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A small upgrade can make an old TV feel new again, and the Amazon Fire TV Stick HD is the kind of plug-and-play streaming device that does exactly that. It’s down to $17.99 right now (from $34.99), which price-tracking sites confirm is its lowest recorded price.
PCMag calls it “the best 1080p media hub” for folks sticking to Full HD, and that lines up with how simple it is to set up. The stick slides straight into an HDMI port, and Amazon also includes a short extender in case your TV’s ports are too tight. It runs in 1080p and supports HDR10, so shows and movies mastered for HDR look a bit richer, even on older screens. I wouldn’t expect a dramatic jump in picture quality, but scenes with a lot of contrast—the kind with bright signage or dark backgrounds—look more defined. It also supports Dolby Atmos, which helps when you pair it with a soundbar that can handle it.
Using it day to day feels familiar if you’ve used any recent Fire TV interface. You get all the usual streaming services—Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, YouTube, Apple TV+, even Crunchyroll and Twitch. The Alexa button on the remote works like it does on other Fire devices: press, talk, let it find what you want. The remote itself feels simple enough to use, and the built-in volume rocker is helpful if your TV remote is long gone. It relies on a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, 1GB RAM, and 8GB of storage. That’s enough for the basics, but you’ll feel its limits from time to time. The interface can get choppy, especially when you jump across tabs quickly or open a large library. Reviews also point out that the stick still uses wifi 5 instead of wifi 6, which matters if your home has a lot of devices fighting for bandwidth.
This is strictly a 1080p device, so if you have a 4K TV (or plan to get one), the Fire TV Stick 4K is just $7 more and offers smoother performance, better wifi, and Dolby Vision. It also doesn’t support AirPlay or Google Cast, so sending videos from an iPhone or Android phone isn’t as seamless. Still, for someone with an older TV who wants the modern streaming apps in one place, the current $18 price makes it feel like a low-risk upgrade.
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