Amazon Fire TV Cube (3rd Gen) Review: Blazing Speed

At a glance

Expert’s Rating

Pros

Excellent, fast performance
HDMI passthrough
Doubles as an Echo Dot

Cons

Expensive
Ad-heavy software

Our Verdict

The 3rd Gen Fire TV Cube is one of the most powerful media streamers around, and pulls double duty as an Echo Dot equivalent, but the steep price is hard to swallow.

Price When Reviewed

$139.99

Best Prices Today: Amazon Fire TV Cube (3rd Gen)

$139.99

Now in its third generation, the Fire TV Cube is a pretty simple proposition: a combination of a Fire TV Stick with an Echo Dot; a TV media streamer that will double as a smart speaker.

Upgraded hardware mean the Fire TV Cube is slick and fast, and Alexa brings with it capable hands-free controls. The only real hesitations are the high price – though more amenable if you need an Echo Dot anyway – and the fact that Amazon’s busy, ad-laden Fire TV software is at times a frustration.

Design & build

Clean, minimalist design
Looks more like a speaker than a streamer

The Fire TV Cube’s third generation looks much like the ones that came before it.

This is a compact cube (funny, that…) intended to sit next to or near your TV, rather than hide away behind it, as you’ll need it out in the open for the voice controls to work well.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

That means that unlike other media streamers you’ll need a spot for the Cube to sit out, and you’ll have to be happy with how it looks.

Thankfully the minimalist charcoal design is fairly unobjectionable, only occasionally interrupted by the bright blue LED border that kicks in along with the Alexa voice controls.

You’ll need a spot for the Cube to sit out, and you’ll have to be happy with how it looks

There’s a merciful lack of visible logos across the fabric mesh wrapper (they’re limited to the cube’s underside) and only four simple buttons to interrupt the top, which will be familiar to any Echo owners: two volume buttons, a select button, and a microphone mute button.

The 3^rd-gen Cube also comes with a slightly upgraded remote designed to offer a more well-rounded TV experience thanks to channel up and down buttons, a shortcut to the Settings menu, and a Recents button that helps you dive between apps without returning to the home screen every time.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

Beyond that it’s a pretty standard remote, powered by a couple of AAA cells, with a selection of pre-set app buttons at the bottom (Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Music on mine – but this will vary by country) and of course an Alexa button at the top.

Ports & performance

HDMI passthrough
Impressively fast thanks to 8-core processor
4K upscaling

There are more ports on the back of this Fire TV Cube than ever before, and for good reason. Alongside the power socket, you’ll find an IR extender (useful if you do want to tuck the Cube out of sight), USB-A port, 100Mbps Ethernet, and a pair of HDMI sockets.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

The USB-A port allows you to connect up game controllers, webcams, hard drives, and other basic USB devices, which is welcome. Ethernet of course allows for faster and more reliable internet connections, though the Wi-Fi 6E onboard should be good enough for most people anyway.

The dual HDMI ports are an input and output respectively, driving one of the Cube’s neater tricks: HDMI passthrough, which allows you to connect another device to your TV through the Amazon kit.

This is best suited to set-top boxes like Sky, or cable if you’re in the US, as you’re then able to use the Fire remote or Alexa to change channels or drive other controls, both saving you an HDMI port and streamlining your setup so that you don’t have to switch HDMI inputs every time you want to fire up your cable box.

You can use it for a game console, but you probably don’t want to, as the passthrough adds a little extra lag to the connection – not a problem for TV, but frustrating for gameplay.

From a pure performance perspective, this is hard to beat

One of the other benefits of the passthrough is that you’ll get the benefit of the Fire TV Cube’s 4K upscaling, which works for both its own content and anything on the passthrough. This is a little more advanced than the default upscaling your TV might already offer, though in practice the effects still aren’t life-changing.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

What is impressive is the all-round performance driven by the octa-core processor inside the Cube. This thing is fast, loading almost every app in seconds. It’s significantly faster than the Amazon-powered JVC Fire TV I use day-to-day, but also nippier than any of the recent Roku or Chromecast streamers I’ve tested recently.

The Cube also supports a solid array of standards, with HDR10+ and Dolby Vision there to provide 4K HDR video, and Dolby Atmos alongside the 7.1 surround support.

From a pure performance perspective, this is hard to beat.

Software & smart features

Busy Fire TV interface
Lots of ads and promoted elements
Smooth voice controls

The software and smarts side of this is a mixed bag.

I’m very used to Amazon’s Fire TV software – like I said, I use a Fire TV – but even I have to admit that it’s far from the best around.

The good is that it’s fairly simple and straightforward to use, with settings laid out simply and an interface that just makes sense most of the time.

The bad is that there’s a whole lot of that interface, with rows upon rows of content the moment you turn the TV on, and big banners devoted to Amazon’s latest series and software. Half of your home screen tends to be made up of adverts, one way or another, so you’ll have to get used to Amazon using your TV to push content on you.

Jared Newman / Foundry

You can of course install the full range of third-party apps you’d expect on a modern streamer, and all work smoothly. The only downside here is that the interface’s focus on content over apps makes it take a little longer to get to them, and they’re also not integrated into the ‘Recently watched’ row – only Prime series and live TV channels appear here.

This is functionally an Echo Dot in addition to a TV streamer, with all the usual benefits of a small smart speaker

Setting aside what’s on the screen, you also get all the benefits of Alexa in that little box. The obvious level is that it means you can use Alexa to navigate the TV interface, though of course most Fire TV devices have had this in some form for a while thanks to including voice control remotes.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

The bigger benefit of the Fire TV Cube is that Alexa works hands-free, and even when the TV is off. This is functionally an Echo Dot in addition to a TV streamer, with all the usual benefits of a small smart speaker: reminders, queries, smart home controls, and music playback (here getting all the benefits of whatever sound system you have hooked up to the TV).

That means the Fire TV Cube pulls double duty, saving you the cost of an Echo Dot (or allowing you to move an existing one to another room in the house). Assuming you’re happy to have Amazon drive your smart home’s smarts, that’s a big appeal and softens the steep price point.

Price & availability

The Fire TV Cube is available now from Amazon (of course) though you can also pick one up from other tech retailers like Best Buy in the US, or Currys in the UK.

The price is the sticking point here. At $140/£140 this is more expensive than any Roku or Google Chromecast device by quite some way, and more than double Amazon’s own Fire TV Stick 4K Max.

Of the mainstream options, only the Apple TV 4K is around the same price, which should tell you something about the premium positioning here.

Even subtracting the $50/£55 price of an Echo Dot, assuming you might otherwise buy one, the Fire TV Cube still comes out as one of the most expensive streamers on the market.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

Check out our guide to the best streaming sticks to see some of those more affordable options.

Verdict

If you’re already all-in on Amazon, or looking to pick up an Echo Dot anyway, then the 3^rd gen Fire TV Cube might well be worthwhile, especially considering the smooth performance and perks like HDMI passthrough.

But this won’t be the device to win people over to the Alexa ecosystem, as you’ll be able to find many of the core features elsewhere for less.

If nothing else, if Amazon is going to insist on advertising so aggressively in its interface, the least it could do is offer better value on the hardware.