Amazon’s Fire TV Stick Release Date, Specs: Can It Stand Against Chromecast and Roku Streaming Stick?

Amazon's Fire TV Stick Release Date, Specs: Can It Stand Against Chromecast and Roku Streaming Stick?

Amazon's Fire TV Stick launched Monday and is now available for pre-order at $39. It will be hitting stores beginning November 19. Before the November 19 cutoff, Amazon Prime members can get the device for just $19. The Fire TV Stick is a media streaming dongle much like the Roku Stick and Google's Chromecast. It is designed for plugging into the HDMI port of a television to access content like music, movies, games and, of course, TV shows from sources like Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Instant Video in 1080p resolution. It also has 8GB of built-in storage, 1 GB of RAM, dual-band/dual-antenna MIMO WiFi, a remote control, and, for an additional fee, a voice search option through a smartphone or app.

According to Amazon, its $39 Fire TV Stick offers 50% more processing power, twice the memory and 32 times the storage capacity of the $35 Chromecast, although not as much as the $50 Roku Streaming Stick. Both the Amazon and the Roku dongles have their own dedicated remote controls. However, that may not necessarily mean that the Fire TV Stick is better than the other two streaming dongles. In a review of the three competing products, and using 10 criteria, Caleb Denison at Digital Trends, said, "If we tally up the scores, it looks like Amazon's Fire TV Stick and Roku's Streaming Stick are dead even, with three wins each and two draws. Still, the Chromecast has always appealed to a different type of user, and it is hard to say that it "loses," though the Amazon Fire TV Stick's lower price makes that a less clear-cut observation."

 

 

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