It ’s become almost impossible to avoid Amazon , be it as a shopping finish or the machine that inhabit our homes . While Alexa gadget and Fire television marijuana cigarette have been around now for a decade , its first Amazon - built saucy TV did n’t become available until 2021 . Just like any other Alexa twist , the Omni tv integrate flawlessly into an Amazon ecosystem and could act as the hub of your smart home base .
The new Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini - LED continues in that tradition . It has Fire TV Ambient Experience — Amazon first included it with theFire TV Omni QLED — which now has an interactive feature ( an early preview of the characteristic was included on my review sample ) . Using the TV ’s built - in radar sensor , your capable to use movements to affect the artwork . For instance , land your hand close to the image of koi Pisces the Fishes swimming in a pond , and the Pisces the Fishes will gather around your hand as if you ’re feed them . Or brandish your hand near some butterflies , and they ’ll flee away to other flowers on the screen .
There ’s the option of adding simulacrum and fine art to display your own photo gallery , or create AI fine art with the reproductive AI Titan Image Generator using command prompt you’re able to say into the spokesperson remote control . Also , like Samsung ’s The Frame or the new CanvasTV from Hisense and Nxtframe TV from TCL , the Omni Mini - LED has access to an ever - rise curated compendium of over 2,000 piece of nontextual matter that can be displayed on the TV .
In addition to your veritable Alexa gimmick , the Omni can also get in touch to your Ring devices , or other smart home devices ( such as a thermostat ) to ascertain your whole home base arrangement . The Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini - LED is designed to not only be be the center of your living elbow room but the control nerve center of your intact Alexa smart base system . It ’s a full Amazon experience .
Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini-LED specs
Much like the last Omni QLED looked like aTCL 5 - Series , the Omni Mini - LED reckon like a TCL Q6 , with the same fairly chunky skeletal system shape and TCL - style leg . There ’s a small blow under the Fire television badge on the bottom bezel where the IR sensor is housed , as well as a forcible mic shutoff substitution if you do n’t want your TV listen all the time .
One excellent aspect of those TCL - style legs is the amount of meridian it provides for a soundbar , if you choose to sum up one . I will say that the sound system performs passably well . It ’s miss the bass answer I ’d want for a Hollywood blockbuster , but dialogue clarity is good . Still , I ’d take reward of the 3.5 in of space below the TV for a soundbar to beef thing up even more .
The Omni Mini - LED comes with Amazon ’s Alexa Voice Remote Enhanced instead of the Pro rendering ( the Pro includes two customizable buttons , outback finder , a earpiece button for pair Bluetooth headphones , and backlit buttons ) . you could buy the Pro for $ 35 , and while the included remote control is fine , I wish the backlit version were included .
Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini-LED: numbers for nit nerds
As the name suggest , the major addition to the Omni this year ismini - LED technology . The series practice between 512 and 1,344 dim zones , depending on size ( our 65 - column inch sampling had 768 dimming zones ) . It ’s not as much as the rival ( this will be a running theme ) , but what ’s more important than the numeral is what is done with them . With Local Dimming set to High , the Omni Mini - LED does a great caper manage blooming of burnished images environ by mordant place . There ’s a bit of bleed from subtitles , but in dark scenes — like the Millennium Falcon vaporize through the Maw inSolo — the television receiver ’s processing keeps that light wrangled in .
I measure the Omni Mini - LED with a Portrait Displays C6 HDR5000 tintometer profiled to an X - rite i1 Pro 3 spectrophotometer , a Murideo Seven - guanine 8 K pattern generator , and Calman standardization software . With factory setting , the Filmmaker mode in both SDR and HDR was the most accurate , although they both also had the same issue — the humble one-half of the grayscale curve was darker than it should have been . While Filmmaker was the most accurate mode , Movie Bright was the bright , reaching 933 nits in SDR and just over 1,600 nit in HDR . This is a pregnant increase over the premature model , making HDR pop . Even in Filmmaker , HDR is still able to reach 1,230 nit .
Using out of the boxful Filmmaker mount in SDR , the coloring material temperature is on the coolheaded side as grayscale gets whiter with peak luminance hit 763 nits . By bringing the Backlight setting down to zero , luminance maxes out at 142 nit — within the 100 - 200 nit mark range for SDR . play the luminousness down to this point also evens out the color temperature across grayscale ( although da Gamma is still gamy , meaning midtone gray are still a minuscule sorry than they should be ) .
Still , what ’s most significant is how it look with real content , and overall the Omni Mini - LED does a good job . HDR in especial is dynamic , with specular highlights supply overnice resonance to scenes . Detail of face and Luv ’s intricate nail designs inBlade Runner 2049are fantabulous . The TV struggles a little bit with SDR upscaling , especially in dark prospect where I saw some posterization in the phantasma , but for the most part it is n’t too distracting .
Amazon Fire TV OS holds it back
As I bring up earlier , the Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini - LED is an Amazon experience through and though . If you ’re look at buy this TV , that ’s probably what you ’re after , but it ’s also what holds the TV back . The Fire telecasting OS is easily its speculative feature film .
To begin , the TV is always trying to sell you something — and sometimes it almost feels like its taste to trick you into signing up for a service of process . As is a part of every TV frame-up , you need to instal apps that were n’t already pre - installed ( interestingly , Amazon Prime Video was not one of the pre - installed apps ) . For the most part , determine and lend apps is easy . You search for it , select it , and then take the default option of download it .
On initial apparatus , all feature subject autoplays with audio . If you do buy the Omni Mini - LED TV , verify the first thing you do is go into the full background computer menu and disable autoplay . Look for the gear icon on the home screen to exhibit a bunch of tiles for different menu option ( you ’ll see it at the correct end of the run-in of installed apps ) . you could not access these tile from the cogwheel picture on the remote , only the gear picture on the home sieve . From there , go to Preferences , then Featured Content , then make certain both Allow Video Autoplay and Allow Audio Autoplay are set to Off . While you ’re there , I ’d recommend double - check your Privacy configurations and Data Usage Monitoring configurations .
The o itself is zippy and responsive . Scrolling through the dissimilar rows of recommendations or installed apps has no time lag from button press to movement on cover , and apps load up straight off . I did operate into some problems with app sign - inch , though . One — the Les Mills physical exercise app — would put me through a sign - in loop topology and never actually get loaded properly . Sometimes when opening apps I ’d find that I would need to sign in again ( this befall multiple time across multiple apps ) . The Hulu app also randomly give up while watchingInterior Chinatownwhile the remote control was seat foot away from me on the coffee table . The inconsistency of functionality was beyond frustrating .
so as to head off all of those annoyances , I ’d recommended following Caleb ’s suggestion in hisPanasonic Z95A review(which also run on the Amazon Fire tv set OS ) . Get a freestanding cyclosis machine — your choice ofApple TV , Google TV Streamer , or a Roku Ultra — plug it into one of the HDMI ports , go into the options section as before ( through the power train image on the home sieve ) , select Display and Sounds , then Power Controls , and switch Power On from Home to Last Input . That ’ll cause the TV to jump up on whichever input you were using when you turned off the video .
There ’s no question that the Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini - LED is the serious TV that Amazon has produced so far . Over previous iterations , brightness has been boosted , accuracy out of the box has meliorate , and blooming control has gotten significantly better . Compared with other TVs in its price range , though , the Omni Mini - LED is still trying to catch up to the battalion . Both theHisense U8Nand TCL QM8 are significantly bright than the Omni Mini - LED ( both achieve more than double the luminance ) , have more dim zones , and their grayscale and color truth are a bit better . Yes , they ’re both a couple hundred buck more for the 65 - column inch model , but they also both have Google TV O rather of Amazon Fire TV OS , and I ’d say the supererogatory money is worth it .
That is , of trend , unless you ’re await for a video that fits easy into your Amazon Alexa ecosystem . For that function case , the Omni Mini - LED will serve its intention well . You ’ll get easy integrating and a pretty salutary picture . If you ’re a sports fan of Amazon Fire TV o , this television is deserving your consideration .
