Well I said I’d give my honest unbiased review of the 4K Max
TROY WAS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.
In every way I must bow to Troy and support his review. I found it more responsive. The quality of my picture is better. Streaming seems smoother with slightly less buffering. App loads and transitions are faster and smoother.
Do I have anything negative to say about the Max? Unfortunately yes but it really has nothing to do with performance, it has to do with aesthetics . Simply I think the remote sucks. For me the buttons for Prime, Netflix, Disney+, and hulu are a waste of space. I understand that as a salesman these sorts of decisions are money in the bank. Ppl see these buttons and go “hey I was thinking of getting Disney, and look they have a button for it”. Sold. Just one more thing to be done and that’s remap them. I haven’t done anything to add storage as I don’t need any. Again I defer to Troy’s review as he’s covered it all imho.
Is the Max worth it, absolutely. It does outperform my 1st gen 2018 4K, if only by about 25%. But that’s significant. I have more on the way to program and will recommend my customers switch to the Max. When is Black friday? Lol. Have fun, listen to Troy, and STREAM ON.
I agree Miki with your positives and the one small negative. I have had it for a little over a week and I also think it is worth the extra money. I added a USB flash drive with no problems at all. It recognized it right away and all sideloads now install on it.
@Hgmartin
Thank you for your input. Much appreciated. After several hours of heavy use I am noticing some hiccups. It locked up entirely once and I had to literally unplug the power and wait to restart. The last stick that did that to me was the 2016 model. I did have an otg cable plugged in and I think perhaps the plug was a bit loose. I have since removed it. We’ll see what happens. I’m hoping others will contribute their experiences, positive or negative so we can all learn. Thanks again H. Have a great night.
So day two of this review and I can honestly say I have nothing negative to say about the Max. This Stick handles streams much better imho.
A big shout out to Troy for his new m3u playlists. I love these as they have working epgs to go with the playlist. Loaded them in Tivimate and my streaming is smoother with less lockups. Even loading Tivimate onto the Max was easy and I didn’t need the companion app on my phone to activate my Pro version.
I loaded my sports streams in Silk and those also play smoother and streams are rock solid. Switching between streams was smoother and initiated quicker.
Launcher manager and Wolf Launcher are installed, running, and configured without issue. There is still that months old issue of no search function on the app store. My stick is back to being lean and mean.
I have literally had no issues with setup and configuration. I have the update blocker installed and running. I was easily able to find “downloader” in the app store and install it. I did notice some of the apps I use to use are gone, but with lots of sources, I trust, that isn’t an issue. So far no problems with the battery issue in the remote. Others have reported easy installation of external storage, I don’t need it. I am one happy camper.
I should mention that registration was slightly different than in the past. This time I had to log into Amazon from the country of account origin, thank you VPN, and then a code was displayed on the screen that I had to enter in the site shown on the stick and then confirm the e:mail sent to the registered email of the account. Similar to the two part security verification being used by Google verification system. Stay tuned for updates.
Excellent suggestion. Apparently you can, and it’s quite easy. Hold down the home key for 5-10 seconds as the stick is loading and you’re g2g. Sometimes it may take a couple of tries, but works. Thank you for this idea. Just goes to show you, sometimes you can over think a problem and WHAM someone comes along and gives ya a little poke. Way cool.
Where did the epg url come from? I did not see any in his post. Btw, this is the same playlist I posted on my topic, but the epg supplied with it was basically worthless. Did you install this url: https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/countries/us.m3u
Edit: I see on the github page they updated their epg’s and added two more USA sources. Later on tonight I will install those and see if more epg’s populate. I don’t have the "DirectTV epg that offers another 376 channel’s guide, and the ontvtonight epg, but that only generates about 6 channel’s guides. The other 2 epg’s I already have installed.
@Powerfader
I have absolutely all the apps I want installed. I’ve already started testing various apps ppl are having trouble with to see if there is a step or such missing. I just won’t ever install Kodi again. Other than that I’m super g2g.
I’ve had pluto, stirr, xumo etc but on all 3 I’m lucky if there are 3 channels I would ever watch. I am using Ola, as unlike the free playlists, I can find a precise channel in the precise location I want to stream from.
So I am very happy with my New 4K Max and troy also has a great review on the newest Firestick edition.
BUT,and this is a new issue that I haven’t had until the last two days, my Max is locking up, becoming unresponsive and the remote doesn’t seem to do anything, although it is working, but the stick is slow initiating the commands from the remote. Now to be sure, this is after over 6 hrs of continuous use. I did a thorough analysis and I isolated it to a heat issue. When I first considered the Max, I was a bit concerned when I read about the faster processors in the Max. As those who have been around computers for a time know, faster processors mean higher temps. I brushed it off thinking perhaps the experts had found a way to resolve this issue with the new Max. WRONG. Of course some programs need more cpu and gpu cycles to run creating more heat, and what triggers my issues, is the Silk browser. There are many ways to help limit the sticks temperature and I do everything necessary on a daily basis and I have resolved, or for now seemingly reduced, my problem, by installing a small fan behind my TV to increase air flow and cool the stick. That’s it for now folks.
Stream On and have fun.
There was external cooling you could get. Not sure if still around.
Overheating seems to be the biggest issues for alot of units. The firestick doesn’t have ports to vent. As much as I enjoy the reviews they really should have vents on these sticks. They are putting more power into them without cooling or proper heat releases which would cause rebooting.
There is options you can get after some research. Haven’t tried tho.
This is back to the old days when some rebuilt the outer case with mods like drilling holes, placing the unit inside a homemade housing with small case fans and leaving the cover off, to prying off the original heat shield and adding miniature heat sinks. Necessity is the mother of invention.
I downloaded the Clean Master app and there is a feature in there to cool down a device called CPU Cooler. I guess it closes down apps that generate a lot of activity ergo heat? Idk, but it is free and worth a shot.
Btw, this app is intended for phone applications, but I use it on my Shield.
I don’t have any “extra” cpu hogs to close down. So far I’ve isolated it to two apps. Cinema HD and Silk. I deleted Cinema but use Silk every day. May have to think about FireFox. My Max still has 3.6GB of space. Lol. Lean and mean. The fan worked perfectly. No more overheating.
