Amazon’s Fire TV devices make regular appearances in our best media streamer pages because they work well and they’re reasonably priced. But these cracking little devices are set to get even better over the next few weeks as Amazon introduces a completely revamped UI.
Dubbed the “All-new Fire TV Experience”, the redesign improves usability across the board and introduces a handful of extra features. There’s loads to get your head around.
The new UI was initially announced during the firm’s annual hardware unveiling in March 2020 — where the 4th generation Echo and Echo Dot were first shown — and it’s now set to be unleashed across a range of different devices in time for Christmas.
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What’s new?
Top of the list is the arrival or profiles. Confusingly, although the Prime Video service has had profiles for some time, the Fire TV platform has not.
Now, what you watch across multiple streaming services will feed back into your personalised suggestions, ensuring you don’t get a stream of anime series recommended based on your children’s one-track watching habits.
The new profiles should also make it much easier to keep track of where you’re up to in a series if two users are watching at different rates.
Profiles are super easy to set up, too, as you can now import pre-existing Amazon profiles from your account. Oddly, though, Fire TV still doesn’t support child profiles as tablets like the Fire HD 8 do.
The UI is getting a revamp as well, with a change to the way the home page is set up. When your hardware gets the update the first thing you’ll notice is that there’s now more space dedicated to suggestions at the top; you may also spot that the main menu rail has moved to the middle and has a new, friendlier and more personalised look to it.
On this rail, you’ll see the profile icon for whoever is using the Fire TV currently, then the new Library, Home and Find tabs, followed by launch buttons for your favourite apps. And as you highlight these app buttons, you’ll see an “App peek” showing what’s trending now on the service before you click on it.
The Library tab gathers together the content you’ve put on your watchlist and lists any purchases and rentals you’ve made.
The Home tab, meanwhile, makes suggestions based on general popularity or whatever Amazon wants to promote at any given time — you’ll also see your "recently watched" lists here.
Finally, the Find tab collects all the Fire TV’s search tools together on one page, including voice and keyword searches, and category searches from Films and TV programmes to Sport, Documentaries, and more.
Which hardware is getting the new features?
The first hardware to get the new software will be Amazon’s cheapest devices: the latest generation Fire TV stick and the Fire TV Stick Lite. These devices will receive the update in the coming weeks.
After that comes the Fire TV Cube early in 2021 – although, for those who own Fire Edition TVs like the JVC Fire Edition TV , the wait will be longer. The update should still arrive at some point in 2021, however.
