IN DEPTH: Amazon Fire TV vs Apple TV vs Roku vs Chromecast: which is better?

The Amazon Fire TV has officially made the transition from rumored TV set-top box to app-streaming competitor today, as it ships to US living rooms via the online retailer's speedy Amazon Prime service.It instantly challenges the closed ecosystem of Apple TV, the still-budding app list of Google Chromecast and the scattered hardware attempts of the Roku Streaming Stick and Roku 3.That said, Amazon Fire TV is last in line when it comes to its release date, especially vs the established Apple TV and Roku, which first came out in 2007 and 2008 and have been updated three times already.Amazon has a lot of work to do to catch up to Apple TV, Roku and Chromecast, but it offers just enough in the way of unique features to consider purchasing, even on day one.DesignStreaming media players come in all shapes and sizes, as demonstrated by the Amazon Fire TV set-top box and Chromecast HDMI dongle.The good news is that they're all relatively small in size and exhibit colors that blend in with black televisions, with the exception of the purple Roku Streaming Stick.Amazon Fire TV sits with a low-profile of .07 in and takes on a square shape of 4.5 in x 4.5 in. Roku 3 requires a little more headroom at 1 inch even, but takes up less space at 3.5 in x 3.5 in at its length and width. Apple fits in between the two at .91 in high and 3.9 in x 3.9 in. At these sizes, it's not hard to fit them in a media cabinet, or if you're uncivilized, stack them on top of a cable box.Chromecast and the Roku Streaming Stick dongles are even smaller - the size of an oversized USB thumb drive - and conveniently plug into HDMI ports. They're very simple to install.The two downsides to this design are that they still require a power cable to function and there's no Ethernet port. When it comes to streaming video, that can be a problem for a lot of households.RemoteAmazon Fire TV introduces an innovative remote with a built-in microphone for voice search. It's a surprise Google wasn't the first to do this considering it has us saying "Okay Glass" into Google Glass and will have us "Okay Google" into Android Wear watches soon.On Amazon Fire TV, finding a movie or show title, an actor you like or a genre you want to explore can all be done by talking to your remote control as if you're from the future.Roku has a similar 5-button directional pad without the fancy voice search capabilities. On the plus side, the Roku 3 model's remote does have a headphone jack for a useful personal listening mode.Apple TV's click-wheel remote is small and easy to lose. That would be a problem, except the iOS app is the iOS way to navigate, so it doesn't matter.Chromecast actually requires a smartphone or tablet to control. This means owning an Android or iOS device is a requirement of the tiny streaming stick. It's not as out-of-the-box friendly in this way, especially if you're a Windows Phone 8 user, but it does mean a QWERTY keyboard is always handy. AppsA streaming media player is nothing without a worthy collection of apps, and Roku leads the way with more than 1,000 apps to its name. Apple is a distant second with around 100 apps.The newer Amazon Fire TV and Chromecast are duking it out with about two dozens non-gaming apps each, many of which overlap with their set-top box competitors.Whether or not they claim to have an "open ecosystem" or restrict development through a "wall-garden," they all share key apps like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Crackle, YouTube and Pandora.Exclusive apps make the difference. Amazon Fire TV and Roku come through for Prime members who have been looking for native access to Amazon's video library.Both boxes provide a native solution for watching Amazon Instant Video on a television, something that Apple TV and Chromecast don't offer outright.Sure, Apple TV can beam all Amazon Instant video content from an iOS device like an iPhone 5S to an Apple TV through mirroring. But it's a cumbersome operation and its device-to-device relay often introduces buffering.Amazon Fire TV alleviates this headache, but it doesn't offer HBO Go, a must-have app for US TV watchers who want to catch up on Game of Thrones and other premium shows. HBO Go fans will have to tune their streaming media players to Apple TV, Roku and Chromecast instead.GamesNo one has gotten set-top box gaming quite right, though Amazon Fire TV has a fighting chance, even in its early stage. That's because Kindle Fire HD tablets have an established catalog of games.Amazon offers more than 100 games at launch and promises over 1,000 games by next month, including its own Sev Zero tower-defense third-person shooter. Best of all, it comes with a dedicated controller that has a design akin to the Xbox One or, if you remember it, OnLive. Let's hope this streaming box survives a little longer than OnLive did.Roku 3 offers less than 100 games, and its pint-sized TV remote doesn't exactly conform to a gamers' hands. Apple TV can mirror games from iOS devices, but it's prone to lag and a flat smartphone or tablet is hardly the ideal controller.Even with the Google Cast SDK out there, Chromecast falls well short of its competitors with simple games like Tic-Tac-Toe and a single trivia game.SpecsThere's a lot going on under the hood of the Amazon Fire TV with specs that amount to three times the processing power of its closest competitors.Qualcomm supplies all of the chips. There's a quad-core Krait 300 running up to speeds of 1.7 Ghz and a separate Adreno 320 graphics processor, meaning it has a dedicated GPU. Amazon intends to take buffering down to zero with 2GB of RAM, which gives Amazon Fire TV four times as much memory as the 512MB in Roku 3, Chromecast and Apple TV.To be fair, Amazon is able to offer the latest technology within its target price point because the box just came out. Apple TV is due for a refresh in 2014 and could rival these specs.ConnectivityAll of the set-top boxes and streaming sticks go for a minimalist look, but there's also a temptation to give consumers a variety of ways to connect to their TVs.Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku 3 all make room for HDMI out, optical audio out, an Ethernet port and some form of a USB connection. On an Apple TV it's a micro USB slot, while Amazon and Roku went with full-sized USB ports. There's also a micro SD card slot on a Roku 3 for loading additional content like photos from a camera.Chromecast and the Roku Streaming Stick are a little more straightforward, for better or worse. Both of these HDMI dongles have a micro USB port for required power and work over WiFi. That's it. Streaming sticks are less intrusive and have a smaller footprint, but the bigger set-top boxes bring more options. Being able to hardwire to an Ethernet port cuts down on potential lag. The optical audio port also makes it easier to splice sound to a speaker system while still running video to a speakerless TV through HDMI. Everyone with a projector know this dilemma all too well.PriceSometimes is just comes down to the price. Picking up a Chromecast is a no-brainer if you're looking for a quick way to access most apps on a budget. It's $35 (£30, about AU$38).Amazon Fire TV is only available in the US so far, and it's $99 (about £60, AU$108). Expect Amazon to jack up the price when it flies the Union Jack. It'll likely be £99 in the UK.That's because the Apple TV and Roku 3 are $99 (£99, about AU$108). All three set-top boxes cost around the same price, while Chromecast has the distinct advantage of being significantly cheaper.ConclusionAmazon, through its retail channel, sold a whole lot of Chromecast devices during the holidays, and certainly took note. Interestingly, it didn't copy Google's app-driven streaming stick design or price point. Instead, it did the opposite. It designed a box with specs that are high-end, at least for a living room streaming player.With Amazon Instant Video, Android-driven Kindle Fire games numbering in the thousands by next month and voice search, it offers something different from Apple TV, Roku 3 and Chromecast.Apple TV and Chromecast still have the advantage of smartphone, tablet and computer mirroring, and Roku 3 has more apps, but for a first day on the job, Amazon Fire TV defines what a fully prepared launch is all about.

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