Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus Review: Wi-Fi 6 Arrives

Unless you follow Amazon's hardware closely, working out which HDMI stick to buy quickly becomes a puzzle, because the Fire TV Stick range now runs to a long list of references. The Fire TV Stick 4K Plus is a recently announced model that looks, on paper, like the best balanced of the group.

True to habit, Amazon changes nothing dramatically and proceeds by incremental adjustment. Presented as the second generation of the model, the 4K Plus illustrates that strategy perfectly, and its headline argument comes down to two characters: Wi-Fi 6.

The newcomer does bring a handful of other modest technical developments. The processor now runs at 1.7 GHz and is stated by the manufacturer to be 25% faster than the previous generation, backed by 2 GB of RAM against 1.5 GB before. On the video side the stick handles 4K Ultra HD, Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG, while the audio section decodes Dolby Atmos. Internal storage climbs to 8 GB and the whole thing is still driven by voice through Alexa. In short, this is a technical upgrade rather than a genuine redesign.

Opening the box holds no major surprise. There is not much to say about the design of an HDMI stick, since this type of device is destined to remain permanently hidden behind a screen; once plugged into the back of a television the dongle is forgotten entirely, which is exactly the point. The box is nonetheless reasonably well filled, with a short HDMI extension cable included alongside the power supply.

Switch the device on and you are met with the familiar Fire OS interface. The operating logic is the same as Google TV and most smart television interfaces: a system of tiles navigated with the remote control.

Amazon does add an AI-driven search that can find a film from a simple description rather than an exact title, a welcome function that can save real time when a title will not come to mind.

For players, the 4K Plus supports Xbox Cloud Gaming, which allows games to be played without a console, alongside Amazon Luna. The stick then turns into a small stopgap gaming platform with no additional hardware. Given the internals and the limited storage capacity, it will come as no surprise that gaming ambitions stop at roughly that point.

Overall, setting the product up is relatively straightforward, especially if configuration is handled from a smartphone, although the process still takes a little longer than it might. Once everything is configured, the Fire TV app for iOS and Android can also be used to launch content or even to control the device from its remote-control tab.

On raw performance, manufacturer figures put the processor at 1.7 GHz, corresponding to a 25% gain over the previous generation, again according to the manufacturer, with 2 GB of RAM supporting it against 1.5 GB previously. These are measured specifications, obviously, but entirely decent for this sort of product. Throughout the review period navigation proved fluid and responsive enough within the interface never to cause frustration, even though occasional micro-stutters can be felt here and there.

One notable difference from the Fire TV Stick 4K Select and the Stick HD is that applications can be sideloaded here, meaning apps can be installed by routes other than Amazon's official application store.

This is where the 4K Plus makes its strongest case, ticking every box expected of a modern 4K device with support for Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG. That covers the full set of HDR formats encountered on the main streaming platforms, so whichever service is used you should not run into a format incompatibility.

On the audio side, Dolby Atmos is present for spatial sound. On a compatible home cinema system or soundbar the experience is excellent.

Connectivity is where the whole interest of this Fire TV Stick 4K Plus lies. It carries Wi-Fi 6, in dual-band 802.11b/a/g/n/ac/ax form, a clear step forward from the Wi-Fi 5 fitted to the previous Fire TV Stick 4K.

The promise lies less in higher throughput than in day-to-day comfort, with a more stable signal and smoother streaming even when several devices are connected to the network at the same time, which is the reality of most households now. In use the small stick worked perfectly, with no connection drops recorded with a router about 5 m away. It is worth noting, though, that Wi-Fi 6 is not the top of the range: the Fire TV Stick 4K Max carries the more advanced Wi-Fi 6E.

Screen mirroring is far less encouraging. The stick supports Miracast only, with neither AirPlay nor Google Cast on the menu, at least not natively. AirScreen-type apps can in theory work around that limitation, but integrating them is inevitably more awkward than a native system function. On compatible devices, Miracast performance was not especially impressive either, with some slowdowns and dropped frames to report. For anyone living in an Apple or Android ecosystem who relies heavily on screen sharing, that is a limitation worth knowing about in advance.

Power is supplied through a micro-USB port on one edge, using the bundled USB cable and mains adapter. If your television has a sufficiently powerful USB port, one capable of running an external hard drive for instance, it could in theory power the stick without the mains adapter. In practice, despite attempts on several televisions and monitors, no USB port managed to run it, so the mains socket appears essential for this device. As on the rival Xiaomi TV Stick 4K (Gen 2), the choice of micro-USB rather than USB-C is surprising on a product of this generation. In both cases it has no bearing on everyday use, since the cable is meant to stay permanently connected.

The black remote keeps its compact format and is as pared back as it is functional. Without reinventing anything, it offers everything you would expect of such a handset today, including a button to invoke voice input and Alexa, plus quick-access keys. Those shortcut keys have the good taste to cover only genuinely popular services: Netflix, YouTube, Disney+ and, inevitably, Prime Video.

The Fire TV Stick 4K Plus is aimed first and foremost at users already settled in Amazon's ecosystem. Although Google and Apple streaming services can still be reached from it, anyone who is not an Amazon Prime subscriber would be better served looking at the Xiaomi TV Stick 4K (Gen 2), which runs Google TV and logically integrates better with that platform.

Prime subscribers with lower technical requirements have two other Amazon HDMI sticks to consider. The Fire TV Stick 4K Select and the Fire TV Stick HD run Vega OS, a more restrictive in-house software build. The Select version does stream in 4K but has to make do with Wi-Fi 5 and 1 GB of RAM, and it goes without Dolby Vision. The HD stick does get Wi-Fi 6, but its maximum definition is limited to 1080p.