Amazon Fire TV (2017)

With Alexa onboard the Fire TV has the best-in-class voice remote, but given its spotty support for 4K HDR and Dolby surround standards, the Fire TV is best used for watching 4K TV shows rather than movies. It’s affordable and boasts a polished, intuitive interface and lets you stream shows in 4K HDR from Amazon and Netflix, but movie buffs are better off with Roku, at least until the situation settles with the competing 4K HDR and Dolby surround sound standards.

The Amazon Fire TV (2017) is the latest version of Amazon’s streaming box, and comes with a fantastic new redesign, plus support for 4K HDR content and Dolby Atmos soundtracks.

Although Roku's 4K stick is slightly better overall, the Fire TV wins with Alexa devotees who own 4K HDR TVs.

Honestly, these things are getting cheap enough that you could spend $70 on the Fire TV now with the full expectation that you’ll upgrade again in a year or two, and if you’re excited about Alexa it might be worth it. But I would stay tuned for our Roku review next week.

At just $70, it's a more expensive than the Fire TV Stick, but the new Fire TV is primed for the future. As the Alexa ecosystem continues to grow and 4K content becomes readily available, so does the capability of this $70 device.

Amazon’s little black box of wonder is back and better than ever.

With 4K and HDR support at a $70 price, the all-new Amazon Fire TV makes a lot of competitors — especially the Apple TV 4K — look overpriced.

The Amazon Fire TV is smaller and more affordable than last year's version, and adds HDR10 to its already compelling 4K video support and Alexa voice assistant.

Cheap UltraHD streaming gets weighed down by a cluttered interface, middling voice search, and a lack of hardware innovation.

What the Fire TV offers is a way to plug a potential hole in your entertainment setup and it does so in a fun way that's easier to understand than Google's Chromecast. The only barrier that remains is whether this actually does anything that your 4K HDR smart TV can't already do.

If you own Google Home or Chromecast audio, I’d recommend the Chromecast Ultra instead, and if Sky Now is a priority, then the Roku Streaming Stick+ makes more sense, but as an all-rounder, even considering its limitations, the Amazon Fire TV with 4K is currently the best 4K streaming stick on the market.