It’s a little hard to believe we’ve gone through most of 2024 without a new Amazon Fire TV Stick. That is, until now. The Fire TV Stick HD has been announced, with the $35 device reducing the Fire TV Stick lineup from four to three and in the process replacing the two oldest sticks in the family. The $40 Fire TV Stick and the $30 Fire TV Stick Lite will still be around while they’re in stock. But after that, they’re gone.
The other two current devices remain the second-generation Fire TV Stick 4K, and the second-gen Fire TV Stick 4K Max, which we still consider to be the best Fire TV Stick to get.
There’s not a ton to write home about here. The Fire TV Stick HD, as the name implies, tops out at 1080p. It does support HDR, HDR 10, HDR10+, and HLG, but there’s no Dolby Vision, or Dolby Atmos for audio, for that matter. (It does support HDMI passthrough of Dolby-encoded audio, though.) It comes with the basic Alexa Voice remote, uses the older Wi-Fi 5 (that’s 802.11ac) standard, and has just 8GB of storage for apps and movies or whatever, along with 1GB of RAM. It’ll work with Amazon’s Luna cloud gaming service, but not Xbox Game Pass.
It’s also lacking other Fire TV OS features like the Ambient Experience, which allows for AI-generated artwork, and you won’t even get picture-in-picture support on this stick.
So this stick’s as much about Amazon consolidating things at the low end as it is anything else. Good for a spare room, perhaps, but probably not for your living room.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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