Amazon Fire TV 4-Series (2026)

Design

• Tidy look
• Feet for stands
• Disappointing viewing angles

Assembling the Fire TV 4-Series is a quick and easy process. Screw the feet in at either side of the TV, and it’s down in two minutes.

The placement of the feet at either end means it needs a wide surface to sit on, which does restrict where you can place this TV.

Build quality is fine, but it doesn’t feel much different from the plastic build quality that more affordable TVs come in. This model only comes in 43-, 50- and 55-inch sizes.

Viewing angles haven’t improved from the previous model: Brightness tails off, reflections get worse and colours are paler. The best way to watch is head-on.

User Experience

• Fire TV app
• Ambient Experience
• Alexa support

If you already have a Fire TV account, the initial set-up process is quick-ish through the Fire TV app. It ports over previous settings from other Fire TV devices. These aren’t TVs that can exist offline without losing a host of features.

Fire TV does have a huge number of apps. All the big global apps and the UK catch-up apps are included, though there is a singular focus on all things Prime Video. But logging into apps populates rows higher up the interface (Prime Video comes first). Curiously, booting this TV up for the first time, there was a big focus on Amazon’s Music Unlimited service.

I wish Amazon would give its standard remote an upgrade (and include a proper settings button rather than holding down Home). But navigation is quick enough and the remote here is more responsive than the one provided with the Xiaomi TV F Pro.

Alexa integration is snappy with the voice assistant speedily bringing up results and fetching requests. She can open apps, switch inputs and check the weather forecast in double quick time. This TV doesn’t support the hands-free version – you have to hold the Alexa button and speak into the remote’s microphone, but even so, the mic is good at picking up voices even when the TV is blaring at full volume.

This is the first Fire TV 4-Series that supports Amazon’s Ambient Experience, which is activated when the TV goes into standby, or the off button is pressed (hold it for longer to turn the TV fully off). It scrolls through screensavers (which you can choose), some of which are dynamic and feature moving images. If you don’t like seeing a black screen in your living room, the Ambient Experience makes the TV feel more homely.

Features

• HDR10+ support
• 20W audio system
• 60Hz screen

HDR support extends to HDR10, HLG and HDR10+ with no Dolby Vision. This model also supports Filmmaker Mode for a more accurate picture.

It’s still a 60Hz, Direct-Lit LCD, but the sound system has been boosted to 20W, and there’s support for Dolby Digital Plus but not Dolby Atmos.

With Alexa comes smart home support to control compatible smart lights, thermostats and other Alexa-enabled devices. There’s also support for the Fire TV control app which is very helpful during the set-up process.

This model supports Amazon’s Omnisense where the TV can turn on automatically from standby similar to how Sky Glass functions. It works some of the time. Most times I’d walk past and the screen would stay off, others I’d sit down and the TV would unexpectedly turn on.

Connectivity

This newest version of the Fire TV 4-Series offers three HDMI 2.0 inputs plus an HDMI 2.1 eARC port for connecting a soundbar, an Ethernet port for a hardwired connection to the Internet, a USB input and an audio digital optical out.

There’s Wi-Fi 6 for casting and there’s a mention of Bluetooth for streaming to the TV, though strangely no specific mention of it on the Amazon product page.

Gaming

• Luna cloud streaming
• ALLM support

Luna is Amazon’s built-in cloud gaming service, and you can use your smartphone as a controller. I measured input lag over HDMI at 13.2ms, which is still zippy but actually slower than the previous model.

There’s ALLM but no mention of VRR or any advanced gaming feature.

Playing games on the Fire TV 4-Series is responsive, so even though input lag is slower, I’ve got no complaints about how it feels to play.

Image quality, however, isn’t the most colourful and there’s a distracting issue I’ll get into more in the next section, but the cliff notes version is that the image looks soft as if motion processing is on by default.

Picture Quality

• Action Smoothing on by default
• HDR performance not as bright as before

Something’s not quite right from the off with the Fire TV 4-Series. Watching the Marvelous Miss Maisel on Prime Video and there’s a soft, Soap Opera motion look that makes the series look artificial with traces of motion blur and judder.

I initially thought the TV was in Standard mode but there’s support for Auto Filmmaker Mode in Prime Video, so a check of the settings showed that Amazon’s Action Smoothing processing is on in Filmmaker Mode! There shouldn’t be any additional processing on with Filmmaker Mode.

And even worse? The Action Smoothing processing is enabled by default on every other picture mode, and I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. Of the two settings provided, I could dial down Smoothing to 0 but the Clarity setting was greyed out and stuck to its max setting.

And on top of this, what baffled me was when viewing my usual test scene from 1917 to test motion, the Fire TV 4-Series looked absolutely fine. It’s not the sharpest image, but it handled motion without much complaint.

Nudge it higher and judder, stutter and blurriness factor in, so while the motion processing seems to work, I can’t figure out why Amazon doesn’t allow for Action Smoothing to be completely disabled.

Move past these motion processing issues and the picture quality simply isn’t as good as before. Brightness is down from the previous generation (from 430 nits to 340 nits), black levels are often thin, contrast and depth are lacking.

Clarity and sharpness are solid enough once a few settings have been turned off (or reduced), and while Into the Spider-Verse is given a colourful presentation, it’s not as punchy or as vibrant as I remember the older model. With the film’s night-time scenes, the TV looks good, but in the daytime scenes colours look paler.

Watching Bad Times at the El Royale in HDR10+, colours look paler than they should. Levels of sharpness can look soft to the point where the image looks slightly noisy in places.

It’s a similar result with Monkey Man: Colours are pale, contrast is lacking, while black levels vary from ok to thin. Switch to Vivid mode and the TV gets brighter but there’s a washed out look that adds more noise, with colours that lack punch and saturation. I’d suggest using the Movie Bright mode instead.

Upscaling

I complained about the upscaling with the previous Fire TV 4-Series and not much has changed. It’s fine, but for £549 RRP I still expect a better performance than this.

Tron Legacy on Blu-ray doesn’t look sharp, and in darker scenes the image looks noisy. When Sam enters the arena, there’s some blurriness to panning shots, and colours look in the Movie Dark mode looking a little dim (Standard, Movie Bright, and even Filmmaker offer more vibrancy and brightness in SDR modes).

Playing with settings such as Banding Reduction and Noise Reduction doesn’t make a difference. And the Super Resolution feature? Barely any change.

With a DVD of Spider-Man 3, the TV handles lower-resolution ok. There’s noise, there are jagged edges but colours look reasonably good. As far as upscaling goes, the Amazon Fire TV 4-Series doesn’t make sub-4K images any better.

Sound Quality

• Clear with dialogue
• Struggles with big bass

This new model sounds a bit better than the previous Fire TV 4-Series.

It still struggles with loudness but it is louder than the older model. It’s not the sharpest or most detailed presentation although it’s clear and smooth with voices, and dialogue sounds natural. The soundstage feels bigger with voices being placed in the right location.

You’ve got a choice of a few modes and Film is probably the best with slightly more depth and detail than Standard.

Enhanced Bass adds a weightier presence but bass isn’t particularly deep, and with the submarine sequence in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, there are ripples of distortion breaking out from the 20W sound system.

Smart Mode seems to reduce detail and introduce an odd, unnatural tone.

A soundbar would help, and Amazon has the Fire TV Soundbar and the Fire TV Soundbar Plus, neither of which I think are the right model for this TV. The Fire TV Soundbar isn’t good enough, and the Plus is too premium to be matched with this TV.

If you’re not concerned about spatial audio, give the Creative Stage Pro a look to improve this TV’s sound.

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Should you buy it?