds that go along with that,
then it might be worth it to hop on the 4K Max train.
And frankly, if you ask me,
and this is just a personal opinion.
If you put the Fire TV Cube,
and the fourth gen Echo Dot next to each other on a shelf,
I think the dot looks a little bit better.
If you're concerned about your home decor, then hey!
Maybe the Dot is a better route.
On the other hand,
if you go with the Cube you are going to get,
like I said earlier,
a little bit faster speeds with that Cube.
It's also got that ethernet adapter,
which is great if you prefer to hook your devices up
with a hard wire instead of just using wifi.
And frankly, because it's two devices in one,
instead of two devices,
you save a little bit of a wall socket space, right?
So you're not having to plug in two different devices,
manage two different devices.
It does the same thing as those two devices,
but there's something to be said
for a little bit of efficiency, right?
Hopefully that helps you make a decision
on which one you would prefer.
If it's me, I would probably go for the combo
instead of the Cube.
The performance on the cube just wasn't enough better
that it made that big a difference.
And frankly, sometimes I use my Echo Dot
to do things like play music.
And so, because I do that,
I prefer something that sounds better.
The Fire TV Cube has a speaker that's absolutely awful,
it sounds terrible.
You'll never wanna use it to do anything
other than take commands.
That being said, the Fire TV Cube is great,
and there is something to be said for simplicity.
Which one are you gonna choose?
Which one are you going for?
Let me know in the comments below,
I'd love to hear your reasoning
for why you choose one over the other, or neither!
So, hit the comments,
don't forget to like and subscribe
if you enjoy what we do here on this channel.
Thanks so much for watching everybody,
I will see you on Friday at the live stream, be there!