Amazon is taking its Fire TV product lineup global… sort of.
If you’re in the US, UK, or a few other markets you can currently choose between Amazon’s latest $70 Fire TV or $40 Fire TV Stick media streaming devices. But up until now there have been many regions where Amazon didn’t sell its Fire TV devices at all.
Now there’s a new option called the Fire TV Stick Basic Edition. It’s coming to 100 countries around the world, and it’ll sell for $50. And if the new device looks familiar, that’s because it’s pretty much the same thing Amazon’s been selling in the US since 2016… with a few less features.
The Fire TV Stick Basic Edition is a tiny device that you can either plug directly into the HDMI port of a TV or allow to dangle from the port by using a small HDMI extension cable.
It has a quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, 802.11ac WiFi, and support for 1080p HEVC video playback and Dolby audio.
In other words, it’s the same thing as the $40 Fire TV Stick (2nd-gen) that’s currently available in the US. But there are a few differences:
- The Basic Edition ships with what looks like a 1st-gen Fire TV Stick remote. There’s no microphone for use with Amazon’s Alexa voice service.
- Amazon charges $10 more for the Basic Edition than for the 2nd-gen Fire TV Stick.
Of course, that $10 premium comes with a perk: you can actually buy the device in regions where it wasn’t available before. The list of available apps will probably vary from country to country, but Amazons Prime Video is available in every region where Amazon is launching the Fire TV Stick Basic Edition.