The big picture: Amazon's long-rumored Fire TV Cube marries two established product lines into a cube-shaped form factor. It's a logical "next step" for Alexa, both for those that are new to the voice assistant and consumers that may already have an Echo in another part of their home.
Amazon on Thursday officially took the wraps off the Amazon Fire TV Cube, a 4K-enabled streaming media player with integrated Alexa smarts.
It's more than just a run-of-the-mill set-top box. Thanks to its multi-directional infrared blaster, the Fire TV Cube can control your other home theater gear like your TV, sound bar, A/V receiver or cable / satellite box. When you get home, for example, a simple verbal command like "Alexa, watch TV" can power on your gear and even turn the room lights on.
Alexa can also control the experience once you've settled in so there's no need to reach for the remote. Just say, "Alexa, tune to CBS" or "Alexa, launch Netflix" and you're off to the races.
Technically speaking, the Fire TV Cube is powered by a quad-core processor (four Cortex-A53 cores) clocked at "up to 1.5GHz," Mali-450 MP3 graphics and 2GB of RAM alongside 16GB of internal storage. Its dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi supports 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac standards.
Amazon's Fire TV Cube is available to pre-order for $119.99. Prime members that order today or tomorrow can take advantage of a special introductory offer and grab the gadget for just $89.99 - a savings of $30. Plus, if you register the device by July 1, you'll be eligible for a $10 credit for Prime Video. Look for it to ship on June 21.