But are the compromises worth the lower price? Let’s find out.
Design and Build
The Fire TV Stick Lite boasts an almost identical design to its brethren, with a compact rectangular shape. It can be plugged directly into your TV or attached via the HDMI extender which is included in the box. All-in-all, the Fire TV Stick Lite itself is rather discreet and can be hidden away neatly. The matte black finish is inconspicuous and will blend in with most TV setups.
Alongside the stick, you also get the all-important remote. On here you can control playback (playing, pausing, forwarding and rewinding), navigate to the homepage, go back a step, turn on the Alexa voice assistant, bring up the settings and scroll through the various bits of content on the homepage. The remote on the Lite version has some key differences to the traditional Fire TV Stick – namely that it has no volume controls and no power button.
In addition, the device only goes into sleep mode either after a period of inactivity or by manually selecting it in the settings. Sleep mode isn’t the same as powered off – if you want to do this you’ll have to unplug it or turn it off at the wall. The Alexa voice assistant is mostly pretty responsive to most commands. I only had one occasion where it got confused, but otherwise, it recognised film titles, playback options, the ability to open apps and more.
Software, Compatibility and Performance
The stick can only steam content at either 720p or 1080p at 60fps with support for HDR, HDR10+ and HLG. If you have a 4K TV and want to get the most out of the resolution, you’ll need a 4K Fire TV stick. Audio is another compromise on the Fire TV Stick Lite. The standard Fire TV Stick has support for Dolby Atmos, whilst the Fire TV Stick Lite only supports Dolby Audio via pass-through HDMI. Depending on your TV and audio setup, the difference may not be that noticeable – but if you have a good sound system or are a real audio buff, it’s worth spending the extra dosh for the standard Fire TV stick.
In the UK you can also watch local catch-up services such as BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4 and more. Meanwhile, users in the US can stream the likes of HBO Max, Hulu, Starz and Sling. The interface of the Fire TV Stick Lite boasts a clean grid layout. The main menu sits in the middle of the screen when you first load up, and you get tabs for your featured apps and games, recommended video channels, recommended apps and more. The home screen also keeps track of your six most-used apps for quick and easy access. You can manually search for titles by using the ‘Find’ tab, however, it’s much quicker and easy to do this via Alexa voice control than spending the time typing out a show/movie via the on-screen keyboard. In addition, there is a ‘Live’ tab, which will open the standard TV apps which you can use to watch live broadcast TV (iPlayer, ITV Hub) as well as any Twitch channels that you’re following.
There’s a sponsored tab right in the middle of the interface with some odd apps on there, including Just Eat and Now Music. It was annoying that this took up room on the homepage, especially considering that they were quite niche apps for Fire TV. There was the odd occasion where the stick took ages to recognise my home Wi-Fi network after being disconnected from the internet. It did so eventually – but this is something to be aware of.
Pricing and Availability
However, the main Fire TV Stick is only £10/$10 more expensive than the Lite version. With that, you get better audio compatibility, volume controls and a power button.
You can also check out our list of the best streaming devices.
Verdict
The Fire TV Stick Lite is the streaming stick for you if you want the basics – you don’t have any need for 4K streaming, and you don’t have an advanced sound system. All you want to do is get the apps on your TV for the cheapest price possible. Hannah Cowton is a Senior Staff Writer at Tech Advisor and Macworld, working across entertainment, consumer technology and lifestyle. Her interests and specialities lie in streaming services, film and television reviews and rumours, gaming, wearables and smart home products. She’s also the creator of The London Geek, a geek culture and lifestyle blog.
