AMAZON FIRE CUBE SERIES
AMAZON FIRE CUBE TV

Sometimes, Alexa just didn't work as advertised.

I was finally starting to experience Amazon's vision for the Cube, and it felt pretty cool. At last, I could finally skip easily around cable, multiple streaming devices and gaming consoles all with a few simple commands to Alexa.

AMAZON FIRE CUBE TV

My TV went from the Fire TV home screen directly to ESPN on my cable box. To my genuine surprise and delight, it worked. Amazon claims cable boxes from Spectrum, my provider, along with a string of others, work in conjunction with the Cube to allow Alexa to control your cable.Īfter I added the cable box to my list of connected devices, I said aloud 'Alexa, tune to ESPN on cable,' and held my breath. I then hooked up my cable box directly to the Cube through the HDMI input. To my surprise, it automatically recognized the model and connected easily. By this point in the process, I was just happy that Alexa worked at all.įinally, I connected the Cube to an LG TV circa 2011 to see how it worked with older devices. Unfortunately, I was unable to get Alexa to launch my Xbox games, despite spending hours checking all my settings on both devices and using the prompts listed on the Xbox site. The Cube recognized the TV immediately, and Alexa was able to switch back and forth between my Xbox and my Roku with ease. Next, I tried the exact same setup on a 2020 Samsung TV, which, to my relief, worked much better. The Cube just doesn't want to work with this TCL TV. They sent me a brand new Cube to see if that would help. I contacted Amazon and had a meeting with its technicians to try to fix the issue. I spent way too many hours trying any conceivable combination to get it working consistently. Even if it made the correct guess one time, it would switch to the wrong input the next. As a backup measure, I tried to teach it the infrared signals my remote uses when switching to each device, but that also failed to work. Eventually, the Cube was able to turn my TV on and off using Alexa, but it remained incapable of adequately reading which device was plugged in, and to which HDMI. Instead, I needed to manually find and click on my TV manufacturer.

AMAZON FIRE CUBE SERIES

I first tried to add a Roku and an Xbox Series X to a Cube plugged into a 2021 TCL 6 Series Google TV, but the Cube failed to automatically recognize the television. In order to set up this feature, you first need to head to Equipment Control in the settings menu to add each extra piece of equipment you want to connect.

At $140/£140 this is more expensive than any Roku or Google Chromecast device by quite some way, and more than double Amazon’s own Fire TV Stick 4K Max.Amazon touts that you'll be able to connect many of your TV-related devices to your Cube so it can seamlessly switch between streaming, a game console or even a cable box. The Fire TV Cube is available now from Amazon (of course) though you can also pick one up from other tech retailers like Best Buy in the US, or Currys in the UK. Assuming you’re happy to have Amazon drive your smart home’s smarts, that’s a big appeal and softens the steep price point. That means the Fire TV Cube pulls double duty, saving you the cost of an Echo Dot (or allowing you to move an existing one to another room in the house). This is functionally an Echo Dot in addition to a TV streamer, with all the usual benefits of a small smart speaker: reminders, queries, smart home controls, and music playback (here getting all the benefits of whatever sound system you have hooked up to the TV). The bigger benefit of the Fire TV Cube is that Alexa works hands-free, and even when the TV is off.

Amazon fire cube