Amazon significantly improves Network Status Test on Fire TVs with new speed test feature and more

Amazon Fire TV devices have had a rudimentary network status check for a while that did very little. Usually, it just reported that the network was either disconnected or fine. At best, I’ve found that the tester would sometimes recommend a different WiFi channel to use if the one that is currently being used is congested. Amazon has now completely overhauled the Fire TV’s built-in network test with vastly more information as well as a built-in network speed test.

Fire TV’s old Network Status Test

I suspect that most people aren’t aware that Fire TVs have a built-in utility to test the device’s WiFi or Ethernet connection, as it’s quite buried in the device’s settings. You launch the test by going to the Network area of the Fire TV’s settings, then highlighting your current network connection, and then pressing the Play button on the remote. A much quicker way to launch it is using my free Network Test shortcut app, which will instantly launch the built-in utility directly, as if it were a standalone app. The old version of this utility, shown above, didn’t really do much to analyze your network, so I don’t blame you for not caring about it or knowing it even existed.

Fire TV’s new Network Status Test

The new built-in network test, which is accessed the same way as before, has been revamped and now includes a built-in download speed test. Running the optional speed test will take a few seconds and then report the Fire TV’s download rate in megabits per second. Once the test is run, a message appears informing you of the maximum streaming resolution your internet speed is capable of supporting. Note that even if your internet speed is capable of streaming 4K video, it appears as though the message will only report that you’re capable of 1080p video if you’re using a non-4K device, like a basic Fire TV Stick.

The built-in speed test is a great addition to the Fire TV’s network advisor, but selecting even more helpful changes lye behind the Advanced button at the bottom of the screen. Pressing it takes you to a screen with a slew of information about your network that can help you diagnose issues and improve connectivity. On the left is a list of network info, such as the channel, various IP addresses associated with your device and the network, the device’s MAC address, and more. All of this information could be previously accessed in various parts of the Fire TV settings area, but it’s quite nice to see it all in one place now.

More interesting than the network info on the left is the addition of network quality values on the right. Here you can see your WiFi signal strength and noise level, which, before, could only be seen through a hidden Fire TV menu that was very clunky to use. The signal strength value is displayed as the power ratio in decibels from 0 to -100. Meaning, that the closer the value is to zero, the better your signal strength is. For example, the value -16 dBM is better than -65 dBm. The noise value is the opposite, so you want that to be as low as possible. The closer the value is to -100 the better, so, for example, -92 dBm noise is better than -21 dBm.

The other two important figures listed are channel utilization and the signal to noise ratio. The channel utilization value indicates how much traffic, from all sources, exists on the WiFi channel the Fire TV is currently using. The lower the value the better. The signal to noise ratio is the difference between your noise level and your signal strength. You want this value to be as high as possible and, in general, you may start to experience poor performance and speeds if this value drops below 25. For example, if you have high signal strength (which is good) but also have a high noise level (which is bad), then your signal to noise ratio will be low, indicating you may have performance issues despite your high signal strength.

Scrolling down on the advanced info screen reveals the last bit of hand information that has been included in the new network utility, which is data usage stats. This lists how much network data has passed through your Fire TV during the current day, current week, current month, and previous month. This is an extension of the information already available in the Fire TV’s Data Monitoring capabilities, which can show you which apps are using the most data and can alert you when your data cap is reached. You can access the Data Monitoring tool directly from the network utility through the button on the bottom of the screen.

This update to the Fire TV’s built-in network utility appears to be rolling out to Fire OS 7 devices at the moment, but it’s not clear which Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, Fire TV Cube, and Fire TV Smart TV models will ultimately receive the update. You can use my Network Test shortcut app to easily check if you have the new version on your device.

23 comments
  1. Greg Linden says:

    This feature does not Appear if you use Ethernet Cable Connection. For people who are trying to find it

  2. william millar says:

    This is working on my fire cube.

  3. AFTVUser says:

    Interestingly, the speed test results appear to report support only for the maximum resolution of the TV to which the Fire TV device is connected, regardless of actual results and maximum available bandwidth.

    For example, 720p on my 720p TV, 1080p on my 1080p TV, and 4k on that respective TV, all connected to 2nd-gen Cubes with a 300Mbps+ speed test result.

    • It goes further than that. If you have a 1080p stick connected to a 4K TV with a speed fast enough for 4K streaming, then it reports 1080p as the max streaming resolution. Basically, whatever the bottleneck is, whether it’s the Fire TV, the TV, or the network, it will not report any better than the least capable device, which makes sense.

  4. william millar says:

    HBOMAX also has been fixed now playing in HDR but no Atmos sound

  5. Roger says:

    Thank you for the information I do have this problem I will see if I can follow your instructions and fix it thanks

    • Greg Linden says:

      The Best Channels to use is 1,6 or 11 for 2.4 or 149 up for 5g or tri band wifi/wifi6/ wifi Mesh Routers

  6. Reesy says:

    How do you get the remote batteries to last longer than 3 days.

  7. Anthony says:

    Hey is there way we can fix the icons on all the app like 4k firestick

  8. Kywildcat says:

    Very Xbox like

  9. MickX says:

    WiFi >100 MB/S download tested
    All WiFi stats are shown as great
    4K max stick
    4k TV with the correct HDMI
    And the stupid thing still tells me that my Max resolution is 1080p
    4K videos don’t play
    Ultra HD ones do
    BBC iPlayer plays ultra HD via the stick.
    Pretty useless!

    • Is the resolution under Settings > Display set to 4K? You can also try to enable the “System X-Ray” bar and the “Advanced Options” in the developer tools menu to see some additional info about the Fire TV settings and what is being played. Also, “4K” and “Ultra HD” are the same thing, so I don’t know what you mean when you say one plays but not the other.

  10. Victoria Pennington says:

    How can we get our signal strength to be better?

  11. ShaVerZ says:

    I try to run the Network Status Advisor and I’m returned with an error as follows;

    Network status advisor app is currently unavailable

    Please update your device to use the Network status advisor app.

    I’ve tried updating the device but no updates are available.

    I’ve also tried forgetting the WiFi network and setting up again but still have the issue.

    This is on the Fire TV Cube (gen.2), I have two of these devices and had the problem on both but when I forgot the Network and setup the WiFi connection it only resolved the issue on one of the devices.

    Thanks in advance.

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