Amazon Fire TV Cube (newest gen) review: a powerful media streamer with hands-free Alexa

The Amazon Fire TV Cube is one of the best streaming devices available, thanks to its wide range of features and hands-free voice control.

By having it hooked up to your TV, you’ll be able to stream 4K content from all the best streaming services, use voice commands to search for shows, control your other smart home devices – such as your lights – and even get answers to your questions about everything from the weather to the news.

It’ll be best used alongside one of the best TVs (and a 4K Ultra-HD one, no less) and you can even use it with your games consoles, such as PS5 Pro or Xbox Series X. It supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+ high dynamic range format, plus Dolby Atmos surround sound (if you have output for it) to deliver high-quality picture and sound.

So is the Fire TV Cube worth splashing out on, instead of buying something more stripped-back and affordable, like the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K? Keep reading to find out...

Amazon Fire TV Cube: Price & Availability

The Amazon Fire TV Cube is available to buy from Amazon US, UK and Australia. At the time of writing it will set you back £139.99 / $139.99 / AU$219 – but it is regularly discounted, especially during sales like Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday.

Amazon Fire TV Cube review: What’s new?

The Amazon Fire TV Cube is the most advanced and feature-packed streamer with the Fire TV interface. This is the third-generation of the Amazon Fire TV Cube, improving on the first with a new HDMI In port to connect games consoles or set-top boxes, a USB-A port to connect peripherals like a mouse or webcam, improved performance, faster response times and Wi-Fi to 6E speeds.

Thanks to a built-in speaker and microphones, you’ll be able to control it completely hands-free through the Alexa voice assistant. That means you can use it just like a smart speaker to control your smart home devices, such as your lights or a coffee machine (if you have a fancy and smart one anyway!). You can even use it to get a live view from a compatible video doorbell or smart security camera.

When you’re not feeling like talking, it comes with the Alexa Voice Remote Enhanced – which you can use to navigate the operating system and control the TV, so you can use it to turn the set on or off, change the volume, and so on.

Amazon Fire TV Cube review: Performance

The Cube can stream TV shows and movies in resolutions up to 4K for those with compatible TVs and app subscriptions, delivering clear and detailed picture quality with vibrant colours and a good level of contrast. If you don't need 4K as your TV can't cater for that, then you might want to save and buy a basic Fire TV Stick instead.

As well as that, Dolby Vision enhances the look of certain compatible content, while Dolby Atmos delivers a more immersive surround sound experience. If you don’t already pay for services with those features, then it will be worth the upgrade. So long as you have decent enough kit that can output such visual and audio levels.

You can use the Amazon Fire TV Cube as a speaker, but I didn't rely on it for anything other than simple voice commands and questions. Playing music of any kind will leave you a little disappointed, as the audio delivery is flat and quiet – lacking both clarity and precision. I’ll be sticking to my regular Echo Studio for listening to playlists and entertaining guests.

Thanks to Wi-Fi 6E, I found the Cube loaded new pages and apps quickly, although that will depend a lot on your internet speed at home.

Amazon Fire TV Cube review: Design & Usability

As you may have guessed from the name, the Fire TV Cube is box-shaped. It has a control panel on top, framed with the Alexa light strip and fabric mesh wrapped around its body. There are buttons to increase or decrease the volume, mute the microphone and manually summon the voice assistant.

On the back, there are six ports: an HDMI Out to connect it to your TV, an HDMI In to hook up a console or set-top box, the power input, an IR extender, a USB port and the Ethernet port. Annoyingly you don’t get an HDMI cable included in the box, so you’ll need to buy that separately if you don’t already have one.

You can control the system using voice commands like “Alexa, show me comedy films”, or using the included Alexa Voice Remote – which you can also use to control the TV itself (to turn it on or off and control the volume).

You'll know when the speaker is listening because the light strip circles in blue. Every time I said "Alexa" the speaker quickly picked up the sound of my voice, and for the most part searches were accurate – although it did occasionally misunderstand me.

One thing I wouldn’t use voice commands for was to look through the interface, as it's a very slow way of doing things – the navigation pad on the remote is much easier to use if you’re not sure what you’re looking for.

The remote is pretty straightforward with all the buttons you’d expect. That includes volume controls, a power button, skip and pause buttons. There are also a couple of useful extras, like an Alexa button to call the voice assistant, a settings button, and four others that take you directly to popular streaming apps (Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Music).

Overall, the Fire TV operating system is very easy to use, albeit a little overcrowded with Prime Video recommendations and Amazon adverts. Oh yes, the adverts, it's the same with Fire TV on Panasonic Z95A OLED TV, though, so no surprise.

You can access all the streaming apps you’d expect, as well as more obscure ones like Crunchyroll and Hayu. Other services such as YouTube and Spotify are also available, and there's a section to find live TV (that does take you through to the channel's catch-up app, though).

You can pin your most used apps to the navigation bar at the top of the home screen, and below that there are several reels with content recommendations including options to rent or buy.

Amazon Fire TV Cube review: Verdict

The Amazon Fire TV Cube is one of the most powerful streamers you can buy, and the added benefit of hands-free voice control makes it one of the easiest to use as well – if that's how you like to do things.

As long as your TV, soundbar and streaming apps are compatible, you’ll be able to watch TV shows and movies in crystal clear 4K quality with immersive Dolby Atmos surround sound. Just make sure you possess the kind of kit that will make that both look and sound worthy.

The Cube can be used just like any other Alexa speaker, which virtually gives you two devices in one, both of which I would use regularly. The only major downside is that the speaker isn’t particularly good, so you’ll need to play music through another device, as this won’t be a replacement for a home speaker.

Also consider

If you don’t necessarily need hands-free Alexa and you’d prefer something a little more discreet with a lot of the same capabilities, take a look at the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max instead. It plugs directly into the back of your TV and will give you the same interface as the Cube, with a lot of the same features including 4K streaming, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and Live View. You won’t be able to plug your other devices like a games console into it, though.

The Apple TV 4K is another premium streamer to consider. It has top-level performance and a simple but aesthetically pleasing operating system featuring plenty of tailored content recommendations. It supports 4K UHD, voice control, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. You will also get access to Apple Arcade games.