Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote - 2020 release

This review for the Fire TV stick 1080p. I don't really care about 4K and this was sufficient enough for my setup.The Fire TV stick is compared to Roku 2XS and to TCL Roku TV. The stick is connected using Amazon USB Ethernet adapter to be comparable with Roku devices. The build quality of the stick itself is OK, but the remote is of much worse build quality than the Roku remote. Remote creaks and gives significantly when squeezed. The battery door does not close well and has some play when closed. On the plus side you get a Bluetooth remote. Other than the remote build quality, the Fire TV hardware is quite good. When running the Fire TV does not get hot at all, just barely warm. The performance is very good, UI is responsive. I tested both devices with Amazon Prime videos and navigation is much faster with the Fire TV. Buffering and wait times are about the same and very acceptable for both devices. I feel that the video quality is better with the Roku device, especially frame rate conversion and 3/2 pulldown. I set both Fire TV to 720p60Hz and video would stutter every now and then, when frame rate is adjusted. Roku does not have this issue. When Fire TV is set to 720p50Hz format, the issue is less noticeable but still present. You can clearly see this issue in Cliffhanger movie, 12 minutes into the movie. Horizontal panning scenes are very jerky on Fire TV and on Roku TV they are smooth. Lipsync is often slightly off with the Fire TV and almost never with Roku. Roku UI is much cleaner and has just one ad. Fire TV is plastered with ads for different shows. You have to navigate around the ads and that is somewhat annoying. If you are not ad tolerant the Fire TV UI may frustrate you. I also compared Fire TV with new TCL Roku TV and the Amazon Prime UI is very similar, including all the ads. Configuring the remote to control my TV was very easy. It is effectively configured itself. Initial setup was straight forward and simple. Installing applications is also simple, especially if you are familiar with the Android platform. If you want to play videos from your network, the Fire TV wins hands down if you have internet connection at all times. All you need is VLC and a Windows or Unix machine with the samba shared drive. The VLC can navigate the shares and plays videos really well. You can also use number of media servers and clients for the Fire TV stick. Roku only works with a media server software running on PC with a corresponding app running on the device. No direct file access. One serious downside of the Fire TV is that it does not work with your local network if there is no internet connection. I did not realize this at first but it is a really bad oversight. When our internet was down, I could not even play anything from the local network. The main UI is not usable at this point. Roku software does not have this problem. If you want wired Ethernet support on the cheap, Fire TV is your only option. The Roku only supports Ethernet on the high end devices or if you have a Roku TV. However Roku TVs are not that great as far as display quality goes. For the price Fire TV stick is just OK. I would not recommend it at all. If you want the best image quality and the correct video decoding, I would get a higher end Roku device. Something like Ultra or Ultra LT would work. If you want something simple, low end Roku will do the trick. To me streaming quality like lipsync, no stuttering and 3/2 pulldown are much more important than 4K decoding. This device misses on all of the points.