Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite review: The simplest streaming solution

Streaming sticks from Amazon, Google, and Roku are a dozen. With so many out there, it can be a bit of a chore to find the right one. What separates the wheat from the chaff often depends on a single characteristic. If you’re looking for the absolute basement in terms of cost, you can’t get much lower than the Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite. We’ll let you know if this inexpensive streaming stick is worth your $ 30 Android Authority Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite review.

See also: The best media streaming devices you can buy

What is the Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite?

• Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite: $ 29 / £ 29 / € 29 / Rs. 3,999

The Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite is Amazon’s easiest, most affordable streaming option. Like most streaming sticks, it’s similar to a USB stick and plugs directly into your TV’s HDMI port. It might not be visible, but it has the streaming smarts to get the job done. It competes directly with Google Chromecast and Roku Express HD.

What is good?

The price. Seriously, $ 30 is about as cheap as a streaming stick gets. That makes the Fire TV Stick Lite ideal for a cave or guest room TV that you want to keep costs down.

The content is all there. It may be cheap, but the Fire TV Stick Lite doesn’t skimp on movies and shows. The streaming stick offers the same menu and user interface as the better-equipped Fire TV Cube, but not all of the performance. It has a quad core processor and it does lag from time to time.

The Fire TV Stick Lite is one of the most affordable streaming devices out there.

It’s all in. Everything you need is in the box, nothing is missing. You get the stick, the remote control, the batteries, the power cord and above all an HDMI extender. The extender is important when your TV’s HDMI ports are crowded and there isn’t enough room for the Fire TV Stick Lite. This ensures that you can incorporate the streaming stick into your setup.

The Stick Lite supports up to Full HD resolution with HDR / HDR10 / HDR10 + on board and Dolby Atmos passthrough. This means that the picture and sound are great for your middle-aged televisions and audio equipment.

What’s not so good?

The differentiation lies in the remote control. One of the biggest differences between the Fire TV Stick Lite and the Fire TV Stick is the remote’s ability to control your TV. The Lite’s remote doesn’t interact directly with your TV like any other Fire TV Stick product. This means that you will have to rely on your TV remote control to turn on the device and perform actions such as adjusting the volume. The good news here is that the regular Fire TV Stick is only $ 10 more if you really want a TV remote. It’s great to have options.

The push-button Alexa Assistant is a bit slow.

The push-button Alexa Assistant is a bit slow. To use the voice-activated controls on the remote control, you need to press the small microphone button. I noticed a delay in interacting with Alexa, which is not there on the Fire TV Cube (which has a more powerful processor). If you play the TV very loudly, the microphones on the remote control are not sensitive enough to always hear you, even though you are speaking directly to the remote control.

Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite Review: Should I Buy It?

The Fire TV Stick Lite is what the name suggests: a stripped down version of the Fire TV Stick that provides the basics and nothing more. I don’t recommend the Stick Lite for your main TV, especially if you have a home theater system and watch a lot of movies. Get the full-featured Fire TV Stick or, even better, the Fire TV Stick 4K for enhanced remote control and picture experiences.

The Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite is simple, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a very powerful streamer.

Even so, there is still room in your life for the Stick Lite. I think it works well in bedrooms, basements, caves, garages, and other rooms where you may have an older, less powerful secondary TV. Just because the Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite is simple doesn’t mean it isn’t a capable streamer.