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- The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd Gen) is discounted down to £45 in the Spring Sale
- Over the past 180 days, the price has averaged £60
- During sales events like Black Friday, however, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max has been a little cheaper than this, dropping down as low as £40
- In our review, we rated the Fire TV Stick 4K Max a full five stars and gave it our Best Buy award, highlighting the speedy performance, excellent audio and visual quality and support for Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and HLG formats
Somewhere in the same general airspace as death and taxes, you can also usually rely on Amazon to reserve the best discounts on things like Fire TV Sticks, Kindles and Echo speakers for its own sales events. And yet here we are, a couple of days into the Amazon Spring Deal Days Sale, the retail megacorp’s longest spring sales event to date, running from 10 March to 16 March, and the discounts are… fine?
Take the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, for example. This is our favourite of the brand’s streaming sticks and the top-tier of its lineup. If you want a streaming stick with integrated Alexa support, this streaming stick is the final word.
Despite launching for £70 and averaging around £60 (calculated over the past 180 days) it’s even more affordable if you buy it at the right time. Take last year’s Amazon Prime Big Deal Days sale in October, or Black Friday a month later; during both events, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max dropped down to £40, its lowest price on record.
In the Spring Sale, however, which has neither the notoriety of Black Friday nor the exclusivity of the Prime members-only Big Deal Days, the discount just isn’t quite as good, only discounted to £45 this time around. This feels a little stingy when it was £5 cheaper only a couple of months ago, but if you don’t want to wait for the next Big Deal Days sale, it’s still well worth snatching up.
Why should I buy the Fire TV Stick 4K Max?
The main appeal of this Max version of Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K is its more powerful hardware. The CPU’s maximum frequency is 2GHz, as opposed to 1.8GHz on the non-Max version (now rebranded as the Fire TV Stick 4K Plus), and the GPU runs at 850Hz, compared to 750Hz. We also have Wi-Fi 6E support added here and 16GB of internal storage.
There are also a couple of choice features that carry over from Amazon’s Fire TV range: Ambient Experience gives you a customisable screen-saver with your choice of background, weather, calendar and on-screen post-it note widgets, plus the option to have Spotify or Amazon Music play in the background. There’s also an AI-enhanced search tool that’s designed to be more conversational.
Otherwise, this is just a very fluid streamer, with excellent video and audio quality – enhanced by support for Dolby Vision, Dolby Audio, HLG and HDR10+ formats – a sleek and accessible platform for all your streaming content and (mostly) useful and accurate searching via Alexa.
What could the Fire TV Stick 4K Max do better?
Why mostly? I’ll caveat this by saying that we tested the Fire TV Stick 4K Max a couple of years ago, and the technology may have improved by now, but our reviewer Stuart Andrews found the so-called intelligent searching a touch disappointing. Trying to conversationally ask for other films by the director of Guardians of the Galaxy, for instance, just delivered more films starring Marvel’s ragtag crew, rather than any other of James Gunn’s oeuvre.
Another concern with the software is that, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s very Amazon-centric. This means that your continue watching and next-up lists will have no problem at all integrating content from Prime Video, even separating out suggestions for your different profiles, but the same cannot be said for the likes of Netflix or Disney Plus. The recommended selection does include shows from other brands, but they very much feel like an afterthought.
What other Fire TV Sticks are on offer?
It’s definitely worth noting that, while this is Amazon’s best streaming stick, it’s not the only one that you should consider. For instance, if you don’t care about the faster performance, Ambient Experience or supposedly more intelligent searching, you’ll be far better off paying less for the Fire TV Stick 4K Plus. Don’t care about 4K? Save even more with the Fire TV Stick HD.
- Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus: Avg £52, now £34 | View deal at Amazon
- Amazon Fire TV Stick HD: Avg £35, now £24 | View deal at Amazon
Is this deal worth it?
It’s a little galling that Amazon’s own products aren’t at their best-ever prices for the Amazon Spring Sale – especially when they’re a couple of years old, as is the case with the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. That being said, even a fiver more than its lowest price is still a decent deal for Amazon’s most powerful, feature-rich streaming stick.
Notably, it’s still cheaper than the Roku Stick 4K HDR – our current pick as the best-value 4K streaming stick, which is £50 at the time of writing. So, if you’re looking for a powerful streaming stick with 4K capabilities at a decent price, the Amazon Fire Stick 4K Max just about hits the mark.
Our team is hunting around for the best deals in this sales event, so if you want to see what treasures we’ve uncovered, head over to our central Amazon Spring Sale page, where we have the most attractive discounts on everything from headphones to vacuum cleaners and much more.
