Amazon Fire TV loses the sticks but finds a telly
As a relatively new brand to the UK, Chinese outfit Xiaomi appears to have figured out that it will help it establish itself as a household name (it’s pronounced shau-mee, lest you were wondering) if it brings to market something unusual, officially ‘endorsed’ by one of the most established brands in the western world, and eye-catchingly cheap. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the Xiaomi F2 Amazon Fire TV.
At £299, this 43in 4K LCD TV is down there scrapping it out with fancy OS-toting competitors such as Hisense and TCL’s Roku TVs. The F2 is also available in 50 and 55in screen sizes.
Familiar Fire
The Xiaomi F2 looks and feels mostly like what it is: a cheap television. The bodywork is extremely lightweight despite apparently being built around a metal frame, while its glossy black finish tries but fails to hide its innate plasticky-ness. The only thing its design has in its favour, really, is the way a plastic cover running over the screen and most of the screen frame creates the illusion that there is barely any bezel at all.
The F2’s remote control will look familiar to anyone who has owned an Amazon Fire TV device. There are more buttons than you get with most Amazon Fire TV remotes, though, thanks to the fact that the F2 works as a regular telly.
The F2 adds HDR to its picture mix in the basic HDR10 and HLG flavours, but there is no support for HDR10+ or Dolby Vision. It carries an impressive four HDMIs among its connections, though these don’t support any cutting-edge gaming features, such as variable refresh rates, 120Hz frame rates or Auto Low Latency Mode switching. The HDMI ports don’t support the ‘e’ version of HDMI’s ARC functionality, meaning that the TV’s ARC-compatible HDMI can pass on only a compressed version of Dolby Atmos sound to ARC-compatible soundbars and AV receivers, though that is unlikely to be an issue for the type of buyer considering it, particularly as streaming services use this compressed version of Dolby Atmos.
Built-in wi-fi support, Bluetooth 5.0 and Airplay wireless options for non-Amazon streaming sources are on hand, while hard-wired connections include an optical digital audio output, terrestrial and satellite tuners and two USB ports.
The whole Amazon Fire TV interface and content database is present and correct, leaving people familiar with the Fire TV (OS 7) platform able to dive straight in and start using it like the Fire TV stick. The interface runs stably if a little sluggishly at t
