Fire TV Cube

[mwdxer1]

I thought about moving to the Amazon Fire Cube for the past couple of years, but the cost kept me from purchasing one, until I got a deal from Amazon for $30 off. Still spendy, but it was well worth it. Since the Fire stick came out, Amazon kept adding more and more apps I never would use and I cannot remove them, so the available space keeps getting knocked down all of the time. It does take many apps to eat up the available space. The Cube has twice the space alone over the Fire Stick and I can add up to another 128 GB thumb drive. I currently added a 32GB, which is plenty. There are not enough apps I would want to fill that much space. I have the Roku also and I can add as many apps as I want, but the Fire Stick adds them differently. But this works very well. Plus the Cube is very fast. I don't care about all of the fancy things it will do. I just wanted the extra space. I bought two fire sticks to separate the apps and even that did not always work. Just not enough space. Then I have the Recast and I have added about 200 channels into the guide from XUMO, Pluto, OTA, Sling, etc. The Cube handles it all fine.

 

[HipKat]

I thought about moving to the Amazon Fire Cube for the past couple of years, but the cost kept me from purchasing one, until I got a deal from Amazon for $30 off. Still spendy, but it was well worth it. Since the Fire stick came out, Amazon kept adding more and more apps I never would use and I cannot remove them, so the available space keeps getting knocked down all of the time. It does take many apps to eat up the available space. The Cube has twice the space alone over the Fire Stick and I can add up to another 128 GB thumb drive. I currently added a 32GB, which is plenty. There are not enough apps I would want to fill that much space. I have the Roku also and I can add as many apps as I want, but the Fire Stick adds them differently. But this works very well. Plus the Cube is very fast. I don't care about all of the fancy things it will do. I just wanted the extra space. I bought two fire sticks to separate the apps and even that did not always work. Just not enough space. Then I have the Recast and I have added about 200 channels into the guide from XUMO, Pluto, OTA, Sling, etc. The Cube handles it all fine.

I thought about the cube for the same reasons, before I settled on the Nvidia Shield. You can add a thumb drive to the Firestick, too, though. There's an adapter you can get, which I have on mine with a 32 GB THumb Drive.

 

[arlo]

I've had the cube for about 2 years now. I really like it. Works real good. I put a USB OTG adapter on it although I really didn't need it with an 8 gig usb drive.
The only darned thing about it is leaving the tv on on and a commercial comes on and someone says "Alexa, play Taylor Swift" and I come back and she's wailing about another bad relationship. Lol!!

 

[TV Junkie]

I just want a faster processor (over more storage)

 

[arlo]

I just want a faster processor (over more storage)

Over on Tom's Guide the Roku would be your better bet for speed.
But for freedom of app installs, Fire has it hands down.
With and OTG cable and wired Ethernet the Fire devices I have really run fast enough.

 

[ncted]

I just want a faster processor (over more storage)

What aspects do you want to be faster?

I have all the latest streamers, and they are all faster/slower at different things. IMHO the AppleTV 4K is the most consistently fast when it comes to loading apps, where the Roku and Android-based devices are sometimes faster or slower, depending on the app. It may not be the fastest overall when opening any particular app, but all apps seem to load about the same speed which is acceptably fast to my eyes. Unlike Roku, the Apple and Android devices don't quit apps when you close them, so opening a recently-used app can be much faster on those platforms.

When it comes to video delivery, again I find the ATV4K to be the best. I rarely see any frames dropped, unlike the others where it is slightly more common. None of them really drop many frames. Annoyingly, the new version of the Hulu app on my Shields is actually pretty bad about this, but that is an app-specific problem and could happen on any platform any time a new version rolls out. I had a number of problems when tvOS 14 rolled out at first, but they got fixed quickly.

I have tried the current Cube. It felt marginally faster than the FS4K, but the storage upgrade is the big win. I don't like voice commands, so I never even tried Alexa.

 

[mwdxer1]

I thought about the cube for the same reasons, before I settled on the Nvidia Shield. You can add a thumb drive to the Firestick, too, though. There's an adapter you can get, which I have on mine with a 32 GB Thumb Drive.

I tried the adapter on the fire sticks, but never got them to work right. The Cube found the Thumb drive immediately and a few apps have moved there by themself. I guess the Cube decides where to put the apps. I looked at the Nvidia Shield, but it is over double what I paid for the Cube. I had two or three Fire Sticks already, so I was set up for it.

 

[mwdxer1]

I've had the cube for about 2 years now. I really like it. Works real good. I put a USB OTG adapter on it although I really didn't need it with an 8 gig usb drive.
The only darned thing about it is leaving the tv on on and a commercial comes on and someone says "Alexa, play Taylor Swift" and I come back and she's wailing about another bad relationship. Lol!!

I did not active that function. I run it like I did the Fire Stick where I have to push on the button for voice control. I only bought it for the extra room on the drive and I could easily add a Thumb Drive if I wanted to. I got so tired of trying to add an app, and the message was, you are running out of room. I never had that in the beginning. Too many Amazon apps I don't want or need.

 

[mwdxer1]

I tried the adapter on the fire sticks, but never got them to work right. The Cube found the Thumb drive immediately and a few apps have moved there by themself. I guess the Cube decides where to put the apps. I looked at the Nvidia Shield, but it is over double what I paid for the Cube. I had two or three Fire Sticks already, so I was set up for it.

I just wanted the extra space. Now, I can add as many apps as I want without any issue. In fact last night, I just added a ton of apps to see how far the space would go. I deleted a bunch, but after I added a ton of them, I still had over half of the available space left. Add a thumb drive, and I am set to go, if I needed more. Funny, even with 16 GB, that it really planty, and I have no idea why a person would need a thumb drive on 128 GB! Even the 32 I have I will never need that. 16 GB is a lot of space!

 

[HipKat]

I did not active that function. I run it like I did the Fire Stick where I have to push on the button for voice control. I only bought it for the extra room on the drive and I could easily add a Thumb Drive if I wanted to. I got so tired of trying to add an app, and the message was, you are running out of room. I never had that in the beginning. Too many Amazon apps I don't want or need.

It's even more annoying to update an app and get that warning

 

[mwdxer1]

It's even more annoying to update an app and get that warning

Yes, I like having Alexa, but only when I want to use it. Not all of the time.

 

[arlo]

I'm working on getting the Logitech Hub skill working to integrate my HT system. So far no joy. Just takes time I guess.

 

[HipKat]

I'm working on getting the Logitech Hub skill working to integrate my HT system. So far no joy. Just takes time I guess.

I'm not sure what that is

 

[schneid]

I'm working on getting the Logitech Hub skill working to integrate my HT system. So far no joy. Just takes time I guess.

I use a Logitech Harmony Ultimate remote and Hub with the Alexa Skill to control an LG OLED/WebOS TV, a Fire TV Stick 4k, a Shield Pro 2019, a Win HTPC, a Roku Stick 4k, and an LG BD player. Both Logitech and Amazon have instructions about how to pull all this off. Forgot, I can also access my Ring cams and Insteon lights.

It is all kind of tedious but doable.