Amazon Fire TV 4-Series  TV Review

The Amazon Fire TV has a basic design with a glossy black finish. It looks okay for a budget TV, but the overall design is a bit dated.

Update 01/06/2025: This TV's backlight failed in early September. We traced the failure to one of the LED strips, which, unfortunately, cannot be replaced on this TV. We've permanently removed the TV from the longevity test.

The stand is pretty basic, but it supports the TV well, with just a bit of wobble. The feet are wide-set, but leave enough room to place most soundbars in front of it.

Footprint of the 55-inch TV: 39.2" W x 11.8" D x 2.51" H

Unfortunately, there's no cable management on the back of the TV. The inputs are all housed in the center of the TV, so even though they face to the side, they're difficult to access when the TV is wall-mounted.

Sadly, the Amazon Fire TV has mediocre build quality. It looks and feels cheap, and there's a bit of flex and a creaking noise coming from the back panel when you press on it. The feet and bezels of the TV are glossy black plastic, which looks cheap. Overall, it doesn't feel very solid.

The Amazon Fire TV has a good native contrast ratio, resulting in deep blacks in dark scenes. There's no local dimming feature to improve contrast, though, so blacks are raised whenever there are bright highlights on the screen.

Since this TV lacks a local dimming feature, there's no blooming around bright objects in otherwise dark scenes. Since the entire backlight is always on at the same intensity, dark scenes show raised blacks when bright highlights are on the screen.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature; the entire backlight is always on at the same intensity, so there's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move across the screen.

Switching to 'Game' mode doesn't result in any noticeable difference in dark scene performance.

Sadly, the Amazon Fire TV has poor peak brightness in HDR. Small highlights aren't bright enough to stand out, and HDR is flat and dull overall.

These measurements are in the 'Movie' Picture Mode with the Backlight at its max, Contrast at '50', and the Color Temperature set to 'Warm'.

There's no noticeable difference in peak brightness in 'Game' Mode.

This TV has great accuracy, as it tracks the PQ EOTF well. There's a sharp roll-off near the TV's peak brightness, causing a loss of fine details in bright scenes, and blacks are raised a bit in near-dark scenes.

The Amazon Fire TV has just okay peak brightness in SDR. There's very little variation in brightness with different content, which is great. Very small scenes are dimmed a tiny bit, but this is far from noticeable.

These measurements are in the 'Movie' Picture Mode with the Backlight at its max, Contrast at '50', Gamma at '0', Color Saturation at '45' and the Color Temperature set to 'Warm'.

Unfortunately, the Amazon Fire TV has just an alright color gamut. It can't display a wide color gamut for the latest HDR content, and tone mapping is off in the DCI-P3 and the Rec. 2020 color spaces, causing a loss of fine details in brightly saturated scenes. The Insignia F50 QLED, with its quantum dot panel, delivers a much wider range of colors.

Unfortunately, due to the narrow color gamut, the Amazon Fire TV has disappointing color volume.

Unfortunately, the Amazon Fire TV has terrible accuracy before calibration, even with the most accurate settings. The color temperature is very cool despite using the 'Warm' setting, and there are noticeable issues with every color and the white balance. Gamma is close to our target of 2.2 for a moderately lit room, though, but bright scenes are slightly over-brightened. If you're bothered by this TV's abysmal pre-calibration color accuracy, check out the vastly more accurate Toshiba C350 Series 2023 or the Vizio Quantum QLED.

The Amazon Fire TV has fantastic accuracy after calibration. Although it didn't initially support calibration, after firmware updates, it now supports 2 and 11-point white balance calibration, and it has a full color calibration feature. It's easy to calibrate overall, but the color calibration is a bit more difficult, and blues are still inaccurate after calibration.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The Amazon Fire TV has fair gray uniformity. There's quite a bit of dirty screen effect in the center of the screen, which is distracting when watching sports, and the sides of the screen are significantly darker than the center. Near-black scenes have much better uniformity, but there are still some noticeable issues.

The Amazon Fire TV has okay black uniformity. The screen is a bit cloudy throughout, which is distracting in dark scenes. There's some backlight bleed, but it's not too noticeable. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to improve black uniformity.

Unfortunately, the Amazon Fire TV has a poor viewing angle, so it's not well-suited for a wide seating arrangement. The image appears washed out if you're even slightly off-center. If you're looking for a similar cheap TV with a wider viewing angle, check out the Insignia F30 Series 2022 or the Vizio Quantum QLED instead.

The Amazon Fire TV 4-Series has decent reflection handling. The semi-gloss finish reduces the intensity of direct reflections a bit without smearing them across the screen. Visibility is still an issue in brighter rooms, as the TV isn't bright enough to overcome direct sunlight.

This TV has excellent gradient handling in HDR. There's very little banding in areas of similar color, and gradients are displayed properly.

This TV can smooth out gradients well for the most part. There's very little macro blocking in low bitrate content, but the smoothing features result in some loss of fine details.

This TV has decent sharpness processing, so low-resolution or low-bitrate content looks satisfactory overall. Fine details are preserved well for the most part, but text is a bit blurry and hard to read.

The optimal settings for a sharp 480p image with no over-sharpening are as follows:

• Sharpness: 21
• Super Resolution: On

The Amazon Fire TV uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional Red-Green-Blue layout. It doesn't cause any issues for video content, but if you plan to use this TV as a PC monitor, it might be an issue for text clarity. You can read more about this here.

Unfortunately, the Amazon Fire TV has a mediocre response time, so there's considerable blur in fast scenes. Dark transitions are significantly slower, resulting in black smearing behind fast-moving dark objects.

Unfortunately, the Amazon Fire TV uses pulse-width modulation to dim the backlight. There's noticeable flicker at all backlight levels below the maximum. This flicker causes duplications in motion and can cause headaches if you're sensitive to flicker.

This TV doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion, but there's flicker at all backlight levels below the maximum.

The Amazon Fire TV has an optional motion interpolation feature, which can improve the appearance of low frame-rate content. The feature is okay, but it can't handle fast-moving content well, and there are noticeable artifacts and halos in some content. It's also a bit choppy when the camera is moving.

Thanks to the fairly slow response time, this TV has very little stutter when watching movies or other low frame rate content like most TV shows.

The Amazon Fire TV can remove judder from all sources. It's especially important for a smooth movie-watching experience.

The Amazon Fire TV has a basic 60Hz panel and doesn't support any variable refresh rate features.

The Amazon Fire TV has fantastic low input lag, as long as you're in 'Game' Mode. Unfortunately, 'PC' Mode and any mode other than 'Game' has extremely high input lag.

Unfortunately, the Amazon Fire TV can't display chroma 4:4:4 properly with any supported resolution, so text isn't displayed properly.

Unfortunately, this TV can't take full advantage of the PS5. It's okay for gamers who prefer high-quality graphics over performance mode, but it doesn't support variable refresh rates, and it's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate.

Like with the PS5, this TV can't take full advantage of the Xbox Series S|X. It's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate and doesn't support a variable refresh rate to reduce tearing.

Although advertised to have one HDMI 2.1 port, the Amazon Fire TV only supports HDMI 2.0 bandwidth.

The Amazon Fire TV supports eARC, and it supports passthrough of some advanced audio formats when your TV is connected to a high-definition video source.

Unfortunately, this TV has a disappointing frequency response. The low-frequency extension (LFE) is extremely high, resulting in a very weak bass with no thump or rumble. Above the LFE, the frequency response is fairly balanced, so dialogue sounds clear, as long you're not at max volume, as there's a bit more compression.

This TV has okay distortion handling. There's not much distortion at moderate listening levels, but it's a bit more noticeable at max volume. Not everyone will hear this, though, and it varies depending on the content.

The Amazon Fire TV runs a slightly more recent Fire TV interface than the previous non-Amazon branded Fire TVs, like the Toshiba C350 Fire TV 2021. The interface is smooth and easy to use.

Unfortunately, like almost every TV on the market, there are ads throughout the home interface and content store, and you can't disable them.

The app store has a great selection of additional apps to download, and you can also cast content from your mobile device.

The remote is nearly identical to the one included with the Toshiba C350 Fire TV 2021. It's a pretty basic remote, but it has built-in voice control, which you can use to change inputs, launch apps, or search for content, but it can't adjust the TV's settings. Through Amazon Alexa, you can use the voice controls to control other compatible smart products.

There's a single button located beneath the Fire TV logo along the bottom bezel. You can use it to turn the TV on/off or to change inputs.

• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries
• Power cable
• User guide