Amazon announced today the all-new Fire TV Stick 4K Max as the next successor of the top-selling Fire TV Stick 4K. The new 4K Stick Max comes with a faster CPU and a faster GPU, which Amazon claims it’s 40% more powerful than the existing Fire TV Stick 4K. It also gets an upgrade to its connectivity with the latest Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax standard, and they also added 500 MB to the RAM bring it up to 2GB.
The Fire TV Stick 4k Max is powered by a MediaTek MT8696 quad-core CPU at 1.8GHz. It’s GPU is a Imagination Technologies PowerVR GE9215 at 750 MHz. Both are similar with the Fire TV Stick 4K but notably faster than the SoC in the existing Fire TV Stick 4K which has a MT8695 quad-core at 1.7GHz CPU and a PowerVR GE8300 at 650 MHz GPU. Another improvement is the upgraded RAM from 1.5 to 2 GB RAM which is not that much more that every one was hoping, but still an improvement, and unfortunately the internal storage did not get upgraded and stayed the same at 8 GB.
With the improved performance, Amazon says will result in apps starting faster and more fluid navigation. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max can also display live doorbell and security camera feeds in a picture-in-picture window while you are watching a movie or TV show, without pausing. This can be done by saying “preview [camera name]” to the Alexa remote or can be configured with a routine to automatically appear when a Ring doorbell is pressed. The 2nd-gen Fire TV Cube is currently the only device capable of picture-in-picture, due to the performance requirements necessary to stream two video feeds simultaneously.
One other addition to the new Fire TV Stick 4k Max is the support for AV1 hardware video decoding. Some streaming service providers like YouTube and YouTube TV, are pushing the use of AV1 video encoding over H.265 HEVC, since it has a royalty-free license. Some Fire TV Smart TV models already have support for AV1, but its great to see that it has been included in the Fire TV Stick 4k Max and hopefully other models will follow.
The Fire TV 4K Max supports 4K UHD video playback at 60 FPS and all the high dynamic range video formats, like HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, and Dolby Vision. For audio, it supports Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, and Dolby Atmos surround sound.
As mentioned before, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max is the first Fire TV device to support Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax standard. This comes with the inclusion of a MediaTeck MT7921LS Wi-Fi 6 chipset, which is mostly found on gaming phones and laptops. Wi-Fi 6 should result in better gigabit network speeds and lower latency, and also provide a greater signal range to help reduce buffering issues. Of course, if you do not have a Wi-Fi 6 router, the Fire T Stick 4K Max is backwards compatible with older 802.11ac and other Wi-Fi 5 standards.
Another upgrade on the Fire TV Stick4K Max is support for Auto-Low Latency Mode which is included with HDMI 2.1 standard. This, combined with the lower latency of Wi-Fi 6 will provide a smoother, more fluid streaming and gaming experience.
Some unfortunate specs of the Fire TV Stick 4K Max that will disappoint many, is that it still has only 8 GB of internal storage, like all the other Fire Sticks before it. The only model that comes with 16 GB of storage is the mush more expensive Fire TV Cube. One thing that redeems the Fire TV Stick 4K Max is, it comes with Fire OS 7 which is based on Android 9 Pie, that supports expandable external storage via a USB drive connected to an OTG Cable. However, which brings us to another disappointment, it still uses a USB 2.0 micro USB connection for power and data. This means that even if you used a compatible Gigabit Ethernet adapter, the fastest speed you can achieve is around 300-400 Mbps.
The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is available to pre-order now for $54.99 and will be released on October 7.
