Aesthetically speaking, the Fire TV Stick is about as exciting as the inside of an Amazon cardboard box. Without the fun air pillows to pop. Remarkably, it's probably less interesting to look at than an actual stick, which at least might be a bit knobbly or have an interesting insect crawling along it.But that doesn't really matter, as the Fire TV Stick is destined to be stuck, hopefully unseen, in an HDMI port at the back of your telly. One word of advice for future stick engineers - putting the micro-USB power socket on a thin edge of the stick means you can't put another HDMI in an adjoining port. Sticking it on the end or one of the thick faces would be more practical. Amazon does include an HDMI extender, gratis, but we can't help thinking it would be unnecessary if the Stick was designed a bit more thoughtfully in the first place.Set-up is unbelievably easy. The Fire TV Stick automatically finds and pairs with its Bluetooth remote, then you tap in your Wi-Fi details, including 5GHz networks (unlike Chromecast) for more reliable low-range streaming. A perky video tutorial then talks you through its navigation and operation. 

Interface and features

It's a shame that Amazon doesn't ship the Fire TV Stick with the same voice control remote as the Fire TV. Being able to simply hold down the microphone button and say what you want - in almost any accent and even in a noisy room - makes the rest of the Fire TV's interface virtually irrelevant. You can buy one separately, currently for £25, but it feels like a missed opportunity.
At least the home screen operation is fast and intuitive. Categories and menu items are on a vertical column on the left, populating out with recent and recommended items to the right. The Fire TV Stick feels just as fast as its big brother for browsing but maybe a couple of seconds slower to start playing videos. That sluggishness is even more noticeable when it comes to games, which can take five or ten seconds extra to load.
That's hardly a surprise. The Fire TV Stick has a dual-core ARM chip and 1GB of memory, compared to the Fire TV's quad-core silicon with 2GB of RAM. Both gadgets have 8GB of storage, which is enough for a handful of apps and games. The Fire TV Stick works as a seamless second screen with Fire tablets (and the Fire Phone, if either of you out there with one are reading this), and you can fling other services such as YouTube and Spotify from iOS or Android phones.
All the most popular apps are present and correct. Amazon Instant Video is the easiest and quickest to use of course, but Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube and WatchESPN work OK. HBO GO is promised for next year (at least in the US), just in time for its promised unbundling from cable subscriptions (both Roku and Chromecast already offer the app Stateside).

Amazon Fire TV Stick tech specs

The great news is that video (up to 1080p, 60fps) looks every bit as good on the Fire TV Stick as it does on the Fire TV. Colours are great, detail is crisp and there are no nasty artefacts. It doesn't handle navigating through video quite as well, though. Tap the fast forward or rewind button for a 10-second shift and the screen hiccups slightly, unlike the Fire TV's silky smooth transitions. Scrubbing at high speed forward or back also feels laggy.
One thing worth noting is Amazon's smart handling of Wi-Fi interruptions and general internet slowdowns. The video signal degrades very gracefully, pixellating the image without interrupting the stream until the last possible moment. If your connection is prone to problems, this is one of the best systems we've seen to cope with it.
The Stick can't play H.263 or MPEG videos (unlike the Fire TV) although it does offer Flac and Vorbis audio playback that its older sibling does not. Home cinema fans will be pleased to hear that Dolby Digital Plus and 7.1 channel passthrough are on board. There's no optical audio out (again, unlike the Fire TV).
As long as you're not expecting the Fire TV Stick to replace a real console for games, you won't be disappointed. Casual games are slower to load than on the Fire TV but play without glitches, including the latest 3D puzzlers such as Disney's Smash It! Amazon gives you some coins to buy a few games without actually spending any money - you might even find them enough to keep you busy between Netflix binges.

Amazon Fire TV Stick verdict

Amazon did the right thing in releasing a super-portable streaming stick. The Fire TV Stick is small enough to take on holiday with you or to lend to a mate, and looks very respectable when stacked up against Google's Chromecast or Roku's Streaming Stick. While it doesn't offer quite as many apps, it's got all the basic, popular streaming services stacked up, with the bonus of a selection of high quality casual games to dip into.
The problem really comes with the Fire TV Stick's core audience - people who already pay for Amazon Prime and want to get the most from it. Given that you're paying £79 or $99 a year for the service, saving a little on a cut-down streaming device doesn't add up. The standard Fire TV box comes with a revolutionary voice control remote, beautifully smooth video and pretty fast gaming - the Fire TV Stick really only has its price and size going for it.
The Fire TV Stick is a solid performer at a very cheap price, then, but if you're a streaming veteran there's probably not enough reason to up sticks and switch to this.

Amazon aims high

With the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, the online retail giant has reaffirmed its determination to play rough in the high-end mainstream tablet market. It sits between the established "small" (7-inch) and "big" (10-inch) tablet forms. The 16GB Wi-Fi version (without ads on the homescreen) will set you back a tenner more than the smaller iPad Mini Retina or £70 less than the bigger iPad Air and Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition.
Its little brother, the Kindle Fire HDX 7, has its sights on the value end of the market, matching Google's Nexus 7 with a price tag of £200, so you might wonder quite where the HDX 8.9 fits in. In many ways it feels like one step down from the tablet top tier; if your budget won't quite stretch to the very best that's not such a bad place to be.

Is this a premium product?

In a word, no. That is, the HDX 8.9 doesn't feel particularly special, even though it's priced a long way above the "value" end of the scale. While it lacks the design chic of its Apple and Samsung rivals, it is remarkably thin and light. It's comfortable to hold thanks to rubbery backing and edges that don't feel cold or sharp. That's important in a tablet designed primarily for leisurely, handheld reading and viewing.
Flip it over and you can't fail to notice a large embossed Amazon logo. The tapered top strip houses an 8MP camera and LED flash framed by a few Darth Vader helmet creases, flanked by stereo speakers. Hardware volume controls are usefully located to sit beneath the fingers of your right hand when holding the tablet in landscape mode. There's work to be done in the desirability stakes but in terms of practicality Amazon has done a good job here.

Beneath the surface

As with the Kindle Fire HDX 7, the HDX 8.9 is actually built on Android but because the interface is a bespoke top layer it doesn't look or feel like an Android tablet. The design and layout of the interface is neat enough but lacks some cohesion and isn't as intuitive as it could be, as if Amazon's designer's couldn't decide on a single system or hierachy for its various online services, apps, settings and navigation controls.
A row of text labels runs along the top of the screen, reminiscent of the company's own website. Most of them take you off to Amazon's physical and virtual stores.
We find the interface more user-friendly than Windows 8 and it doesn't have Android's tendency to become cluttered, but it still feels as if it needs a stronger direction and focus. There are too many blank screens with no explantion (for example, if it fails to connect to the app store) and an over-reliance on swipes from offscreen in order to bring up essential menus and navigation controls. For simplicity and ease of use, Apple's iOS 7 is still the best.

Ring-fenced app store

While the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 is built on Android, it won't access the main Google Play app store. Instead, developers can submit Kindle editions of their apps to Amazon where they are then vetted and, if all is well, added to the Kindle App Store. The benefit is that it cuts out a lot of the dross and reduces the likelihood that you'll be scammed or mugged off by a dodgy app, and most of the big-hitters from Android are available, but there are some big exceptions, such as WhatsApp Messenger and Instagram.
There are apps for all the functional stuff but if you want high quality games, educational apps or serious creative apps you'll be disappointed by the omissions. Apple's App Store continues to be leagues ahead in terms of the quality and range of apps available, but this heavily curated store is much simpler to navigate than Google Play.

Kindle FreeTime: a safe place for kids

Much of Amazon's tablet ethos revolves around security, and this extends beyond the app store. There's a feature called Kindle FreeTime, designed to allow parents to "child-proof" the Kindle Fire HDX. It allows you to put the tablet into a mode where only specific apps or books can be used, and it's also possible to impose time limits on these sessions.
As a parent, you set up a new profile for a child or a number of children and authorise certain apps or books which will be accessible when you log in to that profile. The profile can only be exited by entering a password, set by the parent. It's a simple system that works very well and could be a major selling point for parents looking for a family-friendly tablet. It's not unique (the Android 4.3 update includes a similar feature) but it is very useful and currently not something that's available on many other tablets.

Mayday, the video helpdesk

Another helpful feature is the Mayday button. Accessed from the settings pull-down menu, this connects you to the Kindle helpdesk with a couple of taps. In our tests, calls have been answered in just a few seconds. Once you're connected you get to see your helper in a little video window (they can't see you), and from there they can answer technical questions, aided by the ability to remotely control your device (with your permission) or sketch onto your screen to show you how to do things yourself.
We've found the helpdesk's level of technical knowledge to be sufficient to solve minor queries and the service has always been friendly. This is a service to help out users who have "lost" all their photos, or found that "the internet has been switched off", so we'll cut it some slack for the slightly vague responses we got to some more technically taxing queries.

Battery life

Amazon's battery life claims of "Up to 12 hours of reading, web surfing over Wi-Fi, video watching or music playback" are probably achievable at low brightness settings, and in many sitations (in bed or on a flight) you won't need the luminance cranked up to the max. In our tests it lasted 5 hours, 20 minutes playing a continuous stream of live TV via the iPlayer app with brightness turned right up. A side-by-side test with a Google Nexus 7 saw the smaller tablet pegging out at the 3hr, 45mins mark. Standby performance is a little disappointing, though: our 25%-charged Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 drained itself completely in a 63-hour spell of inactivity.

Music and video streaming

If you're the kind of person who grumbles a mild obscenity and hits the "back" button as soon as the suggestion of a free 30-day trial pops up on your screen, the Kindle Fire range is probably not for you. The HDX 8.9 is full of such things because it's really all about getting you hooked up to Amazon's media subscription services, such as a LoveFilm (for on-demand movies and TV), Amazon Prime (for access to a library-style book-lending service) and Audible (for audio books).
You can still buy music and ebooks as one-offs, and there's also the option of uploading your own existing music files to Amazon's cloud storage, from where they can be streamed back to your tablet.
If you're going to get the most from the HDX 8.9 you'll need to buy into all of these, literally and figuratively. Once you do, the Kindle Fire 8.9 really starts to make sense. So long as you're in range of a strong Wi-Fi signal you'll have access to a huge amount and variety of entertainment.

A screen for crisp video

The screen is one of the HDX 8.9's best features. Depending on your source, images and video can sometimes have a slightly blue hue but this is very minor and not something you're likely to notice unless doing side-by-side testing. The pixel density is sufficient for the little dots to be invisible to the naked eye, rendering fonts, icons and webpages very cleanly. Viewing angles are pretty good, too, with an acceptable level of brightness reduction when shared around a boardroom table or across a sofa.

Verdict

The HDX 8.9 is certainly a safe option. Bigger than an iPad Mini Retina, cheaper than an iPad Air or Galaxy Note 10.1, it's an outstanding middle-of-the-road option, and that's not as much of a contradiction as it would seem.
Tidier and simpler than the regular Android option, the HDX 8.9 will please those looking for a no-fuss tablet solution, but if you stretch the budget just a little bit further you could have the best from Apple or Samsung. For this reason the far cheaper HDX 7 makes a lot more sense to us.

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