Amazon Fire TV 43" Omni QLED Series 4K UHD smart TV, Dolby Vision IQ, Fire TV Ambient Experience, hands-free with Alexa

Great Fire TV for the price and features. Picture and sound are both good on the 50” version that still has local dimming. Some infrequent blooming but overall another TV that proves less dimming zones isn’t a detriment with proper processing. Peak brightness isn’t as high as more expensive TV’s but is still noticeable with HDR content and very acceptable at this price. HDR10, HDR10+, HLG and Dolby Vision IQ all work well with good brightness range and color volume. Note: no Dolby Atoms for sound. I knew this, my TV is wall mounted high and tilted down slightly in a small bedroom and I have no need for a sound bar. NOTE: if using a sound bar with an optical cable, try turning the TV speakers off AND changing the output to PCM or Dolby Digital; and use HDMI 4 (ARC/eARC).This TV is a great value for my application and the budget I set for it.I’m just using the Fire TV interface and none of the HDMI inputs. So I can’t speak on Hue, Contrast and Color issues others may see. Out of the box, mine seems spot on and I currently have no want or desire to go in and adjust any settings based on the content from the various apps I’ve used.The interface isn’t as fast as the Fire TV Cube 3 or Fire Stick 4K Max but still pretty good overall. Note to new Fire TV users: the interface is slower when updates are being downloaded and installed. Check the Device Info for updates several times when first starting the TV. There will be several updates: some very big ones and 2 to 3 more little ones at the least. Keep checking back until it says that it’s “up-to-date”. THEN start to really enjoy the interface. Also the network connection and its QUALITY also plays a factor. This TV supports 2.4/5Ghz and wired (100Mbps).Ambient mode is great but just remember what the TV tells you. The power button on the remote TOGGLES between the Fire TV interface and ambient mode and that long pressing it turns the TV off. No issues with any widgets so far for me. Also, my TV easily recognizes when I enter and exit the room.If you have other Amazon products nearby that listen for “Alexa”, simply change the TV’s wake word to Computer, Amazon or Echo. Absolutely no issues with this.1. I haven’t found any “inescapable” ads to get to content. You can “click” on these shortcuts if you want but you can just user your voice to search for titles instead. Like every other TV interface or box, third party apps have their own interfaces, sign-ins, ads, etc. that can’t be controlled by Amazon, Apple, Google, TCL, etc. Third party apps also place their own ads onto the TV platform they are on based on the deals they have in place.2. The Fire TV interface is anything but complex. You can set it up anyway you want. Again, the various interfaces, profiles, etc. of third party apps are completely independent from Fire TV and on the makers of them and this would be the same on any other TV platform.3. YMMV on the interface. Third party crashes and bugs are possible too. Third party interface issues need to be reported to their makers. They manage the various versions of their app across various platforms and sometimes they aren’t all equal in performance or features offered by platform.4. It hasn’t quite been a decade for Apple to allow the removal of 1st party apps (2016) but maybe Amazon will allow certain apps to be deleted one day. But understand these devices are meant to interface with and promote Amazon products and services primarily.5. The remote button press sounds can be turned off in options for the main interface. Don’t know about the Alexa Home Theater mode but if there isn’t a way, find out if there is one and if not ask that it be implemented.6. Again, out of the box settings being what they may for everyone, at least there are detailed picture settings available for the TV and all of its inputs – all independent of one another to get things looking the way you personally prefer.

This TV was given to me by my dad and I absolutely love it! I love the picture quality and the set up was very simple and smooth. The only complaint I'd give is the sound quality. It is slightly better than my former smart tv but not by much and it doesn't echo so that's something. I would give it a 4.5 star if I could. I still highly recommend this TV if you want a good and easy budget friendly smart tv! The channel navigation is good and smooth and I genuinely have enjoyment.

Summary: image quality is great, but the clunky interface, unavoidable hardware lag, and Amazon bloatware make owning this TV an absolutely abysmal experience. If this is the highest tier of TV Amazon has to offer, look elsewhere even if it costs you a few hundred dollars more.Details on why you SHOULD NOT buy this TV:1. THERE ARE INESCAPABLE ADS THAT YOU MUST CLICK THROUGH TO ACCESS CONTENT. This is absolutely unacceptable on a TV that is paid for in full. There are similar features on other Fire devices, like tablets, but that is disclosed to you up front at the time of purchase, and you have the option of paying slightly more to disable them. No such option exists on these TVs, and no disclosure is made at the time of purchase. It’s a joke and an insult to customers. (NOTE: other competitors, like Roku, have ads as well, but the ads don’t need to be clicked through to access content)2. The user interface is unnecessarily complex, and it can’t get out of its own way. As one small example, you have to select a Fire profile on TV startup, and only then can you access apps, like Netflix, which themselves have profiles you must select. Forcing users to select a profile up front when they will have to again select further app profiles regardless is ridiculous. Let us just get into our apps from the beginning and skip this unnecessary step.. This is just one example of user-unfriendly interface design; it’s endemic and everywhere you go in the Fire TV UI: super tiny apps, apps that take multiple clicks to access even if ads were removed, inability to access picture and sound settings from the main menu, profile and other settings that are completely inaccessible on the TV and must be edited on websites or apps for seemingly-arbitrary reasons, and a slew of others. You simply can’t make this TV do what you want it to do without having to click a million things, and even then, the end result is sometimes hidden away on another device or simply can’t be accessed.3. Glitchy, rampant hardware lag is EVERYWHERE. The TV takes seconds to respond to single clicks of the remote. Shows start without proper buffering and play in resolution worse than a Super Nintendo while also moving in stop-motion for 10 seconds before actually working. Ad-supported apps bounce between commercials and content incredibly slowly, which would be fine if it were buffering, but it’s not and the first bit of commercial or content is a pixelated, glitchy mess regardless. Trying to fast forward or rewind a show requires a prayer to ancient Incan gods, and only half the time does the TV actually respond to your button press, and only half of the time after that does it actually stop fast forwarding/rewinding when you let go of the button instead of 5 seconds later. Menus boot up super slowly, and once available still don’t respond to your clicks. It’s like this TV has 40 pounds of crap shoved into 5 pounds of hardware, and it just can’t keep up. The worst part is that when the TV confuses itself enough from all the overload, it crashes and restarts…multiple times per day. (NOTE: TV is completely up to date, and it’s connected to Amazon’s own 6th-gen eero mesh network, which is excellent; all hardware acceleration is also turned off since it makes content look terrible anyway)4. Bloatware. Bloatware everywhere. The TV comes with about as much unwanted software on it as a 2003 Dell PC. Unlike the 20-year-old Dell, however, this bloatware can’t be removed. You can hide it from certain menus, but it will always be there, always try to send you notifications, and always try to force its way into your periphery. Even Apple figured this out a decade ago with its native apps: let us delete unwanted junk that we don’t need. Maybe the TV would actually work if we could get rid of all this garbage?5. WHY DOES ALEXA HOME THEATER MAKE A LOUD, OBNOXIOUS “BOOP” NOISE EVERY TIME YOU CHANGE THE VOLUME!? And how in the world do we disable that freaking noise so we don’t wake up napping children when we want to turn the volume down from 5/100 to 3/100? It’s not in the options of the TV, I can tell you that, which further reinforces how clunky and unintuitive this entire UI experience is if this option is hidden in some other app completely unrelated to Fire TV.6. Every possible hardware modification of the TV’s content is turned on from the start, meaning everything you watch looks like a super saturated daytime soap opera. It’s 2022, guys. Stop shipping TVs with Motion Smoothing and 17 other things turned on by default. No one likes them.If for some masochistic reason you still want this TV after the above points, here is the singular reason you SHOULD buy this TV:1. Once all the hardware acceleration bloat is turned off, and after you’ve edited the picture settings (which again, cannot be accessed through the main menu) so that the image quality doesn’t look like the Teletubbies, the image quality is excellent. Colors are uniform, pictures are crisp (when they aren’t pixelated from all the lag), details are clear, dark areas are dark without looking grey, etc. It’s likely that the display is manufactured by Samsung (like most QLED displays), which is great, and it shows.Overall, there is no way I can recommend this TV to anyone who wants to retain their sanity. It’s very clear that Amazon chose to compromise TV functionality and the user experience so that it could push Alexa, a metric short-ton of Amazon services, and ads, and it does all of this by bait and switching you with an excellent display at an excellent price-point. It’s a borderline scam since the ads, bloatware, overloaded hardware, and unusable interfaces aren’t made apparent to you up front. The price looks great compared to its competitors, but there’s a reason for that, and the reason isn’t made clear at the time of purchase. It’s an unforgivable business strategy, and I’ll be returning this TV in 5 days once Thanksgiving has passed.Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.