Amazon's Fire Devices: A Comparison

The Amazon Fire TV stick has been a staple of the digital signage world since the beginning. Wirth an affordable and easy method of connecting screens, it's no surprise that the Fire TV stick has been so popular. However, the Amazon Fire TV stick is no longer recommended for use with digital signage, due to several operational changes and challenges.

In addition to this, Amazon have launched a new device, the Amazon Signage Stick, which we will look at in detail below.

This guide, which was first published in 2018, is now a little outdated - but we are leaving some of the original content in-situ for your research and information.

Amazon Signage Stick

Launched in September 2024, the Amazon Signage Stick is the latest entry in the line up of Amazon devices. While it doesn't entirely replace the Fire TV stick, it does offer a signage focused upgrade for businesses looking to get into the world of digital signage.

The Signage Stick is basically the Fire TV stick but stripped back to the basics, with no streaming services such as Netflix or Prime Video. With 4k streaming, secure bootloading and high bandwidth Wifi for better signage experience, the signage stick is the professional option for networking.

Find out more about Amazon Signage Stick.

Amazon Fire TV Box vs Amazon Fire TV Stick

The Amazon Fire TV is a media player first developed by Amazon in 2014. Like your traditional set box, it attaches to a TV in order to make it “smart”. Back in 2014, this might have been one of the first devices we used to get our Netflix fix or to play games, listen to music, and do anything else that requires you to have internet on your TV.

Since then, Amazon has released a more upgraded version of the Fire TV box in 2015, and then again in 2017. This has features like double the processing power, 4K ultra-high definition, and enhanced video codec components.

The first Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, released in 2018, is a similar yet smaller device. It plugs directly into the back of your screen to give you access to the internet but is perhaps more portable and able to be used “on the go” due to its small size and lightweight.

Both devices are very “plug and play” in that you put them into an HDMI port on your TV, use the remote to set up and connect to WiFi, and voila, you have a working smart screen.

The Fire TV Box was slightly more expensive than the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K but not as expensive as the Fire TV Cube, which has some swanky features that both earlier devices are missing (more on this below).

Amazon Fire TV Cube

The first Fire TV Cube was released in 2019 for $120. The big addition to the Cube over the Box or Stick (kudos on the simple name choices, Amazon) is that it has Alexa voice control built in. Of course, you do have voice-controlled remotes on devices like the latest Amazon Fire Stick, but you have to press a button first.

On the Cube, Alexa is always listening meaning you don’t have to hunt for your remote first.

If you think of it like this, the Fire TV Cube is a mash-up of your regular media device and the type of voice control we’re more used to having on our smartphones. This takes it outside of the realm of just being a box that makes your TV smart to be a smart device in its own right.

In addition to powering your TV, it could be used to check the weather, play a specific song while you’re entertaining, or control another smart item in your home, like a fridge or thermostat.

Right now, its main potential is to control your TV, stream content, and answer Alexa queries. In the future, however, it could be the master of an entire IoT-driven home ecosystem.

Its technical capability is similar to that of the Fire TV Box, which includes a 2.2GHz ARM chip, 16GB of storage, and 2GB of RAM.

ScreenCloud PIXI: The best alternative to Amazon devices

In many ways, ScreenCloud PIXI combines the best features of all these Fire devices; it’s portable and fits in your pocket, can stream in 4k, plugs directly into your TV, and offers remote device management features, so you can control what displays from anywhere.

And because PIXI was purpose built for digital signage, it comes preinstalled with ScreenCloud, so you can get it set up in minutes. The device is packed with several other features, like a 4GB RAM, a robust 64GB storage, and the ability to run glitch-free 24/7.

At $65, it’s a great bargain if you’re looking for an affordable device that delivers exceptional performance.

Learn more about ScreenCloud PIXI here.

What does this mean for digital signage?

Although ScreenCloud supports all of the Amazon Fire TV devices, we don't currently recommend them for digital signage due to some OS updates that limit what you can accomplish (skipping Amazon's home screen and clearing the device's memory cache). If you want to soldier on anyway, navigate to the Amazon App Store on your device, search “ScreenCloud”, and you can get paired, whether through voice, remote, or otherwise.

Of course, the Cube may be a bit bulky physically to be hidden behind a screen. However, like Amazon, we are working on voice activation as a big part of the future of how we use screens. As you’ll see in the video below, this could mean asking your screen to surface a piece of content in a meeting or changing what your screen’s showing simply by asking. The Fire TV Cube, with its innate voice features, could play a huge part in this.