Amazon's $40 Fire TV Stick Now Comes With the Power of Alexa

Now you can ask Alexa to operate the remote control for you on Amazon's low-priced streaming stick.
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Amazon

Streaming sticks make it hard to justify buying a set-top box. Unless you want 4K video and CPU-intensive games, a dongle should do. With ample processing power, dual-band Wi-Fi, affordable prices, and grab-and-go portability, you'll see a lot of HDMI streaming sticks stuffing stockings this year.

Add the updated Amazon Fire TV Stick to the list. It features beefed-up internals like a quad-core processor and support for faster 2x2 MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi. But the big draw at its crazy low $40 price is Alexa. It's the cheapest way to get the voice assistant, which makes navigating a landscape of 7,000 apps (or even just Netflix) way easier.

The remote is still plasticky, but heftier, and the bigger, thicker clicker sports a built-in microphone. Press the mic button on the remote and summon Amazon's popular voice assistant by speaking into the top of it. Simply say things like "Play Vernon, Florida" to auto-launch Netflix and start streaming or "Find TV shows with Norm MacDonald" to search across several services. Ask Alexa to play a movie you've already started and it picks up where you left off.

Amazon says the voice-search commands will bring up content from Netflix, HBO Now, and Hulu in addition to Amazon Video. Search for a title that may appear on many of those services and it will showcase the content offered free as part of your subscription or tell you if it's available as part of a free sign-up trial on those services.

However, the voice controls offer a little something extra with Amazon's own content. You can use voice commands to fast forward or rewind a designated amount of time ("Rewind two minutes." "Fast forward 10 minutes."), and to play and pause. The new Stick also supports voice-controlled music requests from Amazon Music Unlimited, Amazon Prime Music, Pandora, and iHeart Radio. There's a Spotify app for Fire TV, but you'll need to fire up tracks and playlists the old-fashioned way.

But this is full-service Alexa, not just a voice-controlled TV remote. You can do all the other stuff Alexa can do on the Echo and other devices: Make and display to-do lists, order an Uber or a pizza, get a weather forecast or a news brief, or just ask it things like "Alexa, what's the difference between 'Under Pressure' and 'Ice Ice Baby?'" for a quick chortle.

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Another major change will be available for all Fire TV devices when it rolls out as a firmware update later this year. The new Fire TV OS is more colorful and vibrant, but the most important change involves surfacing recommendations from third-party services on the homescreen. Along with the Alexa integration, it helps make the experience content-first rather than app-first: You can find and watch a show without knowing what service offers it.

It's similar to how smartphones unlock information from within apps and put deep-linked data in notifications and search results. You don't have to open Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu, and other apps to get a queue of personalized recommended content. Deep-linked content from those services is right there on the homescreen.

If $40 for an Alexa-enabled TV Stick doesn't sound like a screaming deal, Amazon includes a month of Sling TV for free (it's usually $20), two months of Hulu with limited commercials ($16), and $10 of content on Amazon Video if you buy and activate a new Stick by October 31. That's $46 in free stuff on a $40 streaming stick.