Amazon announced new Echo and Fire products in September of last year, one of those being a new Fire TV Stick. Amazon positioned the new model as a replacement for the high-end 2015 Fire TV and the 2016 Fire TV Stick, but it lacked many of the features of the larger Fire TV, like external storage. Today, Amazon announced a new media box that sorta fills that gap - the Fire TV Cube.

The Fire TV Cube is a minor upgrade from the existing Fire TV Stick, with built-in microphones. It has the same far-field voice recognition as Echo devices, so it can hear commands from across a room. The Fire TV Cube also integrates with cable boxes from Comcast, Dish, DirectTV, and others; you can use commands like, "Alexa, watch ESPN" and "Alexa, switch to channel 31."

Besides the added microphones, there isn't much of a difference between the Cube and the existing Fire TV stick. It has the same under-powered 1.5GHz ARM CPU, the same 2GB RAM, the same voice remote, and the same Fire OS software (hope you don't like YouTube!). There is an included ethernet adapter and twice the internal storage (8GB vs 16GB), but still no external storage options.

You can pre-order the Fire TV Cube on Amazon. If you have Amazon Prime, it costs $89.99. Otherwise, it's $119.99.

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