After it was revealed that Hisense’s first Fire TV Smart TV had the same specs as every other 4K Fire TV Smart TV from the last two years, I didn’t have much hope for Xiaomi’s first Fire TV Smart TV to be any different. Sure enough, the specs of the Xiaomi F2 Series Fire TV Smart TVs, which were published this morning, are identical to the 2020 Fire TV Smart TVs from Toshiba and Insignia. Under the hood is the same MediaTek MTK T31 Cortex-A55 quad-core 1.5 GHz CPU, Mali-G52 MP1 GPU running at 504 MHz, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, 10/100 Ethernet, and 802.11ac WiFi 5 as all 4K Fire TV Smart TVs released since 2020, regardless of manufacturer.
It seems pretty clear now that all recent 4K Fire TV Smart TVs are using the same guts. I suspect that Amazon is supplying TV manufacturers with this turn-key approach to making Fire TV Smart TVs, which has resulted in the only real differentiator between TV brands being the display panel used and a few outlier features, like support for Dolby Vision and hands-free microphones. On the positive side, this has brought in new Fire TV Smart TV manufacturers like Hisense and Xiaomi, but, on the negative side, it does very little to expand the options in the Fire TV Smart TV lineup.
@AFTVnews
AFTVnews
I think this is similar to what happens with Roku, and this may allow for better implementation of system and app features and updates in the future.
It certainly simplifies things for Amazon and the TV manufacturers, but my concern is that if (when?) the day comes that a real premium flagship Fire TV Smart TV (OLED, Mini-LED, etc…) is released, it better not be powered by the same SoC as is in the budget TVs currently on the market, just for simplicity’s sake. Fire TV Smart TVs are finally starting to creep into the premium feature territory with QLED, Full Array Local Dimming, and higher peak brightness, yet the guts haven’t changed. I’d hate to see that lazy approach continue when even better displays are found in Fire TV Smart TVs.
Which is better…FireTV Cube, or the Toshiba M550 [best FireTV made to date?] as far as the OS/internals are concerned?
The Fire TV Cube has the advantage in performance, but the Toshiba M550 has the advantage in experience/OS because having everything (hands-free control, OTA tuner, etc…) built into the TV works better than if an external device is controlling everything.
Would be nice if operator useable storage was greater than sub-5GB total. You can only add so many apps and then you get pop up notices of storage too low
If the TV’s have 16GB of storage, then I would think there would be more than 5GB of usable storage. My Cube has more than 5GB of usable storage.
Yeah, the Cube and the 16GB TVs initially have around 12GB free, if I remember correctly.
Wait so xiaomi makes TV’s for the US market now? since when?
or is this fire TV model the only xiaomi TV on sale in the US?
I like xiaomi but I must ay my OG MI box 3 left a lot to be desired in the software department
The Xiaomi Fire TV is only for sale in the UK. Sorry, the original linked article mentions that but I forgot to mention it in this follow-up article about the TV’s specs.