Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

**** Update 2 **** 08/06/18 I 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.