Amazon just kicked off another sale on Fire TV devices. The best deal of the bunch is the Fire TV Stick 4K Max for $34.99, which matches its lowest price ever and gives you a serious amount of power for a great price. If you want more power the Fire TV Cube is $124.99 which is also its lowest price ever. Unfortunately, deals this time around on the 1080p Fire TV Sticks aren’t as good. The Fire TV Stick is $24.99 and the Fire TV Stick Lite is $19.99. That’s not a bad price if you need one and can’t wait for a better deal, but it’s still pretty far from their lowest historical prices of $16.99 and $11.99, respectively. The last deals worth mentioning are in Amazon’s Backup Day sale where you can score some great prices on hard drives, SSDs, NASs, memory cards, flash drives, and more.
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I’m thinking of getting a Fire Stick Max or Fire Cube because of the PiP support for cameras.
Besides the HDMI in, is there any practical difference between the Cube and Stick if I link the latter to my existing echo and get a compatible USB hub/ethernet adapter?
Good question. Both are very capable devices spec wise, but if you are going to be pushing a device with PiP, games, etc. the latest Cube refresh (3rd gen) would be where you should look if you budget permits it.
The biggest differences I would point to would be in the CPU and GPU between these devices. The 3rd gen cube easily tops all streamers in raw CPU benchmarks (https://www.aftvnews.com/3rd-gen-fire-tv-cube-benchmark-scores-a-new-king-is-crowned-comparison-against-shield-tv-pro-cube-2-firestick-4k-max-chromecast-4k-onn-4k-and-more/) with an 8-core Amlogic POP1-G (A311D2) CPU versus a 4-core MediaTek MT 8696 in the 4k Max. For graphically intense things, the G52 MP8 GPU really shines in the Cube if you refer to the benchmarking link above. The 4k Max is easily the best budget friendly device I have used, but in comparison to the 3rd generation Cube, it doesn’t hold a light to it.
I can’t speak to PiP for camera use specifically, but the Cube does get the nod from me in bringing up my security camera feed quicker than a 4k Max.
Don’t get me wrong, both devices are great, but I would opt for the 3rd generation cube in your situation if money wasn’t an issue.
Thanks for the responses.
“but the Cube does get the nod from me in bringing up my security camera feed quicker than a 4k Max.”
That might be the deciding factor for me.
In addition to what Nate said, the Fire Cube has built-in Echo capabilities and 16gb internal storage, compared to the tiny 8gb in all Fire Stick models.
https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-tv/device-specifications-fire-tv-cube.html
https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-tv/device-specifications-fire-tv-streaming-media-player.html
see this device:
R58 Mini PC main-board
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GPU: Mali G610 MP4 GPU (so called Odin)
SOC: 4 Cortex A76 + 4 Cortex A55
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RAM: LPDDR4X 4G/8G/16G
ROM: eMMC 32G/64G
Video decode: 8K 10 bit decoder
Video input: HDMI input
Storage expansion: SATA port
Video output: 2x HDMI 2.1 port up to 8K@60Hz Display port 1.4 USB-C port (DP protocol)
Network: Gigabit Ethernet R45
USB: USB3.0 x1 USB2.0 x2 USB Type-C x1
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4+32G: US$ 154
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i dream R58 Mini PC Aluminum )
p.s. accurate name:
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Mekotronics R58 Mini PC Aluminum
Mekotronics R58 Mini PC main-board
I doubt anyone from Amazon will read this but here goes:
I will no longer purchase Amazon streaming devices nor would I take one even if it were offered for free. Their streaming devices belong to them, not the buyer.
They should focus ore of fixing their broken POS software and ecosystem instead all this new hardware.
one of my sticks mysteriously stopped working with CEC control and I have done all trouble shooting and nothing fixes it, the TV no longer will turn or switch the input, my mi box 3 works fine on the same TV with CEC.
updates are blocked on the stick so I don’t know how this happed.
Also all my sticks no longer work with cameras and I get strange behavior.
one one stick it says “cameras don’t work on this device” but then a second later it says “sending to TV” .
(this TV stick does work with CEC unlike my other one and this stick is updated to latest FW, updates are not blocked)
The TV switches on and it tries to pull the feed but then it crashes and goes to the home screen.
On the other stick that is not updated it simply says “cameras don’t work on this device “and that is all, it doesn’t say sending to TV after it just does nothing at all.
And the sticks on the newer FW are useless for viewing cameras anyways because of the HUGE white button/dot that says “minimize to PIP” that you can’t get rid of.
Everything was working one day and I wake up the next and it all goes to S#1t.
I am so fed up with these big tech companies breaking everything remotely every other day.
They also disabled recast on the echo show 15, it not longer works in show mode and it doesn’t work in fire TV mode either.
Amazon is getting just like Google their ecosystem is turning into an out control trash fire.
All these voice assistants are hot garbage and have nothing but problems.
every day it is a new issue and something else is broken that will never get fixed or if it does it will be months or years later, but usually it/s never.
I am not buying anymore hardware that they can just break OTA and even without even performing a FW update.