Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Being an all Apple household I have to say this device impressed me quite a bit. I purchased a Firestick Lite over a year ago to take with me for travel but it had a bit of lag and seemed to have network drop outs on hotel WiFi (I know hotel WiFi is less than desired but it was annoying). In December this device was on sale for over half off and I decided to try it out. This was after I had gotten the previous Firestick 4K which was a decent product but I found out it for whatever reason cannot get the latest software (but the "less capable" Firestick Lite can, baffling I know). I purchased this one and sent back the FireStick 4K as the refund on the Firestick 4K covered the cost of this one and then some. Things that impressed me (with caveats): 1. Ability to use captive portal internet. Currently the tvOS on the AppleTV does not allow for this unless you go through a process to spoof the MAC address of a device on the captive portal or somehow get a hold of the internet provider's help desk to have them add the MAC address. A "dance" I successfully completed once but by the time I was complete it was too late to watch anything. Caveat, this will be resolved with the upcoming release of tvOS 15.4 as the beta version has the ability to connect to captive portal internet in hotels. 2. Ease of use - plug it into the HDMI port and power via the Micro USB port via the TV or power brick. Then sign into your Amazon account. 3. Picture is really good on both 4K TVs and 1080 TVs 4. Responsive when going through menus and applications - caveat, if there is enough storage available to make memory and swap cache available. (See below). 5. Main screen is customizable and you are able to set your favorite applications there. Especially helpful for use by kids. 6. Ability to set multiple profiles. I have two daughters and was able to add the kids profiles that they use on their Amazon Fire Kids tablets. We will not go into the annoyances with the Kids interface. Caveat related to limited storage and having to "download" applications to the Kid's profile is counts towards the storage limit. Annoyances: 1. Amount of storage is only 8GB? It's 2022 Amazon could afford to add more storage to these devices without adding much to the cost. Even 16GB of flash storage would be better. Having to offload applications in order to make cache available to applications can properly run gets old. Yes, I understand you can attach an external device to this for giving it more storage via a hub for applications but that negates the "throw it in your backpack and go" idea I bought it for. 2. Not being able to easily close down applications to make more RAM and storage available (see above). I know this device is more or less running Amazon's version of Android, but even a quick way to shut down applications from the remote would be convenient. 3. The constantly running ads in the main interface and now the ads that pop-up when using live streaming applications like DirectTV Stream. We've come accept commercials are annoying enough when watching broadcast TV but an ad that takes over the screen in the middle of the program is a bit too far. 4. No geo-location ability. This means applications that have the ability to "know" where it is based on the IP address of the internet will automatically know which channels to load (or allow you to "spoof" your location with a VPN). If this is not present services like DirectTV Stream default to the billing zip code and you are locked to the channels for your billing zip code. 5. Kid's Profile cannot be sorted and customized in the same way the regular profile can. Unlike the AppleTV, it is not a profile set with age restrictions and purchase restrictions and it being there same interface as the adult profiles. It might be cute to have a kids interface but it's annoying for kids who already know how to navigate the regular interface. It is the same type of profile that the tablet has and more or less shows what "Amazon thinks they would like" based on habits. Applications cannot be pinned and in addition to this they have to be re-downloaded after being added to their profile instead of just appearing on the profile. This counts towards the used storage. Amazon needs to fix this across all of their devices and do what iOS and tvOS does and have a data partition for a user with applications be available to all users so you do not have to re-download applications. The above said, I've deleted the kids profiles. My kids only go to the pinned applications and access their profiles continued in those applications. 6. All of the privacy settings are automatically set to "allow" - location, watching history, targeted ads, application downloads etc. You have to go into every application as well as the settings for the device and the application setting on the device to turn all of this off. Unless you really "dig" the settings are kinda hidden which is the point as Amazon makes a ton of money off of selling the data provided by the device and applications to 3rd parties. 7. Updates are a PITA. Update notifications are given but not for how many or what they are for. Usually it takes several attempts to check for and run all of the updates. Several times I have thought I bricked the device as it seems to hang when "installing". Backing out of the update, restarting the device and running the scan for updates then shows the update completed and another update is showing. This is a common theme with all Android based devices. Conclusion: If you are an Apple user and looking for something that give you access to your streaming services (Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, DirectTV Stream, PBS etc) on the as well as AppleTV+ this device will do the job. If you are like me this will more than likely be your travel and secondary device that gets tossed in or stays in a bag. DO your due dillgence and turn on all of the privacy settings to "off" or "do not allow" for the FireOS and each application, this usually stops the ads during live TV streams.