Amazon’s new Fire TV experience will begin rolling out to users today.
Amazon initially announced back in September that an update to its Fire TV experience was expected before the end of the year. The update, which will be available on the third-generation Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick Lite, will finally introduce multi-user profiles for up to six people to the user experience.
Additionally, the whole Fire TV interface is getting an update. The new one features a far more streamlined design, a new Home page, better discovery and search features, and a new menu bar situated in the centre of the page with your respective streaming apps. Amazon says this experience also brings expanded voice-control navigation with its built-in assistant Alexa.
Amazon’s Fire TV experience has been long, long overdue for quite a while. It’s devices are super budget-friendly, sure, but with the arrival of Chromecast with Google TV in the budget category this year, the older Fire TV experience felt comparatively clunky and outdated. And with all cordcutters spending more time at home than ever before, it was smart to focus on personalisation and discovery for this update.
A small number of customers will begin to see the rollout this week, an Amazon spokesperson told Gizmodo, before the update starts rolling out more widely in the coming weeks. We’ll be demoing the new experience in the coming days as well, so keep an eye out for a more detailed review sometime next week.