Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Firestick works so well that I use and enjoy it every day while sorta hating myself for buying it. It has replaced all my other streaming devices in a way that kinda makes me sick, but it's just so darn good at what it does. Congratulations, Amazon. It adapts well to our old sound system and even to an older (pre-HD flat screen) TV. Takes some configuring, but generally recognizes components like magic. I hate the remote. I absolutely hate it and I came here to scream into the void about it. I get it, Amazon. You went with small, sleek, and "modern." Here are the reasons old remotes were not made this way, and why it frequently leads to screaming and swearing: SIZE Old remotes were chunky for a reason. This one is tiny and smooth. It slips from unsure hands. It slides away between couch cushions. In the middle of a movie my dog jumped on the couch and it slipped into the tiniest cracks in the cushions and was nearly lost in a gap in the frame. It vanishes into the house as soon as you take your eyes off of it. Making popcorn and you set it down? It's gone. Opened a couple of beers? Good luck. Kids are screaming? Dog is barking? You need to pause your program for any reason? Either you lost the remote and can't pause it, or you've paused it and now the remote is gone. Its design is more than ableist (which I accuse it of frequently), it's just garbage. Yes, I know there are products to compensate for this spectacular failure, but they shouldn't be necessary. Just make a TV remote for human hands for TV purposes. THE STUPID BUTTONS Speaking of ablism, old remotes had large buttons with raised surfaces. This design is associated with products for the elderly and disabled, but it also benefitted the able-bodied because those buttons could be found and used in the dark by anyone. Some had a light-up feature. Some glowed in the dark. Large buttons were easy to find. They took more than a slight pressure to push, and the best ones had raised designs so you knew what you were pressing without looking at it, and didn't have to look away from the TV to hunt for them. The number of times I have pushed "Back" or "Home" instead of RWD or Pause is utterly infuriating. There's a tiny little dot where the Home button is. Easily missed. Placed by someone who has never used a remote before. Who never thought about how much someone will hate their product every time they got to press Pause and find themselves on the home screen. I often think about what this would be like with kids. They'd be screaming. I'm already screaming. It'd be a mess. Sometimes the buttons get pressed when the remote slides away into the cushions. At least in the old days it took a little more effort to push them by accident. Now all it takes is the slightest touch. IT'S STUPID The whole remote is designed by people who have never used a remote before. NO TETHER - NOR PLACE TO ATTACH ONE There's not even a tether. At least in the old days if you were going to design a tiny terrible product you would at least have an attachable wrist tether and hope it would compensate for something. I would attach it to a larger lanyard - preferably one that glows in the dark and/or has an internal LED. THERE'S ONLY ONE Just throwing this out there: Old TVS used to come with a PAIR of remotes. If you're going to design a remote slightly larger than the one for my old CD player (which, interestingly, was never lost and had none of these problems because it was designed by someone who knew what a remote was for), and slightly smaller than a Wii remote, at least sell the product with 2 of them. Don't charge extra. Just sell 2. One of them can be the standard version without Alexa. I don't care as long as a 2nd remote can theoretically be found when the first one disappears in plain sight. Screw this remote. ...Now back to my show.