Amazon – 43″ Class 4-Series 4K UHD Smart Fire TV

I’m happy and impressed with it.TV came well packaged and was easy to set up. Which is to be expected as Amazon is just slapping their FireTV OS guts and some branding on some TVs. But they still managed to get that Amazon feel across in the design and the accessories. I will say it would’ve been nice if they included an ethernet cable but I guess those saved pennies help their space program or something. Everything you need to get started is there with that minimalist Amazon appeal though. I was unpackaged, plugged in, and powered on in minutes.Set up was a breeze after waiting for an update to download and install. If you’re familiar with any of the Fire TV Sticks or other Amazon devices, everything here is familiar. I’m neck deep in the Amazon environment from Recast to Fire Sticks so this was an easy choice to take a flyer on. And yes, Recast works on this TV. So to the dozens of us that use it, worry not. The new Fire remote is handy and adds the extra stuff you need for full control of a TV while still being simple. Settings, channel up and down, Live TV, etc. are all there. I’m not the biggest fan of branded app buttons at the bottom of the remote as things go away and get renamed, but the more buttons the merrier. I’m sure they can be rebound to other apps.The introductory price of the 50″ was too good to pass up. But I will say all the regular prices are just high enough to not be complete bargains. I imagine modest discounts will come occasionally and will be well worth considering. And to be fair, these aren’t bare minimum or cheap TVs. You get some real bang for your buck. Above average picture quality and honestly the best “smart” integration I’ve seen in a TV. I know they added one “premium” feature of Dolby Vision to the two largest options of the OMNI series but I do wish they would’ve made a model with a few more bells and whistles. Especially ones geared towards “gamers” and their consoles. 120hz, VRR, stuff like that. Would’ve been a riskier business choice I suppose. I was shopping for a bedroom and 65″ or 75″ was just too big and DV wasn’t enough of an allure. But for an introductory line of TVs I think they struck the right balance of options in the two lines and prices points. I’m not a hands free voice user, so I didn’t mind choosing the more budget friendly 4-Series line. And again, the introductory price on the 50″ was a great deal. Borderline steal. I’m very satisfied.Back to the OS and its spectacular integration; It boots up quickly and is always one home button, button click away no matter what you’re doing or which input you’re on. Everything is snappy and loads quickly. Apple+, PS5, Prime Video, PLEX, Recast, etc. have all been tested and work/look great. There’s enough picture options to dial things in to your liking. I liked that Dynamic Backlight was off, but disappointed that Action Smoothing was cranked. But that’s me. You can adjust the picture settings for each input. AND for each individual app! Which is pretty amazing and useful. The TV did have input lag with the PS5 out of the box. One of the picture settings like MPEG filter or something was the culprit, but there is a dedicated “game” profile in the picture settings presets that solved everything. I could see this being a small oversight that leads to a couple unhappy experiences. All the options you need are there to solve things though. I can’t wait to explore the nooks and crannies of this thing more. I definitely think they integrated the Fire OS directly to the TV really really well.Big thumbs up to Amazon on their first run with these branded TVs.

PLEASE update the software’s System Settings menu with an option to disable the blue standby light when the TV powered off—I cannot tell you how irritating it is to have to unplug the TV every time I want to sleep in a room devoid of that glaring blue light.Do that and this one-star review becomes a five.Thanks!P.S. The TV is pretty great otherwise, especially for the price.