Amazon heats up its Fire TV line with new Omni QLED 4K sets
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Amazon has significantly upped its Fire TV game with today’s announcement of the Omni QLED series of 4K TVs. The new sets, which will be available in 65- and 75-inch screen sizes, offer features typical of higher-end TVs, such as Quantum Dots and full-array local dimming, and also come with a new Fire TV Ambient Experience that allows you to view artwork. and display photos when the set is not in use.
Quantum Dots on the Omni QLED sets allow an enhanced color gamut to be displayed with high dynamic range (HDR) sources, while the full-array local dimming backlight (up to 96 zones on the 75-inch model) should result in deeper, more detailed and more uniform black – a shortcoming of the company Previous Fire TV Omni Series stilt.
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Amazon’s new TVs also support Dolby Vision IQ and HDR10+ Adaptive, both of which work to bring out more detail in dark HDR images when viewed in normal lighting conditions.
The Fire TV Ambient experience appears to be Amazon’s variation of the “gallery” modes found on TVs like Samsung’s The Frame and models from other brands that allow the set to display art and personal photos when you’re not watching video. A gallery of 1,500 images will be available, with collections from both The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and The Art Institute of Chicago.
In addition to art and photos, Alexa Widgets can be added to the screen that show news, weather, notes, calendars, sports scores and more.
In keeping with the eco-friendly initiatives Amazon announced at today’s press event, the new Omni QLED TVs feature both presence and ambient light sensors that turn the Fire TV Ambient experience on and off based on whether someone is in the room. .
Like the company’s previous Omni Fire TVs and the Fire TV Cube, which also just got a serious revamp, hands-free Alexa voice control lets you control many of the set’s functions, including volume up or down and search, while a What To Watch feature provides personalized viewing suggestions. The Omni Fire TV QLED models can also be used as a smart home hub, with voice commands to launch Alexa home control routines.
Amazon’s Omni Fire TV QLED sets are available for pre-order from the company today for $799 (65-inch) and $1,099 (75-inch).
Analysis: Amazon really wants Fire TV to become the digital hearth of your smart home
While the performance improvements Amazon is bringing to its latest range of Fire TVs make them more competitive in some ways the best 4K TVs (although adding a mini LED backlight for greater brightness and finer processing of shadow detail, such as budget competitors like TCL and Hisense in their latest sets would have been a plus), the company’s real endgame here is to install Alexa on the center of your home.
Echo speakers and Show devices (which the company says are used as TVs, with up to 70% of owners tapping them to watch videos) scattered around the house are one way to entice us into the Alexa world, but on big screen TVs like the new Omni QLED models are where the real action is, with features like What Should I Watch, allowing Amazon’s AI to forge a personal relationship with family members and learn their preferences. Alexa widgets with information like calendars and notes add to Amazon’s data harvest, putting the company in a similar position to Apple and Google when it comes to a go-to for personal communication and organization.
Furthermore, the new Fire TV Omni QLED 4K sets come as a pleasant surprise and show that Amazon is serious about improving the quality of its TVs, which until now have been mostly cheap, entry-level offerings. With additional improvements, Amazon could potentially take ownership of the budget TV space — something I’m sure it plans to do.