Amazon Fire TV Stick makes bid to wee on Google Home's chips with voice-controlled movies and TV plus Alexa's other skills
Google Home loses U from its USP after just two hours
Get all the latest news, reviews, deals and buying guides on gorgeous tech, home and active products from the T3 experts
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Always wanted to be able to say "Put Breaking Bad on my TV" and have it happen, as if by magic?
However, by a bizarre coincidence, Amazon also started mailing out its new Fire TV Stick today (pre-orders began last month), and is also issuing an upgrade for existing Fire TV Sticks and the larger Fire TV and Fire TV 4K boxes – you can add voice control via the Fire TV mobile app, or by splashing out £20 on a new remote with a mic for it, if you prefer to rick your futuristic control methods in an old-school way.
Article continues belowCan you guess what the upgrade does?
Yes, it adds Alexa voice control to all those devices, so you can search for shows and movies, watch shows and movies and even rewind and fast forward shows and movies.
Now, curiously, this video functionality is ONLY on Fire devices, so if you have an Amazon Echo and a Fire TV, you can't issue instructions to the former and have them carried out on the latter. But on balance, that's not such a big deal.
Alexa isn't just for scouring Netflix, Amazon, iPlayer et al for content, either. Most of Echo's capabilities and 'Skills' (third-party apps) are now accessible via Fire TV devices, with the likes of weather and sports scores gaining a visual element.
Get all the latest news, reviews, deals and buying guides on gorgeous tech, home and active products from the T3 experts
Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his.