The battle for your living room is alive and kicking
For the longest time, I’ve been waiting on Amazon to roll out a TV that had their Fire TV OS built in. While I enjoy my Fire TV (2nd generation) right now, between connecting my Xbox One, PC, and PlayStation 4 Pro into the mix, The Fire TV takes up an extra HDMI port. As you can imagine, short of picking up a 4K switch, I’m left with playing musical chairs with the devices. However, it looks like those days may be over as Amazon and Elements have teamed up for the first Amazon Fire TV powered display.
Check out our Fire TV Second Generation Review here
This new TV, aptly called the Elements 4K LED TV – Amazon Fire TV Edition will combine the latest generation of Amazon Fire TV with a 4K picture, starting at sub $500 price tag. The unit will be powered by a 1.1GHz quad-core CPU, multi-core 3D GPU, which on paper looks to be lesser powerful than the 4K Amazon Fire TV set-up box. We’ll have to wait until the TV is released to find out if it runs as good or not. And yes, that name is a mouthful.
What this also means is that in addition to Amazon’s own streamable content, you’ll still have access to everything else that is available via the Amazon Fire TV. HBO Now, Spotify, Hulu, Sling, CBS, YouTube and many others. If the battle between Apple’s TV, Roku and Amazon wasn’t already battling for your living room or man cave space, they will be and soon.
While this TV isn’t available just yet, it is currently up for pre-order over at Amazon. The Elements 4K LED TV – Amazon Fire TV Edition (that’s a mouthful) will be released on June 14th, 2017. At launch will be four different TV sizes: 43-inch ($449), 50-inch ($549), 55-inch ($649) and a 65-inch ($899) model. Sadly, these sets will not include either Dolby Vision or HDR10, so if HDR is important to you, you may want to pass on this. Still, for the price, you can’t deny come packed with several attractive features.
Provided with the 4K TV will is an Alexa powered remote that features buttons to take you directly to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Amazon Music. The TV includes 4x HDMI ports, coaxial connection. ARC, 1 USB 2.0, 1 USB 3.0, SD card, Ethernet, composite/component, headphone, optical audio out connections. That’s a lot, especially the 4x HDMI connections.
Looks like I’ll have to pick up one of these TV’s when it launches. You know, for testing purposes.
