Review: Amazon TV Fire Stick

I’m actually pretty impressed


We live very near a GEO rental store, and recently I have a little tradition with Alyssa that we walk down there and choose a DVD to watch together. It’s fun and not-new DVDs are only about 100 yen to rent. We watch them in English too, which is helping to keep her English skills on life-support.

However, the last four or five disks we rented have all been damaged: either skipping or freezing halfway through. Even worse, when I talked to the shop about it, they admitted that they just try to clean damaged disks and then put them back on the shelves.

Unacceptable! Try telling a four-year-old halfway through Shrek 2 that the DVD is broken and we can’t finish watching the film… I had to find another solution.

I’ve tried the free trials of Netflix and Hulu in the past, but didn’t renew them and remembered I had free films from Amazon Prime, so got interested in the Fire TV devices. We have Apple TVs at my wife’s language school to connect laptops to the TVs, but I haven’t been particularly impressed with them (connectivity issues and functionality), so I wanted to try something different.

Reading up online, there doesn’t seem to be much difference between the Fire TV box and the Stick, apart from the former costing more than twice as much (and being slightly better for playing games, something I’m not interested in).

So over New Years I ordered a Fire TV Stick from Amazon Japan. It arrived a couple of days later.

The first thing that surprised me is that it needs a power cord. It looks like a big USB, so I had assumed it would just plug into the TV, but apparently HDMI doesn’t provide power. Not a huge thing, but makes it a bit less portable and compact.

The second thing that surprised me was when I plugged it in and it said “Welcome, Ben Shearon“. It also connected to my Amazon account automatically. Very clever. There was an option to change accounts if you buy it for someone else.

Once it was plugged in, it just worked. I use it to watch movies and TV shows from Amazon Video, and to stream music from Amazon Music. It has apps for Youtube, and Hulu and Netflix if you have accounts with them.

So far I’m very happy. No streaming issues (it caches content apparently) and an easy interface. So far I’ve managed to avoid Alyssa figuring out how to use it, but it’s just a matter of time.

So the Fire TV Stick is a cheap, simple solution for streaming content to a TV. I haven’t tried the new Apple TV (we have old ones) or the Google Chromecast. I assume they are also decent options.

Anyone else using these new-fangled things? Have a strong opinion?

9 Responses

  1. I picked up a FireTV stick when they were first released in Japan. It was something like 2000yen for primer members, so I thought, why not.
    I was very happy with it in general, but the only problem I had was lack of airplay support. I’m pretty invested in the iOS ecosystem, and have an iphone and ipad. Trying to stream stuff off them was difficult, and often didn’t work.
    I ended up getting an appletv which works even better than the firetv stick, although for a fair amount more of the price. Now I have my firetv stick route through a VPN so that I can watch US Netflix on my firestick, and Japanese netflix on my appletv. Works well.

  2. I have Google Chromecasts for both of the TVs in my house. I use them for Netflix, Hulu, and UFC Fight Pass. It works well, looks good, and is easy to use–no complaints. Although its a bit expensive at 4980 yen.
    I’m actually a bit surprised that the Amazon stick is compatible with Netflix and Hulu–I thought they would be using it to push their own services and sell you stuff! I wonder if something like UFC Fight Pass is available on the Amazon device.

    1. Even if it’s not available through Amazon, if it works on an Android device you could sideload the apk onto the fire. That’s how I got Softbanks SportsNavi Live on my firestick to watch baseball when the games weren’t on TV.

      1. Actually, one of the reasons I ditched my Kindle tablet a couple of years ago and bought an android tablet was that a couple of apps I really wanted–including the UFC Fight Pass app weren’t (and probably still aren’t available) through Amazon.
        I have heard of “side loading” and actually tried to do it before giving up on my kindle, but I wasn’t successful. (Unfortunately I’m not very technology-savvy–at all!) In the end it was easier for me to buy a new tablet. After I did, though, I realized how limited the Kindle was–I was kind of expecting Fire TV to be similarly limited (that’s why I was surprised it had Netflix and Hulu). I guess it’s not though.
        That reminds me of another good thing about Chromecast–you can use pretty much any device as a remote control. I always use my android tablet, but my wife uses her iPad or her iPhone.

  3. I have a FireTV (not stick) that I love for BBC News, NHK, and Youtube.
    They will take a big shot in the arm in about a month, as from this year all of the J League matches are going to be exclusively on DAZN, which is Y1800 a month and has a FireTV app. Used to be Y3500 a month for just the soccer package on Skyperfect, now it’s about half price for all J League and the other sports DAZN offers, on all devices