Got a chance to play around a little bit with my Fire Stick last night.
(I really think they should just remove the 'TV' from its official name, it differentiates it with the original, the name just simply rolls better and as a bonus it gives excellent innuendo opportunity - if you know what I mean)
Anyway, If I had gone from my Roku (first generation) box directly to the Stick without experiencing the original Fire TV, I don't think I would have noticed the 'small lag' that's been mentioned by several people. But alas, I do have a Fire TV, and as the person operating, because the situation is basically identical (user interface that you see, the feel of the remote in your hand, etc.), there's no way you're not going to naturally compare the experience, and the reality is that the Stick is very noticeably slower. Understandable, of course, considering the difference in hardware inside them and that the Stick is technically less than half the price of the Fire TV, so this is not necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, it does give you a better appreciation of how truly awesome the original Fire TV is and how exceptionally fast and smooth it operates.
Other than that, the only somewhat negative thing I can say about the Stick is that connection feels really, really, slow with the wi-fi. From the automatic software update right when I turned it on (which took what felt like forever), to the buffering of streaming videos, either from the internet (Netflix, Prime Video) or locally stored video files (on SMB). The Stick actually crashed on Netflix the first time I ran it, and buffered a few times during the first video I watched through XBMC (more on this later). But then the subsequent videos I watched were smooth without any crashes. Note that this could very well be a problem with my wifi network, and that if anyone recall I've mentioned how heavily I am against streaming videos through wifi and always plug everything in whenever I can, so my opinion about this is a little biased to begin with.
Sideloading is exactly the same with the Fire TV. Back with the Fire TV I installed XBMC manually by following the instruction from Fire TV XBMC Wiki page, but this time I just downloaded a helper application that does the same so instead of typing stuff I just had to click some buttons, adbFire (don't forget to allow sideloading and debugging from the Stick's settings). Installation of XBMC 13.2 Gotham with adbFire worked great and everything went smooth without a problem (note that a lot of the features on adbFire only works for the original Fire TV on a certain firmware version). I do like the standard Fire TV UI, so I left it alone, and had XBMC run as an application through a 'dummy app' with the 'llama trick' , which is how I setup my original Fire TV.
Everything else, the experience is exactly the same with the Fire TV, installing apps like Plex, etc. I haven't had a chance to install/play any games yet, but I usually play puzzle-type, no hardware demanding, games like Quell, etc. on it anyway, so I don't see how it will be a problem.
In summary, this does what I expected it to be, and I don't see any reason why anyone wouldn't call this a great steal at $19.99 during the Prime pre-order promo period. At $39.99 retail price, personally I would think a little bit. If it's going to be my only streaming device, I'd probably rather pay twice that price and get the original Fire TV (Amazon frequently discounted and give out promos so you should be able to get it for ~$80 or less), but for the second or third device at your home, the Stick is definitely a great option.
(I really think they should just remove the 'TV' from its official name, it differentiates it with the original, the name just simply rolls better and as a bonus it gives excellent innuendo opportunity - if you know what I mean)
Anyway, If I had gone from my Roku (first generation) box directly to the Stick without experiencing the original Fire TV, I don't think I would have noticed the 'small lag' that's been mentioned by several people. But alas, I do have a Fire TV, and as the person operating, because the situation is basically identical (user interface that you see, the feel of the remote in your hand, etc.), there's no way you're not going to naturally compare the experience, and the reality is that the Stick is very noticeably slower. Understandable, of course, considering the difference in hardware inside them and that the Stick is technically less than half the price of the Fire TV, so this is not necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, it does give you a better appreciation of how truly awesome the original Fire TV is and how exceptionally fast and smooth it operates.
Other than that, the only somewhat negative thing I can say about the Stick is that connection feels really, really, slow with the wi-fi. From the automatic software update right when I turned it on (which took what felt like forever), to the buffering of streaming videos, either from the internet (Netflix, Prime Video) or locally stored video files (on SMB). The Stick actually crashed on Netflix the first time I ran it, and buffered a few times during the first video I watched through XBMC (more on this later). But then the subsequent videos I watched were smooth without any crashes. Note that this could very well be a problem with my wifi network, and that if anyone recall I've mentioned how heavily I am against streaming videos through wifi and always plug everything in whenever I can, so my opinion about this is a little biased to begin with.
Sideloading is exactly the same with the Fire TV. Back with the Fire TV I installed XBMC manually by following the instruction from Fire TV XBMC Wiki page, but this time I just downloaded a helper application that does the same so instead of typing stuff I just had to click some buttons, adbFire (don't forget to allow sideloading and debugging from the Stick's settings). Installation of XBMC 13.2 Gotham with adbFire worked great and everything went smooth without a problem (note that a lot of the features on adbFire only works for the original Fire TV on a certain firmware version). I do like the standard Fire TV UI, so I left it alone, and had XBMC run as an application through a 'dummy app' with the 'llama trick' , which is how I setup my original Fire TV.
Everything else, the experience is exactly the same with the Fire TV, installing apps like Plex, etc. I haven't had a chance to install/play any games yet, but I usually play puzzle-type, no hardware demanding, games like Quell, etc. on it anyway, so I don't see how it will be a problem.
In summary, this does what I expected it to be, and I don't see any reason why anyone wouldn't call this a great steal at $19.99 during the Prime pre-order promo period. At $39.99 retail price, personally I would think a little bit. If it's going to be my only streaming device, I'd probably rather pay twice that price and get the original Fire TV (Amazon frequently discounted and give out promos so you should be able to get it for ~$80 or less), but for the second or third device at your home, the Stick is definitely a great option.
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