Amazon Fulfillment Services Fire Tv Cube Hands-Free with Alexa and 4k Ultra Hd Streaming Media Pla

I love my Alexas, all 8 of them.The one in our living room is coupled up to our home cinema amp and gets plenty of use streaming music and controlling lights etc. The only trouble is that you can only hear it when the amp is switched on.The Alexa enabled Fire TV Cube should be a perfect device for us, since it can turn on the amp when needed, and reply through its built in speaker at other times.When it works, it's great. It's not quite there though, suffering a number of teething troubles: - it's slower than other Echos- Although it's great at turning on the amp over HDMI, it doesn't reliably turn the TV on- Routines hang whenever there is a custom "Alexa Says" step- The App routines aren't well thought through - for example it fires up Netflix fine, but you have to reach for the remote to get past the sub-account menu- it has a REALLY annoying habit of changing the input on the amp whenver you ask it to do something, often switching the input to something it can't play through (Ironically, the Chromecast input in our case!)- It can't control many devices over HDMI. Pretty much just a TV and Amp, no digibox support, no XBox interaction, (sadly no Raspberry Pi interface)- It has a nasty tendency to try to open media in the Amazon services, even when Amazon doesn't have the requested content (or it's a premium feature); when other services are our default- The Alexa app support is not complete - there are many interactions that do not appear in the device history for the deviceIt's only just released, so I am hopeful it will get updated, but for now it's only OK and has some distinct bugs and weaknesses.

Setting up was easy to do, however I do have a few issues with its use.The audio when setup for Dolby digital has all sorts of timing/ lip sync issues. Depending on which app you are using the audio is delayed by caring amount from 50 to 500mS. If it was a constant amount across all apps it could at least be fixed with my amp by setting a delay. The only fix at present is to select stereo output from the Audio menu. Works perfect then.My other issue is as the unit is not currently available in the UK there is no option to select Alexa voice to be a UK version. She only speaks American and there is a big difference in the way you have to ask compared to my UK spec Alexa's.With a few updates to fix the audio this could be a great little box for all your home entertainment needs.

The cube does most of what I was hoping for with the loss of a couple of features that I found a little disappointing. The pros are that I am now able to control my tv and sound bar via voice, switch inputs and scroll through the Fire TV menu. This makes accessing content through your streaming services seemless. It has micro usb port that an OTG cable can be added, I use this for accessing content off usb, connecting my keyboard and even sometimes charging my phone (slowly). The cons are that it doesn't connect to Cameras (i.e the Ring Doorbell) like the normal fire stick is able to. It seems at times unable to differentiate between it's fireTV half and Echo half as its unable to play music directly from the cube and so turns on the tv everytime. Which is great when you have the tv on (lyrics are a bonus) but if you just wanted background music instead. Would be handy to have option. The final con but this is my own inpatience, at the time of this review it's only available in America (had it shipped) therefore I'm unable to change her language to English (UK) and have noticed that the cube is misunderstanding commands due to my English accent a problem I don't have with my UK purchased Echos. Overall though I do have hope for the future as with regular updates I feel many of the cons and smaller ones (not worth mentioning) will been ironed out over time. I would recommend the FireCube, I was hesitant after reading so many bad reviews but it does a great job and once the Xbox Alexa app has it's widespread release it'll be the best companion, able to combine your home cinema and gaming into one cohesive voice controlled system.

Voice recognition to control home electronic devices is the future now!

this device is a piece of junk, voice commands wont work 80% of the time, the device is slow and thinks about something forever, i have 4 fire tv sticks and they all kick this device's ass, the ir blaster, the main reason i purchased the cube is a joke, you cant control almost anything with it, i have ir light switches, an ir ac unit ir shades in my entertainment room and i cant control any of them because who knows why, that's nitpicking I guess but this piece of junk is so slow it hurts, when i say alexa play x song to my echo it starts almost instantly with the cube 80% of the time it wont ever start and the other 20% ill take about 30 seconds for it to say ok and begin playback.do not purchase this piece of junk i ll be returning mine and i live overseas so i have to pay about 20$ to return it, its THAT bad.

I received the cube and I was excited. It was easy to set up and connect. As I navigated through the home screen, I instantly knew there was a problem. It seems that the processor was not fast enough to scroll and load the information, or there was a glitch with the firmware software. I have 2 older Fire tv boxes that blow this cube processor out of the water. I loaded all of my apps and set them up. I am a directv now customer and I instantly recognized that this cube does not play well with this app. When loading, the screen will freeze and will take a bit of time to log in. Sometimes, I would have to force exit and reset the cube. Once the cube would allow me to log into directv, the video thumbnails would take for ever to load and flicker. I try to navigate into the guide and that flickers as well. After everything settles down, I can select a channel but then the video lags and jerks. One would assume that it was a directv problem or an internet speed problem. Well, my internet speed is 300 mbps download and is perfect. The directv runs perfectly fine with my 4 other firetv devices. I noticed the video also lags on my prime account video, Netflix and YouTube accounts. Futhermore, Alexa was not responding to some of my commands like “what is today’s weather.”etc. Also, Alexa would randomly switch inputs when I didn’t even command it to do so. I started to read other reviews and noticed that other customers were having the same problems. I decided to wait it out hoping that amazon would have their techs fix some of the glitches. Today, I couldn’t take it anymore because the lagging was driving my family crazy. I placed a request call to amazon support and Nathalie called me back. I explained my problems and the solutions that I tried to rectify them. It was obvious that Nathalie did not have a solution and was trained to read dummy cards. She told me she had to download my logs. What? ( I guess this means that amazon knows exactly what there customer watch’s!) I was placed on hold a few times but I was getting agitated because it was taking to long for an answer and I had to get to work. Finally, Nathalie came back and said that she put a ticket in for me and someone could not help me until Sunday because of a high volume of ticket problems. (6 days, really?). I told her that I was going to return it. She did not even offer to send me a replacement, and told me that she was sorry and I would have to wait for a service tech to call on Sunday. This was a deal breaker for me and I told her that I was going to return the cube because there were too many glitches. She particularly didn’t seemed concerned or tried to talk me out of it. In fact, she did the label and extended warranty for me which leads me to believe that Amazon released an unstable product that was not perfected for public use. I am very disappointed and expected better from amazon because I Always believed that there customer service was excellent. I am hoping to see the cube perfected and will wait for the second version. I hope my post helps others.

**** Update 2 **** 08/06/18I wanted this to work so bad that I actually purchased a new modem, hoping (foolishly) that it was our internet, even though the Fire TV cube was basically the only thing giving us trouble... Well, our internet speed increased quite a bit (~45mbps to ~80mbps) which is awesome, but guess what, The Fire TV still struggles to do anything, particularly navigate to Hulu, Netflix, play music, or turn on/off our TV about 80% of the time, which pretty much makes it useless to us.Just to make extra sure that it's the Fire TV (we want it to work SO badly!) we played the same shows on the same apps on our Xbox OneX at the same time the Fire TV wouldn't work - and low and behold the Xbox doesn't hiccup a bit.Also, for some odd freaking reason, when Alexa does choose to respond to "Alexa, play South Park on Hulu", she now plays South Park on Hulu in Spanish. I spoke to Hulu tech support for an hour and we came to the conclusion this is an issue with the Fire TV. Not surprisingly.As much as I desperately want this to work, I think we have to return it.**** Update ****Voice control has basically stopped working at all. The first few weeks, it performed as my original review states below - meticore, but did some things well.Now, it’s just the constant frustrating yellow bar of confusion from the box. Our internet (still) is perfect. Newish router, high speed tests, all other devices perform perfect, and even the Fire TV Cube internet settings claim our signal is “very good”.Luckily, everything regarding tv/movies about the cube works as long as you use the remote (minus voice control of course), but summoning Alexa is impossible. After 10 tries we could finally get a timer set...My advice is to HOLD OFF until they can figure these things out.****End Update********Old Review (3/5 stars)****I've been an Amazon member since 2007 and I'm pretty sure this is my first review, which I'm not proud to say. Reason being - this thing has so much potential it doesn't take advantage of, fails at a lot of the features it does have, and is missing many, MANY basic features it should have.Pros first:- 4K/HDR quality is excellent.- Overall performance is much snappier and fluid than the older Fire TV- Fire TV Cube hears and responds much better than our Echo Dot. Night and day difference.- Controls TV and soundbar almost as well as they advertise.- Many of the functions they advertise, such as searching and controlling apps, works great (most of the time...).Cons:- Lacks very basic features. The remote, like all remotes, has a back button that performs as you'd expect. The Fire TV does NOT. If you say "Alexa, go back", 9 times out of 10 it returns to the Home menu. This is extremely frustrating if your watching a show and just want to return to an episode guide or whatever the last page you were on in any app.- Random pausing and general app functionality. Our internet is great and yet certain apps randomly pause and play during shows and movies. It's NOT buffering, it's clearly a bug they need to work out. General app compatibility is also really buggy. I assume this will be fixed in updates soon.- Native Fire TV app design is terrible. It's clear they're trying to make the app as simplistic and straight forward as possible, but do so by sacrificing many basic functions you're used to. Getting to something as simple as a shows summary page is exhausting.Overall, we enjoy the Fire TV, even with it's flaws. It's clear the device is in its infancy and will be fine tuned with time, but until then it has plenty of frustrating qualities. A solid 3 out of 5 stars - it's not crap, but it's not a perfect device yet either.

I'll start by saying I love my Echo and Dots, of which I have three. So imagine how disappointed I was by this.It pauses every time you ask it do to something. Or if it hears the wake word on accident, which is all the time. It makes it super frustrating to watch live TV. Also, it is nearly impossible to navigate by voice and half the time will say "ok!" and not do what you asked it to. I have to ask another device to turn off my alarm/timer or work my lights.Also, the lack of pause/rewind support by voice for anything other than Prime is frustrating.Just stick with a Roku... wish I could go back, but I'm stuck paying for this. Disappointed.