Amazon Fire TV 50" 4-Series, 4K UHD smart TV with Alexa Voice Remote Enhanced, stream live TV without cable

Great quality, great sound quality, excellent, clear picture and excellent color, perfect size, no lag. I don't really like Alexa on it, it's hit and miss, she doesn't even turn the TV off correctly when I ask her too..I think Alexa is the "worst" of the TV, other than that it's a pretty great product

It’s a great tv, the picture is wonderful, the sound is clear, I don’t have to download everything onto my PlayStation to watch streaming services, and the price was way better than the alternatives. I can’t tell you how long it will last but there’s been no problems with connectivity or use. I’m not a fan of talking to it, so I don’t. And I don’t enjoy ads on my home screen, but I don’t enjoy ads anywhere so I just go where I’m going. There’s no reason to spend more for the same thing, and I’m really very happy with this purchase.

I considered getting a larger TV for several years before finally ordering one last week. I got a good price, and it was delivered in 4 days, just as advised when I ordered. The Amazon delivery driver carried the package upstairs without being asked, and was pleasant and helpful. The TV itself is quite light, and I was easily able to unbox it myself (but anything larger than the 44” would need 2 people). The legs attached easily, and the cord and HDMI cables were obvious and easy to hook up. I had the unit in place and connected in just over 5 minutes. Since I’m not very tech-y, setup of new electronics is always a worry. I turned on the TV with the remote, selected my wifi network and entered the password. The TV then cycled several times through “downloading software” and “installing updates” screens. I was worried that I was stuck in some tech vortex, but just waited. After about 10-15 minutes, the TV prompted me to sign in with my Amazon account, asked whether I wanted extra channels or parental controls, then boom, it was on its regular Home Screen and I was good to go! Picture is clear and colors very saturated compared to what I previously had. Sound is good (general purpose, I’m not a music critic) and refresh rate very adequate for TV (I’m also not a gamer). I think that for my purposes (occasional TV viewing, probably less than 8 hours per week), this will be an excellent set that I will enjoy.

UPDATE: Updated to 4 stars. Maybe 4.5 considering the value price. Turning off HDR on both TV and Roku, plus turning off dynamic brightness on TV ended up helping a lot. Realize this TV has video profiles for each input so i had to change on each. No the picture and viewing angles don't compare to our 55" TCL QLED which has incredible viewing angles but that TV was kind 3x as expensive too. Plus apps seem to be optimizing quality as i use the TV more which helped a lot too. I debated editing my review but think it's still useful for others and Amazon to show a real world experience including the frustrations. A new issue I'm seeing is audio cutting out entirely during transitions between shows & ads that didn't happen on our old TV but thinking it's an app specific issue not the TV So our old 1080 48" HD TV was finally on its last legs and we love our TCL Roku TV we use in the living room so i was ready to buy 55" Roku brand TV and happened upon this 55" FireTV with basically the same specs but almost 100 bucks cheaper so it was tough to justify buying the Roku TV especially since we have a Roku soundbar so don't really need a smart TV let alone built in Roku so i bit and ordered the FireTV. First impression wasn't great in that it took over an hour to do the initial setup thanks to all the updates that seemed to be in SV endless loop as they'd finish then low and behold it was doing more! eventually i got to actually try the TV.. at first it was very impressive and clearly better picture than our old HD TV. of course that was just menus as ran thru installing apps which took forever in part because they'd stick at 'installing' FOR HOURS.. i mean i only did 5 or 10 as i was finding the ones we use on Roku but it's ridiculous it should take hours to install the apps on our broadband connection. i think it was hung up because i restarted the FireTV and at first it seemed they were still stuck but then boom they all finished within seconds. no idea what the issue was but our Internet was definitely working. once apps were usable i sat down to watch a few things and things were washed out. I'd switch to other apps thinking it was just a particular one but everything was washed out. i tried adjusting video settings. i tried the Roku thru hdmi4. washed out. then i happened to stand up and the picture was better. not much but noticeable. i tried multiple apps while standing and indeed they all were better. then i stood directly in front of it dead center and the picture was incredible! if i duck down 2 feet or so and picture gets a little washed out but the big one is not being directly in front of the TV.. as i step sideways i can see tht picture wash out. and no not at 170 degrees but like 15 or 20. it reminds me of very early LCD flat panel TV's where you have to sit in front not off to side at all. i did find turning off HDR on FireTV and on the Roku it helped some (especially how dark things were) but really it depends more on what's being watched and the contrast of what's shown. I took video clip of paused Disney+ on Roku at 4k with HDR off to show an example even if it's not the worst of what I've seen in testing. Watch how the colors change even just moving a few feet to side and back to center. I do like the quick switch previous app option that Roku doesn't have though. Very handy feature I'll keep testing but honestly at the angle of my favorite chair (roughly 15 degrees down and 30 degrees left) it looks so bad trying to watch even just the news I'm not sure I'm keeping this TV..

Overall, I like this. This may be the same model I've already purchased two of, but not reviewed, or a close "variant". I love my Fire TVs though I felt that the earlier ones lacked enough space for applications. This is one I purchased for a different reason. I'm using it as a computer monitor. You have to be careful on this and if you're one who plays games, this might not be for you. It's absolutely NOT snappy fast as game players need, but for me doing my usual academic work (i.e. -grading) and setting up virtual machines and such, it's absolutely fine. I will say that I made the decision to buy it based on another user's review that it was suitable as a computer monitor and handled text well enough, which not all smart televisions can do when being used as a monitor. Pros Easy setup Has a nice picture, and adds HDR when being used as a computer monitor Has ample storage to add apps (around 12 GB) Cons It can get a little strange as a computer display. You might find your scaling changed, may find you need to modify your refresh. Don't try and overdo it even if it's got refresh rate above 60 Hz, as mine showed. In my own tests, it appears to cause the screen to periodically blank out. Overall, I like it and I'd recommend it. The photo shown is me using it as a computer monitor.

I like that I'm able to watch my favorite movies and shows in 4k UHD on a bright vivid screen. Voice control remote and connectivity with Alexa allow me to control the TV from anywhere in the house. The TV also has pretty great sound as well. Great TV for the money.

SUMMARY: Fails primary functions as a TV. Poor integration with HDMI inputs and antenna. Won't change inputs without first running the fire OS. No hard button work around. Terrible sound. Updated and media player won't work on any app, and can't find antenna. Now it's useless, can't even function as a basic "panel" and install your favorite media devices. Detail: This TV has been a failure since day one. I turned it on in the living room and went to enjoy my new TV only to find that it has forced all of the profiles from Amazon kids onto my TV which caused it to lag severely. I had originally set up Amazon kids on a fire TV stick 4K, and was using a standard fire TV stick in the living room on an old Sony Bravia LCD. This setup worked fine. I couldn't imagine "upgrading" to an Amazon Fire TV would cause so many problems. Firstly, I have avoided paying extra for any supposed smart TV because of the inevitable: the onboard electronics that make the TV smart will become outdated, performance will lag, and will eventually lose app support and be deprecated. It makes much more sense to buy a high quality panel, a dumb TV, and upgrade it over time with new media devices whether it be DVD to Blu-ray or fire TV stick to fire TV stick 4K. My 2008 Sony Bravia performed wonderfully, and is still performing. It's heavy, and the screen got kicked in a move, but still the only reason I considered replacing it was the great price on the Amazon TV. I figured since I was not paying extra for the smart functions, it really wouldn't matter if the onboard player and the operating system aged and were eventually deprecated. I thought that worst case, I could simply purchase separate media devices and peripherals, including even a fire TV stick, and I'd be no worse off. I was completely wrong. I immediately regretted it. Not only is the sound from the built-in speakers on the 4 series absolutely pitiful by any standards, but compared to my Bravia that produces sound rivaling a separate soundbar there was no way it was going to feel like an upgrade. Add the fact that there are no hard buttons, the Alexa voice controls did not work and have never worked, and the Bluetooth remote doesn't have an input source change button (rather a button that brings up a menu to change input through the software). I started realizing I had received more value from my 2014 purchase of a bare-bones Samsung LCD at Wal-Mart (still running fine). So you can't just turn the TV on and switch to your video game console. You have to wait for it to boot up, find the console through the HDMI cable, and then switch to it. If the video game console is not powered on, or does not provide standby power through the HDMI, or the HDMI cable isn't CEC compatible, the TV won't even FIND the console. Why does it matter if the TV can't find the console? Because if the Amazon Fire TV 4 Series can't identify the device on the HDMI input, it will NOT change to that input. You can't just change to whichever HDMI you want and it show up as a black screen if there is no input. You also can't unplug the HDMI cable while using the input. If the fire TV does not detect an incoming signal it will not allow you to use the HDMI port. So you can see how that would make this pretty useless as a TV. I can't just plug in whatever I want and make the TV switch to the input with a physical, internal, electrical switch. It only works through the software. That might not seem like a huge deal, but it definitely ruins the concept of using the TV simply as a panel as it ages. The dependency on the aging operating system diminishes any remaining utility. I had thought that the antenna functioned a little bit differently, but after working with it and finding the severe dependency on the channel scan there really was no appreciable differentiation between antenna or HDMI as far as the operating system is concerned. It actually gets quite confusing because Amazon and prime try and cram a bunch of live TV garbage into the space where you find your antenna channels, making it seem like there is a bunch of content but in reality it is just a prompt and clickbait to download more apps or sign up for more services. Finally, everything is dependent on the Fire TV Player. This is the app or software that handles the streaming playback from Amazon, prime, Netflix, YouTube, everything. It is an onboard app, it cannot be updated through the app store, and you cannot revert it to an earlier version. Amazon's custom, chopped up, version of Android that makes up Fire OS is such garbage and so difficult to work with that there really is no way to delete and reinstall the app. If it was a fire tablet or something you might have a chance, but aside from figuring out how to connect this to a PC and run Android Debugger I think it's pretty well hopeless. The end result: Amazon, in their infinite post-Bezos wisdom, has decided forcing an ever increasing amount of ads and bloatware onto my devices is the way to go for revenue, rather than their tried and proven method of providing quality, low cost, intuitive devices that incentivize customers to purchase digital products and services through their compatible ecosystem. This has caused both of my Echo Show 5 to glitch on the main screens, and has now murdered my Fire TV 4-Series. First, following an update, the Fire TV started taking over 20 minutes to start. That's not an exaggeration, that's an actual time, just letting it sit for over 20 minutes. How much over I don't know because I couldn't stand to just sit and wait for more than 20 minutes at one go. Once it had started however things were not any better. The fire media player is dead. No matter what I do and no matter which app I use when playing video I get a horizontal lined Poltergeist nightmare but without any sound. Ironically, this even affects the home screen when it tries to force feed me paid content and suggestions. Anytime it tries to run a video clip it goes to the green horror screen. The antenna is dead. It isn't recognized and I cannot rescan channels. In fact the menu option is just completely gone from the operating system. There isn't even a FAQ or troubleshooting guide that doesn't require using this rescan function so you can imagine how worthless this TV has become. I tried deleting and reinstalling the apps with no effect. I tried deleting the cache and data on the Fire Media Player with no effect. I tried restarting it over and over to no effect. I have reset it to factory defaults 3 times with absolutely zero improvement, because, unlike what you would expect of an Android device, the Fire devices don't appear to have stored at their root a versian of the original firmware. I am resetting the Fire TV 4-Series to factory defaults in March 2025, but the OS will only revert back to January 2025. This actually is not a reversion, as I checked through repeated resets this was the last update of the Fire OS and when I check for updates shows as the most current versian. The problems didn't start in January, so I doubt the problem is from that OS update. I think the problem is from the updates pushed out to their other hackneyed, chopped up, custom Android garbage versions of apps. The Fire Media Player, for example, can receive push updates like any other app. It doesn't require an update of the entire OS to patch this piece of software. And while I haven't dug down into what other little nasty apps Amazon has created for their own Frankenstein monsters, I'm sure there are plenty of custom apps that serve core functions across different devices that all run the same Fire OS. So it's no surprise that you end up with some disgusting, slow, bloated monster of an Android version for Fire, like Windows 10. Rather than run a core, well supported instruction set with customizations layered on top for specific devices, the beefy chunk of an OS carries all the instructions necessary for every type of device possible. Do I know this for a fact? No. I just know that my Fire TV 4-Series is now useless, and the worst TV I've ever owned.

For the price, I think this is a bargain, I've never owned a TV that came with the fire stick built-in, to me the picture is great, easy setup, does everything I need and more, I replaced my Emerson which lasted 15 years, but it finally went out, don't know how long this one will last, but I'm very satisfied and happy with the purchase, don't know why there are any bad reviews, what you get is well worth it, I have mine in my master bedroom on the wall, and the picture is a big improvement over the Emerson I watched for so many years, I'm not picky or much of a complainer, unless it's really called for, so I can honestly say I would definitely recommend this TV, no it's not top of the line thousand dollar premium brand, however I'm enjoying immensely and watching movies is great, for the money you spend I would get this one, every time.