- Amazon has released another streaming device.
All right, we've already got the Fire TV Cube,
plus we've got the Fire TV Stick, the Fire TV Stick Lite,
the Fire TV Stick 4k.
And now introducing the Fire TV Stick 4k Max,
Yes, I got it.
confused yet?
Yeah, you should be.
So first of all, Amazon take it easy.
(gentle music)
All right, that's enough devices, it's enough.
And second of all,
let's find out if it's worth upgrading.
If you've already got a Fire Stick,
is it worth upgrading to the new device?
Well, that's what we're gonna find out today,
so let's dive in.
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So the Fire TV Stick 4k Max, how is it?
Well, right out of the box,
it is almost exactly the same as your other Fire Stick 4k,
if you've already got one.
It looks the same as the other Fire Stick models.
It's got all the same things included in the package.
They are including in the package,
the new second generation remote.
It's pretty much the same as the old remote,
I guess one extra button here and well, okay.
A bunch of extra, more colorful buttons.
Basically, it's the same as the old remote.
They're just selling some ad space on it, okay.
But what they're really selling with this Fire Stick 4k Max
is the guts of it.
The internal hardware that is beefed up,
and it's supposed to give you a better experience
than you've had with Fire Sticks of the past.
The two things that they're advertising on the new Max Stick
is first of all, a faster stick, okay.
So it's going to be more responsive,
easier to make your way through the menus to type,
to, you know, talk to, we don't say her name lest she wake.
And the other thing they're advertising
is Wi-Fi 6 compatibility.
So if you're not familiar,
I'm not gonna get into the technical stuff.
You can watch Juan's videos here on this channel
to learn more about Wi-Fi 6,
but basically it's faster and more efficient Wi-Fi
in your home.
And of course with these bumped up specs
comes a slightly bumped up price tag as well.
It is starting at a price of $55 online.
Now that'll fluctuate,
I'm sure they'll have deals around Christmas time
or prime day, whatever, but yeah,
they're retailing it for 55 bucks.
Now it's a little bit tricky because they're still showing
the sticker price of the regular Fire Stick 4k at $50.
So this is only a $5 price difference.
In reality though, there's always deals going on.
So you can always get the Fire Stick 4k for, I don't know,
usually 35, 40 bucks, something like that.
Especially right now, I think it's really cheap,
but the, yeah, the Fire TV Stick Max, 4k Max,
gosh, this is gonna get really annoying.
It is going for 55 bucks.
So yeah, it is a little bit more than you would spend
on the previous generation device.
So is it worth it?
Does it deliver on what it advertises?
And the answer there is, yeah.
Yeah, it kinda does.
I mean, it's not advertising a giant quantum leap forward.
Everything about it is the same as far as the menus
and you know, how the remote works,
everything is very, very similar
to what you're already used to with your Fire TV devices.
But yeah, it does kick up the speed and notch,
both in terms of the, the experience in the menus,
the interface, and with that Wi-Fi 6 capability as well.
As far as setup goes, like I said,
this is very, very similar to other Fire TV devices.
So if you've already used one in the past,
you'll be able to just kind of port your information
over from there, you'll be just fine.
If this is your first device then, yeah.
I mean, you'll go through a little bit of setup,
putting in passwords for Wi-Fi and all that sort of thing,
but it is very, very simple to do.
Once it's up and running,
and it did take me a few minutes to get through setup,
you know, downloading and installing all the updates
and stuff.
But once I was in, yeah, the responsiveness,
the speed in the menus was noticeably quicker.
It was much quicker than we got on the Fire Stick 4k,
certainly much, much quicker than the Fire Stick.
And it's about what I would expect from the Fire Cube.
Which makes sense, the tech that they are advertising here
bumps up three key areas.
First of all, your CPU, that's your central processing unit
that determines basically the speed of the entire machine
and the components within it.
And the CPU now goes from 1.7 gigahertz up to 1.8 gigahertz.
It may not sound like much, but yeah,
that is a decent boost of power
for a device as simple as this one,
this isn't a desktop gaming computer after all.
The GPU, the graphics processing unit gets a bump as well
from 650 megahertz up to 750 megahertz.
Now this'll be most noticeable if you do
something like gaming on your Fire Stick.
If you're just searching through the menus,
Yes, it will make it a little bit smoother,
little bit more pleasant to watch,
but it's not going to be a huge jump
for people who are just doing very, very basic things
on their Fire Sticks.
It also gets a bump in Ram from 1.5 gigabytes
on the base 4k model, to now two gigabytes on the 4k Max.
So with specs like this,
it doesn't quite bring it in line with the Fire TV Cube,
but yes, it is much better
than the other 4k Fire Stick Model.
Now, with all these bumped up specs,
you might expect a little bit more of a jump
in terms of your viewing experience.
You probably won't get one there.
Once you're actually into your content, watching your shows,
you're still getting the same 4k HDR Dolby vision
that you've got with the other Fire Stick 4k.
So if you're looking for a bump in picture quality
in your content, you're not really going to get that here.
What the bump in the tech specs does
is allows you to get to that content quicker
and much more pleasantly.
Maybe you're still using an old Fire Stick.
I know I've got one packed away here somewhere,
but when you plug in those old sticks,
it's amazing how slow they are, how much the lag time is.
Every time you push a button on the remote, you know,
trying to type is a nightmare.
So the actual experience of getting to your content,
of navigating the menus much, much cleaner,
much faster, much easier.
So is the bump in specs worth the bump in price?
Well, this one's kind of a toss up.
Yes and no, I could really go either way.
It is very nice to have a quicker, more responsive system.
So if you're on your Fire TV or your Fire Stick every day
and you're using it a bunch and you're getting fed up,
it's getting a little bit slow,
it's getting a little bit clunky,
then a refresh might be in order.
It might be worth it to you then.
If you're just fine with your experience now,
and you're wondering, hey, you know,
should I, should I bump it up?
Yeah, maybe give it some time,
let yourself get annoyed with your current Fire TV Stick,
and then you can bump it up to this one at some point.
Because frankly, the regular Fire Stick 4k
is a perfectly good device.
You're not getting a huge bump in performance here.
You would see a big bump,
if you were going from the regular Fire Stick to this one
or the Fire Stick Lite to this one,
you would see a massive boost in performance.
But if it's just going one notch higher from the 4k
to the 4k Max, I, probably save your money for now
and just watch for it to go on sale at some point.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on it.
I hope this helps you make a decision.
Let me know in the comments if it did,
or if you have any other questions.
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