Amazon Fire TV Cube (3rd Generation)

Should the Apple TV 4K be worried?

The Amazon Fire TV Cube has been given a much-needed refresh after over three years of little development from Amazon. The 3rd Generation Cube gives the boxy media streamer an updated design, a faster processor and Wi-Fi 6E support. Sounds good, right? Indeed, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

The Fire TV Cube is the most expensive Amazon streaming device, It is broadly double the price of the Fire TV Stick 4K Max and it comes only in a 16GB storage and 2GB RAM configuration. It is also more expensive than the second-generation model.

The nearest competitor in the streaming-box world is the latest Apple TV 4K and includes double the storage capacity and RAM.

The shape of things

As the name suggests, this Fire TV takes on a cube design – although technically speaking it’s a cuboid, as it measures 86 x 86 x 77mm. It is slightly redesigned from the previous generation, ditching the black plastic for a fabric mesh that wraps around the device’s front, back and sides.

There is a cutout panel for the Cube’s bountiful selection of ports, which includes both HDMI in and out connections (in the HDMI 2.1 variety), a power socket, an IR extender port, a USB-A socket and an ethernet connector. This blows its Apple TV competitor out of the water, as that has no ethernet connection on the base model or HDMI passthrough on either configuration.