There’s only one Fire TV Stick worth buying

• What are the differences between Amazon’s Fire TV Sticks?
• The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is the winner
• What’s the deal with the 4K Select?
• Honorable mention: the Fire TV Stick HD

Over the past decade, Amazon’s lineup of Fire TV Sticks has become a popular way for people to transform their TVs into streaming powerhouses. I believe what makes them so popular comes down to two main factors: simplicity and affordability. Fire TV Sticks are easy to set up and use, and even the highest-end Fire TV Stick is reasonably priced. However, with the recent addition of the Fire TV Stick 4K Select to the Fire TV Stick lineup, the available options have become even more confusing.

There are now four different Fire TV Sticks to choose from when you’re looking to buy one, and the differences between them aren’t exactly obvious, especially if you’re just looking at their names. These include the entry-level Fire TV Stick HD, the new 4K Select, the recently renamed 4K Plus, and the top-tier 4K Max.

If you’re looking to buy a Fire TV Stick for the first time or want to upgrade your current one, here’s how to navigate the current lineup and my personal recommendation for which one is truly worth your money.

What are the differences between Amazon’s Fire TV Sticks?

Picture quality, Wi-Fi speed, and storage are just some

What distinguishes each Fire TV Stick in the lineup is the features it offers, such as supported video resolution (HD vs. 4K), processor and memory specs, Wi-Fi capabilities, cloud gaming support, storage capacity, and support for premium features like Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.

Since each model offers a different set of features (with some being more premium than others), there are, of course, price differences between them, usually ranging from $5 to $10.

Looking at the chart below, you can easily see the differences between each Fire TV Stick. A few notable differences, for example, are that the Fire TV Stick 4K Max has 16GB of storage, while the rest of the lineup has 8GB, and that the Fire TV Stick HD only supports HD 1080p streaming, while the others all support 4K.

Since Amazon frequently discounts its Fire TV Sticks, I would advise against ever paying full price for any of them. Chances are, if you’re looking at one and its regular price, it’s likely to go on sale soon, especially with Black Friday and the holidays approaching. At the time of writing, Amazon already has all of them discounted by 30 to 40 percent.

Along with its Fire TV Sticks, Amazon also offers a Fire TV Cube, which is a more expensive box that sits beside your TV, similar to the Roku Ultra or Apple TV 4K. This story is primarily focused on Fire TV Sticks, as the Fire Cube is more than double the price of the Fire TV Stick 4K Max and occupies a niche of its own.

With all that in mind, I believe the only Fire TV Stick worth buying is clear.

The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is the winner

Since it’s always on sale, it’s hard to resist

I know it’s easy to choose the Fire TV Stick 4K Max as the best option because it’s the highest-end model. However, since it’s always on sale, there’s hardly a reason not to go for it. The price difference between the 4K Max and 4K Plus is only $10, and I believe the premium features the 4K Max offers makes it much more future-proof. You spend an extra $10 now and avoid paying another $40 in a year or two.

So why pick the 4K Max over the other options? While all the Fire TV Sticks have a quad-core processor, the 4K Max runs at the highest speed, 2.0 GHz, compared to the 1.7 GHz of the others, which means it offers smoother performance with less lag. Also, the 4K Max supports Wi-Fi 6E, a faster Wi-Fi standard than Wi-Fi 5 on the Fire TV Stick HD and 4K Select, and faster than Wi-Fi 6 on the 4K Plus. This means that if you have a strong enough internet connection, the 4K Max can deliver significantly faster download speeds, providing a much better streaming experience with minimal buffering and quality drops.

I’m not recommending the Fire TV Stick 4K Max solely because of its specs on paper. I purchased the Fire TV Stick 4K Max myself earlier this year and have been using it daily on my 4K TV…

The 4K Max also comes with the most storage of all the Fire TV Sticks, packing 16GB, which gives you a lot more space to download streaming apps and other apps from the Amazon Appstore.

And to be clear, I’m not recommending the Fire TV Stick 4K Max solely because of its specs on paper. I purchased the Fire TV Stick 4K Max myself earlier this year and have been using it daily on my 4K TV, sometimes on my 4K monitor as well. I’ve found it to be very reliable, and I frequently use it to stream content from services like Prime Video and Netflix, along with free live TV through apps like Pluto TV and Roku. I’ve also tried cloud gaming with it via the Xbox app, which is surprisingly decent considering you’re not playing on an actual console.

Considering all that, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max’s regular price is $60; but, when it’s on sale, it usually drops to about $40. Compared to the 4K Plus, which normally costs $50 and drops to $30 on sale, the price difference is only $10, and I think spending that extra $10 for the 4K Max is incredibly worthwhile.

What’s the deal with the 4K Select?

Amazon’s newest Fire TV Stick isn’t worth it

You may be curious about the new Fire TV Stick 4K Select, which Amazon recently released. While it is the newest Fire TV Stick, it’s certainly not the best one, and it has worse specs than the 4K Plus and 4K Max.

However, the 4K Select has a major difference from all the other Fire TV Sticks. It runs a new operating system called Vega OS, which is a Linux-based system that Amazon has been developing for years. The 4K Select is the first to launch with it, but Vega OS has some issues, mainly that you can’t sideload apps on it, and many apps are not yet supported, making the available apps in the store quite limited. All the other Amazon Fire TV Sticks — the HD, 4K Plus, and 4K Max — use Fire OS, an Android-based operating system that has been in use since the inception of the Fire TV Stick. Since they run Android, they are much more flexible about what you can do with them.

In my view, the 4K Select is more of an experiment by Amazon at the moment than a Fire TV Stick that’s actually worth buying. For now, if you want to stream in 4K, the 4K Max remains the best value, even if it costs a bit more.

Honorable mention: the Fire TV Stick HD

While I believe the Fire TV Stick 4K Max is the best option for most people, the Fire TV Stick HD still deserves a shout-out. Yes, it’s the cheapest Fire TV Stick and has fewer features, but if you’re using an older TV that only supports a 720p or 1080p resolution and want to stream content, the Fire TV Stick HD is an affordable and simple solution.