Amazon has a new offering in store with its new Fire TV Stick, going straight for Google's Chromecast, Roku, and other streaming dongles.
The company hasn't seen much success with its Fire Phone, but it's apparently ready to place more bets on media consumption. Poised to take over your living room, Amazon just launched a new Fire TV Stick streaming media device that comes with a very competitive price tag of $39.
Just like the Fire TV, Amazon's new streaming dongle plugs directly into an HDMI port for more convenience. Moreover, the Fire Stick supports Prime Instant video and music, Netflix, Pandora, Spotify, and Hulu, among others.
"Fire TV Stick connects your HDTV to a world of online entertainment. Whether you're a Prime member or not, enjoy a huge selection of movies and TV episodes, voice search that actually works, and exclusive features like ASAP. Fire TV Stick is an easy way to enjoy Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, low-cost movie rentals, live and on-demand sports, music, photos, games, and more," Amazon touts on the Fire TV Stick product page.
The new Amazon Fire TV Stick is similar in many ways to Google's Wi-Fi-only Chromecast, but it does stand out of the crowd with some powerful specs on board. The gadget packs 8GB of internal storage capacity, for instance, while Chromecast only has only 2GB. Another bonus over Chromecast is that Fire TV Stick ships with its very own remote instead of requiring you to use an iPhone or Android phone as a remote. For now, however, the Fire TV Stick only comes with a free Android app, as an app for the iPhone is not available yet.
Users who already have a Fire Phone or an Amazon Kindle Fire HDX tablet, meanwhile, can easily "fling" content from that device to the Fire TV Stick.
Amazon seems confident that its new Fire TV Stick is ready to take on rivals in a big way, and boasts the gadget's superior performance without much subtlety.
"From the responsive interface to instant search results, everything about Fire TV Stick is fast and fluid. It's all thanks to a dual-core processor with 6x the processing power of Roku Streaming Stick, a dedicated VideoCore4 GPU, and 8 GB of storage - 4x that of Chromecast and 32x that of Roku Streaming Stick," touts the company.
The new Amazon Fire TV Stick is now available for pre-order for $39, set to start shipping on Nov. 19. Lastly, Amazon is also throwing in a 30-day free trial of Netflix and Amazon Prime when purchasing the Fire TV Stick.
