Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this in order to have an Alexa-enabled device connected to our media center and be able to play Prime music through the home stereo. It does that well, and I am happy to give this three stars based on that low-expectation functionality. Fire TV 4K fails to get any more stars because I do not enjoy the user interface. I do not like that I have no way to explicitly browse content that streams for free via my Prime membership. I am frustrated that Amazon consistently interjects media content that is pay-per-view in search results and category browsing. Amazon has intentionally chosen not to include flagging on the thumbnails that identifies which content is Prime and which is not. In the mobile Prime Video app interface, this is a convenient feature. Fire TV has introduced a regression in this regard by requiring users to click on a thumbnail before they can find out if something is pay-per-view or free. I am tempted to drop a star on this review simply because of this frustration. Another thing that sucks about the UI is the proliferation of horizontal scrolling of thumbnails. This requires a separate button push for EVERY thumbnail, of which there are usually dozens in a horizontally-arranged list. I would prefer to see vertical pages of thumbnails that I could scroll down on and only have to push the button per row of three or four thumbnails. I suspect there was some user group testing where they found people perceived the collection of content was greater if it was arranged in this manner rather than in vertically-scrolling pages. I'm also not fond of the trailers they squeeze in front of the content you are trying to watch. It's just another obstacle to have to leap past. It would be one thing if they used their robust analytics capabilities to present properly-targetted content trailers, but it's clearly generic advertising. My hope is that Amazon will improve these UI failures and make this device much better. The hardware aspect of this product is satisfactory. UPDATE 10/31: I dropped a star. Review is now two-stars. This evening I saw a banner ad on the Fire TV 4k home screen advertising a Hewlett Packard computer. I did not buy what I thought was a premium media player for me to be sold to advertisers as a captive audience for ads. I am strongly considering returning this device to purchase an AppleTV 4k unit.