Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I want to start off by saying this a great device. It's super fast, the UI is slick and snappy with zero lag. Overall it's a really good streaming device that gives you everything you need. If you have a non-smart TV with no built-in apps, this will be a life saver. However, if you have a smart tv with built-in streaming apps, you will not be happy with the video quality. I have a 2020 LG OLED E9 which is a powerful tv with a bunch of features and support for the latest video & audio formats. It has all the built-in apps I could ever want but I thought I could benefit from a separate dedicated streaming device to take advantage of the ecosystem. Since my tv does 4K, eARC, Dolby Atmos, HDMI 2.1, HDR, Dolby Vision, etc., I assumed the video quality from the Fire Cube would be identical to what I get from my LG's apps. Boy was I wrong! The problem is with this HDR/Dolby Vision nonsense which makes videos super dark compared to my LG's app. Take a look at my comparison photo while streaming the movie Bright (no pun intended) on Netflix. This picture was taken with a cell phone in a dark living room so it's not true-to-life colors, but it highlights just how dark all the scenes are on the Fire Cube compared to my LG's app. After being spoiled from my tv's apps, the Cube streaming was basically unwatchable. Everything is so dark and when watching nighttime movie scenes is like having the tv off. This isn't a new or unique issue either. Do a Google search for "Fire tv netflix dark" and you'll see this is has been going for years on all versions of Fire tv products with zero resolution. There is really something wrong with how Fire devices interpret the HDR/HDR10/Dolby Vision info from streaming apps. And I know it's the Fire Cube because my 10-bit OLED panel supports all these formats and the streaming apps play perfectly with beautiful color. I tried every setting possible and nothing would help. Changed every possible setting in Fire OS; color, resolution, frame rate settings and tried Adaptive HDR. The problem is there is no true way to disable and turn off all this HDR wizardry in Fire OS which ruins the picture. Choosing Adaptive HDR and lowering the color bit to 8 makes no change. I also tried changing all the HDMI input settings on my tv, turned off Ultra Deep HD color, increased brightness, gamma, etc. Nothing would help. The Fire OS menus and interface were super bright but as soon as the movie would start playing, the picture would go dark because of the HDR/Dolby Vision. It got to the point where I could no longer watch movies on this thing. And it's unfortunate because I really liked the device but for the foreseeable future, I'll have to rely on smart tvs and their built-in apps. So in summary, if you have a smart tv, keep using your tv's apps because chances are you will not like the video quality. If you have a non-smart tv or no other way to use streaming apps, you will love it.