Amazon is rebranding Fire TV—here are the 3 big changes, including the new name
Amid plenty of news from Fire TV, from the newly launched Fire TV Stick HD to the Ember Artline TV, Amazon also quietly made a major announcement that it would be waving goodbye to the Fire TV name. As of April, Amazon has welcomed in a new title for its line of smart TVs.
Announcing the news in a post on the Fire TV Blog, Amazon unveiled the new name Ember TV to match its latest TV launch—and there are a few changes users can expect to see after this rebrand.
Why has Amazon ditched the Fire TV name?
And does the new name really change anything?
Put plainly, it isn’t explicitly stated in the original blog post why Amazon has decided to ditch the Fire TV name for its smart TVs. The name remains the same for Amazon’s Fire TV Sticks and Fire TV Cube, just to keep things a little bit confusing.
Amazon said in a blog post, “We’ve also had so much momentum with our line of Amazon smart TVs that we decided now was the time to give them their own name: Amazon Ember. And it was only fitting to launch this new name with our first-ever lifestyle TV, the Amazon Ember Artline.”
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The Ember Artline TV even uses AI to suggest its always-on artwork.
Smart TVs are in for a name change
If you own a Fire TV already, this change won’t effect you
Amazon has rebranded all of its Fire TVs to Ember TVs, meaning all the names have already switched. The Fire TV 2-Series has become the Ember 2-Series, the Fire TV 4-Series has turned into the Ember 4-Series, the Fire TV Omni QLED Series is now the Ember QLED Series, and the Fire TV Omni Mini-LED Series has changed to the Ember Mini-LED Series.
For those who already own a Fire TV, nothing changes on that front. No exclusive changes are happening to the pre-existing Fire TV models beyond their names.
The change you can actually see
Fire TV owners may have already spotted the difference
Back in February, Amazon gave the Fire TV homepage a makeover, designed to “get you to what you want to watch—even faster,” according to Amazon. The new home screen has easier navigation, faster performance, and a new shortcut panel, which offers up to 20 pinned shortcuts on your home screen.
Amazon described the new design as having a “more modern design with improved layouts, rounded corners, redesigned color gradients, updated typography, and more optimized spacing.”
In terms of its faster performance, Amazon said, “The team rebuilt the underlying code to make the experience faster. In some cases, we’re seeing up to 20–30% gains in speed when using the new UI.”
Device update
Keeping Fire TV users on their toes
Much like I said above, the Fire TV name has been replaced when we’re talking about the physical TVs themselves, but not the software. So the new line of Ember TVs will be classed as devices “with Fire TV,” according to AFTV News.
Source: Amazon