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New $70 Amazon Fire TV Hits Apple Where It Hurts

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Amazon has just unveiled the latest version of its Fire TV streaming box - and it’s fair to say that it seems expressly designed to make life awkward for the recently launched Apple TV 4K box.

The two most important facts you need to know about it are that it adds support for high dynamic range technology to the 4K resolution support already delivered by the previous Fire TV generation, and that it costs just $69.99. Or £69.99 in the UK.

This makes it well under half the price of even the cheapest of the two recently launched Apple TV 4K boxes, despite offering a similar (though as we’ll see later, not identical) level of video support.

In fact, it actually outguns the Apple TV 4K in one key department by partnering its new 4K HDR support with Dolby Atmos audio. Here’s hoping, too, that it does what the Apple TV 4K does not and offers automatic switching between HDR and SDR outputs.

Photo: Amazon

The new Amazon Fire TV also boasts a brand new user interface (which is good, as the previous one was definitely starting to show its age), and is powered by a 1.5Ghz quad-core processor that’s reckoned to make it around 40% more powerful than the current Fire TV Stick.

It supports enhanced voice control via a new Alexa-powered remote, and this time round it’s designed to be small enough to hang from the back of your TV - much like the latest Google Chromecast Ultra. Which also shares the same price, of course.

Support for HDR on a Fire TV is long overdue, of course; Amazon has been streaming shows in HDR to HDR-capable Smart TVs for ages now. But it’s certainly arrived on this latest Fire TV at the right time to steal some thunder from its Apple rival.

This isn’t to say the Apple TV 4K hasn’t got some big guns in arsenal; in my recent two-part review I found 13 reasons to buy one, including the excellent pricing of its 4K content, its support for Dolby Vision (which the new Amazon Fire TV doesn’t offer) and the decent size at launch of its iTunes 4K movie catalogue. Though I did also find 13 reasons not to buy one

At the very least the battle of the streaming boxes is shaping up to be even more epic than usual as we hurtle towards Black Friday and the festive buying season.

The new Fire TV can be ordered from today, though it won’t start shipping until October 25th.

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