Amazon Fire TV Stick now available for pre-order in the UK

Priced at £35, Amazon’s HDMI dongle is all set to take on the Google and Roku in the UK

Amazon UK is now taking pre-orders for the Fire TV Stick, with shipping set to commence from April 15. The £35 Stick is a smaller, more affordable version of Amazon’s Fire TV box and can be plugged into any set with a HDMI port.

Amazon’s Fire TV launched in the UK in October and costs more than double the price of the Stick, at £79.

The Fire TV Stick isn’t as powerful as the standard TV box, but many of its features are identical, including the apps available and its Fling function that lets people beam content from their phones to their TV.

Inside the Stick is a dual-core processor, which Amazon said has six times the processing power of Roku Streaming Stick, and 8GB of storage.

This is four times as much storage as the Chromecast and 32 times that of the Roku Stick.

The Stick comes with a remote control but it can also be controlled using the free Fire TV Remote app for iOS and Android that includes voice search.

While the retail value of the dongle is at £35, Amazon Prime customers can get the Fire TV Stick for just £19 if they order by 8:00AM GMT, March 26.

‘When we launched Fire TV in the UK last September, it quickly became our fastest-selling Amazon device,’ said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and boss.

‘We’re excited to introduce Fire TV Stick in the UK. Fire TV Stick is the most powerful streaming media stick available, with a dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, dual-band and dual-antenna Wi-Fi, included remote control, voice search with our free mobile app, and an open ecosystem.

‘The team has packed a huge amount of power and selection into an incredible price point – Fire TV Stick is just £35.’

Other Fire TV Stick features include Whispersync that saves and synchronises video and music libraries across devices.

Users can additionally ‘Fling’ movies and TV shows from their Second Screen-enabled Fire tablet or Fire phone to Fire TV Stick.

Once content has been ‘flung’, the phone or table can be used to control playback or volume.

The Fire TV Stick will also mirror the phone or tablet display.

A function called ASAP (Advanced Streaming and Prediction) will suggest films and TV shows that people will want to watch and buffers them for playback before a user hits play.

And Amazon’s X-Ray feature for for movies and TV shows lets people see information about cast and crew, the names of songs as they play, as well as a list of music in the movie or TV show, trivia items in context with the action on the screen, and character backstories.

X-Ray is exclusive to Amazon and is powered by IMDb.

• Powerful performance—4x the storage and 2x the memory of Chromecast, plus a dual-core processor for fast streaming and smooth performance.
• Perfect with Prime—Enjoy unlimited access to thousands of movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video, including Vikings, Ripper Street and original shows like Transparent
• Massive selection—Watch what you want, when you want. Tens of thousands of TV episodes and movies, plus millions of songs and hundreds of games.
• Effortless to set up and use—Simply plug in and start streaming in minutes. Take it from room to room and turn your HDTVs into streaming media centers.
• No buffering with ASAP—ASAP learns what Amazon movies and TV episodes you’ll want to watch and buffers them for playback before you hit play.
• Dedicated remote and free mobile app for easy use—With the Amazon Fire TV Remote(included) or the free app for your Android and iOS phones and tablets, you have all the controls you need to easily search, navigate and play games
• Connect your small screen to your big screen— Fire TV Stick lets you fling your favourite apps to your TV to free up your small screen for other uses. Or mirror your phone or tablet to your TV.
• Great for gaming, too—Play favorite titles like Flappy Birds Family, Toy Story: Smash It!, Monsters University, and more great games
• Voice search that actually works—Simply say what you want to watch and start enjoying in seconds with the free app or Amazon Fire TV Voice Remote (sold separately)

For two days only, Amazon Prime members can pre-order Fire TV Stick for only £19 on Amazon.co.uk. Customers who are new to Prime can sign up for an annual Amazon Prime membership, order Fire TV Stick for just £19 and later receive a refund of £12—meaning the final cost of Fire TV Stick will be just £7.

The dongle allows you to access a wide array of digital content from services such as Prime Instant Video, Netflix, BBC iPlayer, BBC News, BBC Sport, Sky News, Curzon Home Cinema, STV Player and more. Prime Members will be able to stream shows such as Alpha House, Bosch, Ripper Street, Vikings, and Transparent as well.

Amazon mentions that the £7 credit would be added to customers’ accounts between May 11 and May 25. The voice search-enabled Amazon Fire TV Voice Remote is also making its debut in the country, and is available for an additional £24.99.

Alongside Amazon UK, the HDMi dongle will be available at Argos, John Lewis and Tesco.

You can pre-order the Fire TV Stick from Amazon UK now.