Amazon Ember Artline is the Fire TV answer to Samsung’s The Frame
Amazon's gallery-style QLED TV is now fully available, while the Fire TV UI now has speedier access to content and a new Alexa+ 'jump to the scene' feature
Amazon’s art gallery-style television is the Ember Artline, and it’s now fully available in both the US and UK, starting at $899/£949, available in 55-inch and 65-inch varieties.
The set offers a super-thin design and a matte-finish display to really ensure your artwork pops. At its core, the new Ember Artline set is a 4K QLED television set that supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ and should offer speedy and reliable access to streaming content thanks to Wi-Fi 6 integration. That price includes your choice of frame.
Running off the revamped FireTV UI, there’s support for 2,000 pieces of free art via Amazon Photos. The Ambient Experience also automatically comes on and off when people enter and leave the room so the artwork will display when there’s someone there too see it, conserving power the rest of the time.
The 1.5in thick set gives users a choice of adjustable magnetic frames with colours including Walnut, Ash, Teak, Black Oak, Matte White, Midnight Blue, Fig, Pale Gold, Graphite, and Silver. Those options should ensure the television fits in with most folks’ interior aesthetics.
There’s support for Alexa+ too, which uses far-field microphones to enable users to talk naturally. Viewers will also be able to use Alexa+ connected to say “Alexa, create a slideshow of our family trip to Colorado” or “Alexa, show photos from our wedding,” via Amazon Photos.
The new Fire TV UI is also now rolling starting with the Fire TV Stick 4K Plus, Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd Gen), and Fire TV Omni Mini-LED Series but it will come to lots of other Fire TV-based TVs as well, including partner Fire TV televisions made by Hisense, Insignia, Panasonic, and TCL. Amazon has also announced a new Fire TV HD stick featuring the new interface, which is based on Amazon’s own Linux-based Vega OS.
Amazon says the idea is to cut down on the time viewers spend searching for something to watch (an average of 12 minutes, according to the latest research). “Now it’s faster and easier to find movies, TV shows, sports, news, and live content across all your subscriptions,” Amazon says. “That means when you browse movies, for example, you’ll see titles from all the apps you use.”
As well as the rearranging of content, the ability to pin more apps to the homescreen, and a new shortcut button, Amazon is saying there are 20-30% UI speed gains thanks to the revamp.
Amazon is also launching a new Alexa+ feature for Fire TV that enables users to jump right to a movie screen simply by describing the moment in the firm. Viewers will be able to say things like: “Jump to the scene when John McClane says ‘come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs’”
Chris Smith
