Amazon Fire TV Cube

Amazon has been a trendsetter in bringing out futuristic gadgets. It was the first one to bring a smart-assistant speaker Amazon Echo to the market, which had 'Alexa' in it to assist you with anything you ask. This speaker spiralled into a new category of devices which became so successful that Google, Microsoft and even Apple had to release their own versions of smart speakers.

Amazon has yet again taken a bold new step by introducing Alexa (their smart assistant) for TVs and naming this cubical block as Amazon Fire TV Cube (well they need a better naming strategy!)

What is it?

It is a cubical block with speakers and 8 far-field mics built-in to catch your voice even from a distance. Once you connect it to your TV(via HDMI), power it up through micro-USB cable and connect to the Internet(either through Wi-fi or ethernet port). It will first determine the make and model of your TV and will try to gain the power controls, so you can always ask Alexa to turn on/switch off the TV.

What makes it awesome?

Well turning on/off the TV is just the beginning, this little cube can control your whole TV viewing experience as it has tied up with Netflix, Hulu, PlayStation Vue, Xbox and other major service providers. So get ready for remote free tv viewing, all you have to do just the name the thing that you want to watch like "Alexa, play 13 reasons why on Netflix" and boom the TV switches on with the first episode of the series playing on Netflix.

What's more, it can easily switch between content swiftly, like while playing Netflix just tell it to switch to BBC News on Cable and another moment BBC Cable is there, no need to remember the atrocious channel numbers now, this is what TV viewing should be, unapologetically simple and easy to use.

You can also tell it forward, skip 30 seconds or play from a specific time. In fact, binge-watchers can tell Alexa to play a specific episode and it would start from right there, no hassles. The Fire TV Cube is truly genius concept with a marvel feat of engineering behind it.

What makes it a million dollar device is that it supports almost all major TVs that means no setup time, apart from that it has a direct support for Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, PlayStation, Xbox out of the box. And yes, you can also use it as a smart assistant for weather forecast, asking jokes, playing songs, etc. Where it actually shines is how it uses the TV's real estate to make your queries more visually appealing, like showing the forecast of the day on the big screen with animations is very soothing, or grabbing the major headlines of the day with video.

The Fire TV Cube retails for $119.99 and is available on www.amazon.com