Price: £79 inc VAT
Rating: 8

Amazon's Kindle e-Readers have been the device of choice for a lot of people who prefer to read ebooks, and the firm then branched out into tablets. Now it's trying to crack the smartphone market with the Fire phone and, not content with just that, has also taken on the Roku, Chromecast and Apple TV with a media streaming box. Here's our Fire TV review.

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Like the Fire phone which launched in the UK just a few months after it was released in the US, it's been a relatively short wait for us to get the Fire TV. It makes total sense for Amazon to have a set-top box since a TV is the most logical place to watch videos from its Prime Instant Video service, formerly known as Lovefilm Instant but was bought by Amazon a couple of years ago.

You can access Prime Instant Video from an Amazon Fire tablet, or any other device which has access to the Prime Instant Video app, including Android and iOS, so the Fire TV is by no means your only option for getting Amazon video on the big screen. See also: Prime Instant Video vs Netflix

The Fire TV, like other media streamers, offers plenty of other content including rival Netflix as well as Spotify, BBC iPlayer and more. For some, this makes it a better choice than an Apple TV already, but with the Fire TV you can even play games using the bundled remote or the optional game controller (which costs £35). However, we'll get to the games later.

Amazon Fire TV review: Hardware, design and setup

The Fire TV is uncannily similar to the Apple TV in many ways. It's a small black box with all its connections round the back: power, HDMI, optical S/PDIF, and Ethernet. (There's also USB, but it's currently unusable.)

The top is like the back of a Fire tablet or Kindle: matt black with a glossy Amazon logo. The front and sides are also glossy black and a small white LED lets you know the box has power - just like an Apple TV.

An external power supply is included in the box, but you'll need to provide your own HDMI cable.

Setup is easy, as you simply choose your Wi-Fi network (unless you're using an Ethernet cable), enter your password, then enter your Amazon email address and password. It's a bit fiddly using the on-screen keyboard and directional pad on the remote, but it's no worse than the Apple TV in this respect. The Chromecast is easier, of course, since the remote is your smartphone or tablet. Conversely, the Fire TV doesn't require you to own any smartphone or tablet: you need only an internet connection and an Amazon account.

The box has similar innards to an Android tablet, and runs a version of Amazon's Fire OS which is also used on Fire tablets and the Fire phone. It's based on Android, but you'll never see so much as a hint of plain Android anywhere.

Amazon Fire TV review: Software

Fire OS is a dark-looking, easy to use system on Amazon's tablets, and things are much the same here. If you've already used the Prime Instant Video app, you'll already know how to navigate around the Fire TV.

A main menu runs down the left-hand side and includes Home, which shows things you've watched or played recently, newly added Prime Instant Video items and other featured or 'top' content.

Other sections include Prime Instant Video, Watchlist (everything you've bookmarked to buy, rent or watch later), TV, Films, Apps, Games, Photos and Music. Quite obviously there are no books, magazines or newspapers, and no web browser or email apps - these are all better suited to tablets. Video Library is a place to see all your bought and rented content from Amazon.

If you head to the settings menu you can synch all relevant purchased Amazon content, rather than going through each section or searching for that content and downloading it individually.

You can also set restrictions to prevent anything being purchased without entering a passcode, and even block different types of content entirely such as apps.

Amazon Fire TV review: Voice search and usability

The interface couldn't be simpler to navigate and button icons are shown on screen whenever there's a shortcut, such as pressing the play/pause button when you've finished entering your password.

It's a well-designed controller whose only flaw is that it's quite small and easy to lose. A feature which elevates it above rivals is the voice search. You hold down the microphone button and say what you're searching for. It proved fast and accurate for everything we tried, and far, far easier than trying to enter text via the D-pad. You're not limited to saying titles: it also works with actors and directors, so you don't need to know what you want to watch.

The voice search isn't universal, though. If you're in the Netflix app and use the microphone, the results will show matches for Amazon's content, not Netflix.

Another source of confusion is the fact that prices are shown for episodes and series even if you have a Prime Instant Video subscription. To watch something with your subscription, you have to wait a second until "Watch now with Prime" appears on the video's thumbnail.

However, even if you're browsing in the Prime Instant Video section, you'll still come across content that isn't included in your subscription. For example, only the first four seasons of Mad Men have the all-important Prime tag at the top-left corner, while the remaining three are just tagged as HD. But it's easy to miss that difference as you scroll through the list and wonder why the "Watch now with Prime" wording doesn't appear on the thumbnail after season four.

A good feature is that a white progress bar is shown across the bottom of each movie or show you've watched, so it's easy to see which episode of a TV show to watch next. Amazon's predictive ASAP technology also works well, with videos beginning almost the instant you press the play button - so much so that you sometimes forget that you're streaming them. 10-second skip forward and back buttons are useful for replaying a section, and didn't cause big buffering delays in our tests.

Amazon Fire TV review: Games

The game controller has to be paired via the settings menu, but you'll get a warning if you attempt to buy a game which requires a game controller and you haven't paired one.

We tried several games, some of which we'd bought previously on a Fire tablet. Sonic the Hedgehog was pretty much the ideal type for the controller, a classic platform title, while Flow Free proved that games designed for touchscreens aren't enjoyable on a console-style gamepad. With those, you can use the shoulder buttons to speed up or slow down the cursor, but even so, it's hard work.

The games library has quite a bit of choice, including some of the latest releases such as Terraria, but it's limited when compared to the choice available on a Fire tablet let alone an Android tablet or iPad.

Amazon Fire TV review: content

Amazon Prime Instant video has a fairly decent selection of films and TV shows, and is comparable with Netflix. Each has its own exclusive titles and in-house content, too, with Amazon's Transparent and Extant being two popular examples.

It's good to see some UK-specific services such as iPlayer and Demand 5 , but it's by no means comprehensive yet. Although the Apple TV lacks even these, you can watch a much bigger selection from your iPhone or iPad via AirPlay, and most people only buy an Apple TV after an iOS device.

If you're looking for the widest array of content available directly via the set-top box, then Roku is the obvious choice at the moment, especially as it has just added the Google Play store.

(You can read our full comparison Fire TV vs Roku vs Chromecast.)

From our testing, the quality of HD video is excellent and if you have an AV receiver you can use the HDMI or optical outputs to benefit from 5.1 or even 7.1 surround sound where the content has it.

You'll also benefit from the new X-Ray feature for certain videos, which lets you pull up IMDB information so you can check which actors are on screen or who directed it.

What's disappointing is the lack of closed captions, or subtitles as we call them in the UK. For those that rely on them, or even those who simply like to turn them on when dialogue is too fast or the actors have an unrecognisable accent, it's a big ommission in the service. Amazon says it's working hard to bring subtitles as soon as it can, and understands that it's a big issue for some users.

One of the Apple TV's limitations is that you can't plug in a USB drive and watch your own content, and you have to have a computer or NAS running an iTunes server to watch your own videos. It's a similar situation for the Fire TV, but the good news is that Plex is available so you can store your video library on a suitable NAS and stream content from that. (If you're so inclined you can also 'root' the Fire TV and install XBMC without losing access to the Fire TV's stock interface.)

It's with large libraries that the Fire TV's powerful processor comes into its own. Thumbnails load almost instantly and there's little or no lag when scrolling through long lists of episodes.

Amazon Fire TV: verdict

The Fire TV is an excellent set-top box which is powerful and well designed. The voice search works well too, but isn't available in all apps.

There are other foibles, too, such as confusion over whether videos are included in your Prime Instant video subscription or not. We'd like an option to show only content that you can watch without paying extra (it's an option in Amazon's app for iPad, so why not on the Fire TV?).

It costs the same as an Apple TV, and you don't get a Prime Video subscription thrown in: there's a 30-day trial and after that it's £5.99 per month or £79 per year (which also includes one-day delivery on goods tagged with Prime on Amazon's website).

Is the Fire TV the best video streamer out there? It's close, but it really only makes sense if you pair it with a Prime Instant Video subscription and use Amazon's other cloud services.

Buying Advice

The Fire TV is an excellent set-top box which is powerful and well designed. The voice search works well too, but isn't available in all apps. There are other foibles, too, such as confusion over whether videos are included in your Prime Instant video subscription or not. The Fire TV is one of the best video streamers, but it really only makes sense if you pair it with a Prime Instant Video subscription and use Amazon's other cloud services.