Fire TV Cube, Hands-free streaming device with Alexa, 4K Ultra HD, includes Alexa Voice Remote

UPDATE: April 2020I should have updated my review a couple months ago but am just getting around to it.Our Fire Cube 2nd Gen is definitely worthy of 5 stars now as almost all of the voice controls work great, thanks I assume to incremental automatic upgrades.Example: If I say:"Computer (wakeword we gave it), Go Home."it turns on the TV and sets it to the Home page.If I say: "Computer, play the Crown."She replies: I can play that on Prime Video or Netflix, which would you like?"i choose and then she says:"Okay, getting that from …".and then she turns on the TV, and opens my choice and starts "The Crown"If I say: "Computer, open Youtube to The Voice Kids." she turns on the TV, skips the home screen, open Youtube and shows me The Voice Kids videos.My experience has been that voice commands have been expanding regularly with automatic updates.Very satisfied now.UPDATE; Jan 19, 2020I am adding another star and reporting that there seems to be a genuine effort on Amazon's Support Team to straighten out the voice command problems. Since posting my disappointed original 3 star report, the only thing I was able to do on my own was to discover that adding the word "the", to-wit: "…Turn on THE TV" and "…Turn off THE TV" worked, but the most important voice commands to us which failed to work were "…PAUSE" "…RESUME" and "…REWIND __ seconds" because fumbling in the dark for a tiny black button on a little black physical remote was never going to be sufficient for us two senior citizens to catch what dialog we might have missed, exchange comments, bathroom breaks etc. So today I spent a long, long time on Chat Support (which I always think is better to use than phone support when you are on an endurance sprint for problem-solving.) A series of very nice support folks had me check and make various trial changes via the Alexa app and ultimately do a full factory reset through the on-screen Settings. It took patience on both sides but now almost all the voice commands seem to work about 90-100% of the time. In addition, two things I did on my own before contacting them may have helped too: Changing the wakeword on the Cube to try to keep our living room Echo from butting in with hilarious irrelevant comments; and pushing the TV (with its enclosed speakers) back several more inches behind the Cube to possibly enhance the Cube's ability to hear and understand my voice commands. This is a product we are definitely going to stick with, and my ultimate goal is to totally eliminate any need to fumble with the physical remote!ORIGINAL REVIEW on Jan. 1, 2020:Very disappointed. As with many senior citizens up in years, we have physical and visual challenges. We are grateful to Amazon Alexa for having enabled us for that reason to automate many tasks in our home; and thus we had hoped to be able to rely on Alexa to do the same for us with respect to our TV viewing. We are reasonably proficient and comfortable with modern electronics and automation.So we upgraded our FireStick to the latest FireStick4K because it promised virtually complete voice control over our TV and Fire TV. This is important to us. Sitting in the dark holding the remote control, trying to fumble with the tiny buttons to navigate Fire TV, or to rewind to catch missed action or dialogue, is impractical. Voice commands, when working, can control all these things quickly and with precision. But the FireStick4K didn't fulfill that promise. Many of the listed voice commands did not work reliably and consistently, so we then purchased and added the Fire TV IR Blaster, which proved to add very little by way of voice control to the FireStick4K. We obtained a return authorization for the Blaster and spent the extra money to purchase the Fire Cube 2nd Generation, hopefully to get the full promised range of voice control, including Voice-Enabled Scrolling (up, down, left, right) and Selection ("Press the onscreen button named __") and the rewind and also all the other listed voice commands which we had at first thought were to be added by the Blaster.Scrolling is what you do when you press the outer ring of the large round button on the remote in order to move up, down, right and left. Hands-free voice-enabled scrolling allows an arthritic person to verbally issue those commands without fumbling with the tiny remote in the dark. Selection is when you press on the center of that large round button on the remote in order to pick one of several on-screen buttons; Hands-free voice-enabled selection allows such a person to do that without accessing the remote. Rewind or go back 10 or 20 seconds or a minute is also an important and handy control which cannot be duplicated with precision on the tiny remote's button. We have always overshot by a mile by trying to go back manually, which can be very frustrating. Verbal rewinding, when it works, is precise.Our expectations are not founded on wishful thinking; Amazon describes the necessary words and phrases to be uttered, and the actions which will result, in documentation published in numerous places on the internet; Netflix assures us they have implemented all of Amazon's voice command set and refer us to Amazon's list of voice commands.But as of this date, we are still disappointed. The harsh truth is that some of these commands never work, while others work sometimes but a few minutes later Alexa will complain not to understand the exact word-for-word command or claim it is not implemented or some other bizarre excuse. Simply turning the TV on and off is unpredictable. Sometimes Alexa accepts only the word "TV" other times only the word "Television" and other times answers "OK" but does nothing. Although many of the hobbyist reviewers on youtube praise this new Cube, at least one whom we find to be generally quite knowledgable and reliable, not only expressed the very same frustration with voice control on the new Cube, but demonstrated it repeatedly occurring to him during his live youtube Cube demonstration. So it is not just us.For the time being, we have decided to keep the Fire Cube 2nd Generation and hope that the promised full voice commands will be perfected in a later software update. But we are not holding our breath.

I have two first gen cubes and i felt they were getting a bit sluggish. I didnt know if the issue was with the cube or the apps. I read the reviews for the 2nd gen and people said they noticed a difference so i thought id give it a try. I have to say there is a noticeable difference! When it comes to tech little delays can feel like big delays especially if there are lots of them, so when you save 5-30 seconds it feels like a lot. Many of the reviews ive read from people are fairly spot on. Its a little silly they dont give you an hdmi cord which is mandatory for the cube to work but they give you an ethernet adapter, most people with internet have wifi so while 100% of users need an hdmi id guess only 10% need an Ethernet adapter. I do use the ethernet adapter for a more stable connection but i dont need to use and as another reviewer mentioned the way they connect the ethernet adapter limits the speed. I get 1gig internet speed but this limits it to 100mb. Not the end if the world but just something that seems silly to have done. In general the cube works well and easily! If you’re a cord cutter it has almost every app i need. For some reason Vudu isnt on there but maybe because its owned by Walmart? Pretty much Anything you own on vudu its on the movies anywhere app which is on the cube. If you still have cable the cube works well cable. I orginally had att cable when i got the cube and i could say “watch TLC on cable” and the cube would switch to the hdmi port that my cable box was on and it would change the channel. It also controlled the volume. There were somethings it couldnt do but i was impressed by how well it worked. Alexa can also turn my xbox on, switch to the right hdmi port and start the game i want to play. Also you can say switch hdmi 3 and she will switch. The only real problem with the cube is inconsistency. The voice commands are not universal. So it’s annoying to figure out what you can and cannot say in different apps. You also have to use the right phrase. For example on PlayStation Vue (which i will miss so much!!) if i say “alex tune to fox on PlayStation Vue) it works but if i say “alex put fox on in playstation vue” it wont work. For some reason when i pause something in hulu and then tell alexa to play she puts on apple music, which makes no sense. This could just be a glitch on mine idk. I have two cubes and its kind if annoying that if i download an app on one i have to do it on the other and also that the passwords have to be entered on each. I wish the remote had a keypad. I bought a bluetooth keypad that has a rubber holder to hold both the remote and the keypad. I didnt find out until afterwards that there is an amazon fire app that turns your phone into a remote! I feel like that is not advertised well. On iphone its nice because sometimes when putting in passwords your iphone can pull up stored passwords which is chill. I wish there was a way to transfer a show from one cube to another. So if youre watching in the bedroom and then go into the living room you can just say transfer to living room and it would turn off the bedroom and turn on the living room tv and have the show or movie start where u left off. Whats cool is you can turn your tv off using an echo. So if im watching tv in the living room and then go take a shower i can say to my echo in the bathroom “turn off living room” and it turns the tv off but i cant say “play x movie in living room or tune to cnn on PlayStation Vue in living room”. Sometimes i get some odd errors like “alexa open funimation app” and the the response is “i can do that on playstation vue or on x which do you perfer” funimation isnt on PlayStation vue so this doesnt even make sense and the other option also didnt make sense. So ill have to say it again. Also sometimes the far field detection that is used to detect which device you are talking to by proximity still needs work. Ive had times where i was leaving for work and my tv is right by the bedroom door and my living room tv is a good 12-15 feet away and ill turn left in the door way and speak directly to the cube to turn tv off and instead my living room cube responds and turns that tv on. I can see the bedroom cube which is only a foot from where i al standing and looking directly at light up but then the cubes for some reason determine that im speaking to the living room tv 12-15 ft away and my head isnt even turned in that direction! Also the cube has a nice option where it has a live tv guide so if you have playstation vue and pluto (which is free and everyone should get it) you can have a guide showing you whats on all the channels and you can even make your own favorite channel list that combines both services channels!! Its really cool but it doesnt work with all live tv like if you have att live app it doesnt work with this. Also whats a little annoying is if you pick a show on Vue the cube then opens the app and tunes to thr channel but you cant go back the cube live tv guide without living the app but with pluto you can still use the cube live tv guide. So theres just a bunch of small goofy things that they could fix to make a much better experience. They also want you to buy hbo and other channels through amazon so if you have them through amazon they integrate well into the menu but if you have hbo through cable and using hbo go. They make you use the app and dont let you use their better integrated option. If you are thinking about getting a fire stick instead...dont! The cube is way better imo. I have a roku TCL tv and I still use my cube over the built in roku. Despite all my little Nitpicky comments above i think the cube is great! It can control your devices, has tons of apps and does everything an echo can do. Oh there is one more thing I don’t like if i im using audible i cant set a sleep timer likeI can on my echo show. You can have it stop after a set time but it doesn’t turn the tv off. I wish they had a better trade in program for upgrading. They only give you like 20% off if u trade in your old one but you have to send it to them first and then they will apply a discount so if its on sale you’ll probably miss the sale. It would be better if they applied the credit and when u got the new cube they included a box and return label and if theres an issue with your old cube they take back the discount and charge u. Similar to how they do amazon wardrobe.