Last year, Amazon released its most advanced and premium Fire TV Smart TVs when it introduced its new Fire TV Omni QLED Series of TVs. At the time, you had to pay a pretty penny if you wanted all the bells and whistles those TVs had to offer because they were only available in 65-inch and 75-inch sizes. Amazon has now announced that its flagship Omni QLED Series Fire TVs are also now available in 43-inch, 50-inch, and 55-inch sizes with nearly all the same features advanced features.
What sets Amazon’s own Fire TV Omni QLED Series from all other Fire TV Smart TVs from other manufacturers is the support for Dolby Vision IQ and HDR10+ Adaptive high dynamic range formats. These use ambient light sensors built into the TVs to automatically adjust the brightness based on your viewing environment. While you can find some of the other premium features of these TVs with other Fire TV Smart TVs, these Amazon-built Fire TVs are the only ones that support Dolby Vision IQ and HDR10+ and all three new smaller sizes come with the capability.
As the name suggests all three new sizes also come with 4K Quantum Dot QLED screens for improved color reproduction compared to the standard LCD screens in Amazon’s Omni Series, 4-Series, and new 2-Series Fire TVs. Prior to these new smaller Omni QLED Series TVs, your only option for a small QLED Fire TV was Hisense’s U6 Series in 50-inch and 58-inch sizes, as the first QLED Fire TVs released by Insigna are difficult to find.
Another feature that sets Fire TV Omni QLED Series apart from most Fire TV smart TVs is the use of a full-array local dimming backlight. You’ll find this on all the Omni QLED Series sizes except for the 43-inch size, which uses a traditional direct-lit LED backlight. The new 50-inch Omni QLED Fire TV has 48 dimming zones while the 55-inch has an impressive 64 dimming zones. For comparison, the first Fire TV Smart TV with full-array local dimming, the Toshiba M550 Series, has a measly 42 dimming zones in its largest 75-inch size. The more dimming zones there are, the better the TV can darken areas of the displayed image that shouldn’t be lit for deeper blacks. The 65-inch and 75-inch Omni QLED Fire TVs released last year have 80 and 96 dimming zones, respectively, for those of you keeping track.
Apart from the aforementioned premium hardware specs, the standout feature of these TVs is Amazon’s Fire TV Ambient Experience. This allows the TV to act as a giant Echo Show-like smart display when not in use, since all of Amazon’s Omni QLED Fire TVs have built-in microphones for hands-free use. These TVs remain off when nobody is around and automatically power on instantly to display photos, art, and information when a person is detected through its built-in presence sensors.
In addition to your own photos and curated artwork, which Amazon says has no increased to over 1,700 pieces, the TV can display a number of widgets on the screen, like calendars, reminders, weather, sticky notes, sports scores, and more. Later this year, Amazon is also adding what it calls dynamic art, which will display pieces related to current environmental factors, like the time of day, current temperature, the weather at your location, and more. All of these Fire TV Ambient Experience features can be adjusted or turned off, but it seems like people actually like them because Amazon says 98% of Fire TV Omni buyers keep them enabled.
As for the rest of the specs of the new smaller Fire TV Omni QLED sizes, they match the larger variants released last year. You get 4 HDMI ports, of which three are HDMI 2.0 and one is an HDMI 2.1 port capable of eARC. There’s one optical audio out port, a headphone jack, an Ethernet 10/100 port, and one USB 2.0 port. You also get an IR port but, unlike the 65-inch and 7-inch models that come with an IR extender included for connecting to the IR port, you’ll need to buy one separately with the new smaller sizes. The IR extender is for controlling home theater equipment that’s in a cabinet that the remote can’t reach.
The three new smaller Fire TV Omni QLED sizes are available to pre-order now from Amazon and they will be released on May 11th. They’ll also be available from Best Buy on that date and are also available in the UK, Germany, and Mexico.
43-inch Fire TV Omni QLED 4K w/ Direct-lit Backlight
US: $449.99 at Amazon.com
UK: £349.00 at Amazon.co.uk
Germany: €399.00 at Amazon.de
Mexico: Not Available
50-inch Fire TV Omni QLED 4K w/ 48-zone Full Array Local Dimming
US: $529.99 at Amazon.com
UK: £449.00 at Amazon.co.uk
Germany: €479.00 at Amazon.de
Mexico: Not Available
55-inch Fire TV Omni QLED 4K w/ 64-zone Full Array Local Dimming
US: $599.99 at Amazon.com
UK: £499.00 at Amazon.co.uk
Germany: €549.00 at Amazon.de
Mexico: $13,999.00 MXN at Amazon.com.mx
65-inch Fire TV Omni QLED 4K w/ 80-zone Full Array Local Dimming
US: $799.99 at Amazon.com
UK: £699.00 at Amazon.co.uk
Germany: €799.00 at Amazon.de
Mexico: $21,999.00 MXN at Amazon.com.mx
75-inch Fire TV Omni QLED 4K w/ 96-zone Full Array Local Dimming
US: $1099.99 at Amazon.com
UK: Not Available
Germany: Not Available
Mexico: $29,999.00 MXN at Amazon.com.mx
Are there any charts that compare the hardware differences between the firestick 4k max, the fire tv omni, and the fire tv qled omni? When I got my 55″ omni on black friday, it subjectively felt like it was a step backwards performance wise from the 4k max that I had been using. Then when they came out with the qled omni, it left me wondering if the platform was upgraded over my basic omni.
found this interactive chart to be very helpful for specs. https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-tv/device-specifications-comparison-table.html
LOL…I saw what you did there…Mr. “measly”. Well, I’m still seeing these new “premium” sets sport a 60Hz “measly” panel. LOL
I’d buy the 75” version if the hardware in it was as powerful as Cube 3.