Amazon Fire TV stick

Internet-age TV in a dongle

This is one of the simplest video streaming gadgets, and now one of the best. Unlike Google’s Chromecast, it works by itself – you don’t need a phone or tablet. The Stick plugs straight into your HDTV’S HDMI port, powered by a supplied USB mains adapter.

We’re not fans of the way Amazon’s products plug its services, but the company does provide a lot of content. Amazon Video offers a huge selection of films and box sets, and if you subscribe to Amazon Prime (£79 a year) you get access to a lot of it (including Top Gear spin-off The Grand Tour, pictured), plus music, at no extra cost. The Fire TV Stick makes video easy to watch, and now it also has Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, so you can request a programme by name rather than hunting through menus.

You can use Alexa from your Fire TV Stick for other tasks, like asking for weather forecasts or sports results and operating home automation gadgets, like ‘smart’ lighting. And you can tell Alexa to open apps that you’ve installed for nonAmazon content too. Netflix has one, as do Youtube, Sky News, BBC iplayer and so on, all available from the Appstore screen (see www.snipca.com/24868). You can install apps from elsewhere, including the Kodi player, which can access a wide variety of internet content (not all legal).

There are even games – over 1,000 – to play with the supplied remote control or the optional Fire TV Game Controller (£40 from www.snipca.com/24869). Although the Stick doesn’t have the processing power of a full-size device, its quad-core processor is good, and the built-in Wi-fi has been upgraded to 802.11ac to keep Full HD streaming smooth, assuming your broadband connection is adequate. The Fire TV Stick still doesn’t support 4K resolution, but that’ll only affect those who have a 4K TV. iphone and ipad users might want to pay more for the simplicity and power of Apple TV, but for most the Fire TV Stick is ideal.

Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant means you don’t have to hunt through menus