The Complete Guide to Streaming Devices — Make Any Television Smart

What a Streaming Device Is — and What It Isn't

A streaming device is a small computer built for one job: fetching video, music and games from the internet and putting them on a television screen. It plugs into an HDMI socket, connects to the household Wi-Fi (or, on some models, an Ethernet cable), and brings its own remote control and its own menu of apps — Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube, the broadcaster catch-up services and hundreds more. Whatever the television can or cannot do on its own, the stick brings its own brain.

Stick or Box?

The familiar form is the stick — about the size of a USB memory stick, tucked in behind the screen and powered by a small mains adapter or, on some models, the television's own USB port. Amazon's Fire TV Stick is the one most people have heard of; Roku sells a close equivalent. Sticks are inexpensive, invisible once installed and entirely adequate for most homes; the trade-offs are modest processing power, limited storage and Wi-Fi-only networking, with an Ethernet adapter a separate purchase. A box or puck such as the Fire TV Cube, Apple TV 4K or Google TV Streamer earns its shelf space with a faster processor, more storage, a wired network port and extras such as hands-free voice control or a smart-home hub, and suits the main living-room television, homes with patchy Wi-Fi where a cable is the cure, and anyone who wants a device that still feels fast in several years' time.

The Remote Deserves More Thought Than It Gets

Every current device comes with a voice remote, which makes searching across services far less tedious than typing with arrow keys. Beyond that, look for television power and volume buttons (so one remote does everything), a backlight for dark rooms, and a finder feature — Roku's premium remote and the Google TV Streamer can make a lost remote beep, and Apple's can be located from an iPhone. For older relatives, a few large, clearly labelled buttons are worth more than any specification.

What It Is Not

A streaming device does not receive broadcast television — it has no aerial or satellite input and does not record like a traditional set-top box; live television reaches it over the internet through broadcaster apps or subscription services. A games console or Blu-ray player can run streaming apps too, though a dedicated stick is simpler, quieter and far cheaper to run. And no stick can improve a poor television panel or a slow broadband connection: it delivers whatever the service, the connection and the screen can support between them, which is why the middle of this guide is about speed and the television itself.

Why Buy One When Your Television Is Already "Smart"?

Almost every television sold in the last decade has apps built in, so why add a separate device? There are five good reasons, and most buyers recognise at least one.

Older Televisions Lose Their Apps

Streaming services only support a television platform for so long. Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and the BBC have all withdrawn their apps from older sets and set-top boxes as those platforms fell behind, and the pattern repeats every year: a television that streamed perfectly well when it was bought finds its most-used app simply gone after an update. The panel is still excellent; only the software has aged. A stick costs a fraction of a new television and restores the missing services in minutes.

Speed and Sanity

Even on a television that still has its apps, the built-in platform is often slow: manufacturers fit the least processing power they can get away with, and a set that felt brisk on day one turns sluggish as apps grow heavier. A current stick has more memory and a faster processor than the smart platform in many mid-range televisions, so menus open promptly and video starts without a pause.

One Interface for Every Room

Households accumulate televisions from different brands and years, each with its own remote and menus. The same stick on each means one familiar layout, one voice assistant and one set of logins everywhere — a real kindness to anyone who finds technology tiresome.

Second Homes, Caravans and Travel

A stick in a bag turns a holiday-let or hotel television into your own, and most current devices can handle the sign-in pages that hotel and student Wi-Fi networks use, on screen or through a companion app on your phone.

Privacy Is a Mixed Picture

Many smart televisions use automatic content recognition, which identifies what is on screen — from any input, including a stick — and reports viewing data to the manufacturer. Adding a stick does not switch that off; it is a setting in the television's own privacy menus, and worth finding. The platforms collect data too, and Fire TV and Roku show advertising on their home screens, while Apple TV shows none and Google TV comparatively little — a legitimate reason to prefer one platform over another.

The Big Platforms Compared — Fire TV, Roku, Google TV and Apple TV

Four platforms dominate. All run the major streaming apps, all offer 4K HDR on at least one model, and all are perfectly capable. The differences lie in ecosystem, home-screen design, casting and regional availability.

Amazon Fire TV is the natural fit for a household with Prime and Alexa: Prime Video is woven into the home screen, Alexa handles voice control and smart-home gadgets, and the range runs from a basic Full HD stick to the Cube. The home screen carries advertising, and the newest sticks run a new operating system with a smaller app catalogue — both covered in the next section.

Roku is the neutral choice: it favours no streaming service, its home screen is a plain grid of app tiles anyone can understand, and its remotes are simple. It is sold in the Americas, the UK, Ireland and a handful of European countries, but not everywhere.

Google TV — on Google's own Streamer and on boxes from other makers — organises the home screen around programmes rather than apps, supports Google Cast from a phone or Chrome browser, and doubles as a smart-home hub. Setup needs a Google account and a phone.

Apple TV is the premium option and the obvious choice for an iPhone household: the fastest processor of the four, an advert-free home screen, AirPlay and long software support. It costs several times what a stick does and has no cheaper tier.

Two others deserve a mention. Nvidia's Shield TV Pro remains popular with enthusiasts for its long software support and media-server abilities, though its hardware is now some years old. In the UK, Sky Stream is a puck that comes with a Sky subscription and delivers Sky channels, Netflix and the catch-up apps over broadband without a dish, while Freely — the UK broadcasters' free live-television service — is currently only on certain televisions and its own boxes, not on the mainstream sticks.

Amazon's Fire TV Range Explained

Because Fire TV is the range most shoppers start with, here is the current line-up from the bottom up. Names change from time to time, so check the specification on the listing rather than relying on the name alone.

Fire TV Stick HD is the entry point: Full HD (1080p) with HDR10 and HDR10+, current-generation Wi-Fi, and designed to run from the television's own USB port with no mains adapter in the box — the sensible choice for a kitchen, bedroom or spare-room set that is not 4K.

Fire TV Stick 4K Select steps up to 4K with HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG but not Dolby Vision, uses the older Wi-Fi 5 standard, and runs Amazon's newer Vega operating system (see below).

Fire TV Stick 4K Plus is the mainstream 4K stick: 4K at 60 frames per second, Dolby Vision as well as HDR10+, Dolby Atmos, Wi-Fi 6, and the established Fire OS platform with its full app catalogue. For most people with a 4K television this is the one to look at first.

Fire TV Stick 4K Max adds Wi-Fi 6E (a third, less congested wireless band), double the storage and a faster processor — worthwhile for a living room a long way from the router, or for anyone who installs a lot of apps and games.

Fire TV Cube is the box: the fastest processor in the range, built-in Ethernet, an HDMI input for controlling a cable or satellite receiver, and hands-free Alexa with its own microphones and speaker, so it doubles as an Echo.

Vega OS and Fire OS — Why It Matters

Amazon is moving its sticks from Fire OS, which is based on Android, to its own system called Vega. The Stick HD and 4K Select run Vega; the 4K Plus, 4K Max and Cube still run Fire OS. Vega starts quickly on modest hardware, but its app catalogue is a small fraction of Fire OS's: the mainstream services are there, but many specialist, regional and gaming apps are not yet available, and Vega does not allow installing apps from outside Amazon's store at all. If you rely on a less common app, check it exists for the specific model before buying. Any Fire TV shows which system it runs under Settings, My Fire TV, About: Vega version numbers begin with 1, Fire OS versions with a higher number.

Picture Quality Levels — SD, HD, Full HD, 4K and What HDR Adds

Streaming quality is described with a cloud of acronyms. They boil down to three things: how many pixels are in the picture, how wide a span of brightness and colour those pixels can show, and how much data the service spends drawing them.

Resolution — the Pixel Count

Standard definition (SD) is the old broadcast standard, roughly 720 by 480 pixels — about a third of a megapixel. HD (720p) is 1280 by 720, just under one megapixel, and is what most services deliver on their cheapest tiers. Full HD (1080p) is 1920 by 1080, a little over two megapixels, and remains the norm for live television and sport. 4K Ultra HD (2160p) is 3840 by 2160 — four times the pixels of Full HD, about 8.3 megapixels. 8K quadruples that again, but no mainstream service streams 8K and no current stick outputs it, so it is not a buying factor.

HDR — the Brightness and Colour Range

High dynamic range (HDR) is often a bigger visible improvement than the jump from Full HD to 4K: a scene can hold brilliant highlights and deep shadow at once, with a wider palette of colours. There are four formats. HDR10 is the open baseline every HDR television and device supports. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision add scene-by-scene instructions that let the television adjust as the picture changes; Dolby Vision is the more widely used in films and series, HDR10+ is favoured by Samsung. HLG is the broadcast-friendly format used for live sport and by BBC iPlayer for its Ultra HD programmes. A format only works when all three links in the chain support it — programme, device and television — and a Dolby Vision stick on a television without Dolby Vision simply falls back to HDR10, which still looks good: a missed bonus rather than a fault.

Frame Rate and Motion

Films are shot at 24 frames per second, most television at 25 or 30, and sport at 50 or 60. Streaming services deliver no more than 60, so a 120 Hz television gains nothing from a stick that a 60 Hz one does not; high refresh rates matter for gaming, covered in our Television Buying Guide.

Bitrate — Why One Service's 4K Looks Softer Than Another's

Resolution is only half the story. The data a service spends per second of video — the bitrate — decides how much fine detail survives compression. Some services stream 4K at roughly twice the bitrate of others, and a 4K Blu-ray disc uses several times more again, which is why the same film can look noticeably crisper from one source than another. No device can change this.

Sound

Streaming sound runs from stereo to 5.1 surround and, on premium tiers, Dolby Atmos, which adds height to the soundstage. Streamed Atmos is compressed and travels happily over a standard HDMI ARC connection to a soundbar; the enhanced eARC connection only matters for the uncompressed sound on discs. If the television's own speakers are thin, our Audio Guide covers soundbars and surround systems.

How Fast Does Your Internet Need to Be?

Less than most people fear for a single stream — and more than they expect once the whole household is online. The services publish their own minimum download speeds, in megabits per second (Mbps), and they cluster closely.

These are sustained figures for one stream. Two people watching 4K in different rooms need around 30 to 50 Mbps between them, and a video call, a games download or a cloud backup running at the same time adds more. A connection sold as "average 70 Mbps" comfortably covers a busy family; one sold as "up to 10 Mbps" manages a single Full HD stream and not much else.

The Speed at the Television, Not the Speed at the Router

The number that matters is what reaches the stick, and Wi-Fi is usually the weak link rather than the broadband line. The older 2.4 GHz band travels furthest but is slow and crowded; 5 GHz is much faster but weaker through walls; Wi-Fi 6 handles a busy household better than Wi-Fi 5, and Wi-Fi 6E adds a third, uncongested 6 GHz band that only the premium sticks and boxes can use. Run a speed test on a phone standing next to the television: if the result is well below the package's headline, the fixes are moving the router, adding a mesh system, or running an Ethernet cable — every box and the Fire TV sticks (via an adapter) accept one. Our Home Networking Guide covers routers and mesh systems in depth.

Data Allowances, Hotspots and Caravans

Streaming through a mobile hotspot or a capped connection calls for a sense of scale. Netflix's own figures are up to 1 GB per hour in standard definition, up to 3 GB in HD and up to 7 GB in 4K; other services are broadly similar and YouTube 4K can be higher still. A 30 GB monthly allowance is four or five hours of 4K, but a whole month of HD evenings, and every service lets you cap playback quality in its settings. Buffering — the spinning wheel — almost always means the sustained speed has dipped below the stream's bitrate, and the cures are the same: a better Wi-Fi signal, a cable, or a lower quality setting.

Which Television Do You Need for High-Grade Streaming?

A 4K stick plugs into any television that has an HDMI socket and plays at whatever that television can show. To get everything the stick and the services can deliver, the television needs a short list of things — and one of them catches people out.

A 4K Panel with the Right HDMI Port

For 4K you need a 4K screen, obviously, but you also need an HDMI port that supports HDCP 2.2, the copy-protection standard every streaming service requires before it will send 4K content. Early 4K sets often had it on only one HDMI socket, usually marked on the back or in the manual. Plug a 4K stick into a port without it and nothing breaks: the services quietly drop to Full HD, and many owners never realise. If a 4K stick seems to be playing in Full HD, try another socket before blaming anything else. It is in the port's hardware and cannot be added by an update.

HDR Support — and the Brand Question

Every HDR television supports HDR10, so that format is guaranteed. The dynamic formats are brand decisions: LG, Sony, Panasonic, Philips, TCL and Hisense support Dolby Vision, while Samsung has never adopted it and uses HDR10+ instead. That is no reason to avoid Samsung — its HDR10+ pictures are excellent — but paying extra for a Dolby Vision stick brings nothing on a Samsung screen.

Power and Picture Settings

Power is the small thing that causes big frustration: a television's USB socket often supplies too little current for a 4K stick, which then reboots, stutters or shows a low-power warning. Use the mains adapter supplied in the box unless the stick is designed for USB power, as the Full HD Fire TV Stick and Roku's sticks are. And out of the box most televisions apply motion smoothing — which makes films look like daytime television — along with heavy noise reduction and sharpening; Filmmaker Mode, or a Cinema or Movie preset, switches these off and improves every stream in two minutes.

Size and Distance

4K's extra detail is only visible if you sit close enough to resolve it: the benefit fades once the viewing distance exceeds about one and a half times the screen's diagonal — roughly 2.5 metres (8 feet) for a 65-inch screen and 2 metres (6.5 feet) for a 55-inch one — and beyond that HDR and a good panel matter more than resolution. Screen technologies, sizes and which television suits which room are covered in our Complete Television Buying Guide, the natural companion to this one.

What Can You Actually Watch? The Range of Content

The breadth of what a streaming device can reach surprises people who think of it as "the Netflix box". Availability varies by country — regional services are noted — but the categories are the same everywhere.

Subscription Video and Free Television

Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, Paramount+ and HBO Max are on all four major platforms, along with national services in most countries. Alongside them is the fast-growing world of free, advert-supported streaming: Pluto TV and Tubi offer thousands of films and series and dozens of themed live channels at no charge, The Roku Channel does the same on Roku devices, and Prime Video's free-with-adverts tier no longer needs a Prime membership. For a household that mainly wants something to watch in the evening, these alone can justify a stick.

Broadcaster Catch-Up and Live Television

In the UK, BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4 and My5 all have apps on the major sticks, with live channels as well as catch-up — so a stick can replace an aerial for most viewing, Freely excepted. Other countries have their equivalents: Peacock and the network apps in the US, ARD and ZDF Mediathek in Germany, ABC iview and SBS On Demand in Australia.

Pay Television and Sport Without a Dish

Pay-television operators increasingly deliver over broadband: in the UK, NOW carries Sky's entertainment, cinema and sport channels as an app on every major stick, while in the US YouTube TV, Sling and Hulu with Live TV offer cable-style bundles. Football, boxing and motorsport have followed, through DAZN, Discovery+, TNT Sports and Prime Video's own rights. Sport is the most demanding thing you will stream — live, at 50 or 60 frames per second, with no chance to buffer ahead — so it most rewards a wired connection or strong Wi-Fi.

Music, YouTube and Games

Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music all have television apps, and YouTube on a big screen is the most-used app on many devices. Cloud gaming has quietly made a stick into a games console: Amazon Luna runs on Fire TV in a growing list of countries, Xbox Cloud Gaming lets a Game Pass subscriber play console titles on a Fire TV Stick 4K or Cube with a Bluetooth controller, and GeForce NOW streams a PC games library to the Fire OS sticks. The Vega-based Fire TV sticks do not yet offer these apps.

Casting, Your Own Media, Children and Accessibility

Every platform can show what is on your phone — AirPlay on Apple TV, Google Cast on Google TV, screen mirroring on Fire TV and Roku — and Plex runs on all of them for a home library held on a computer or network drive. Netflix and Disney+ offer child profiles, Amazon Kids on Fire TV provides a whole child-safe environment, and every platform can protect purchases and adult apps with a PIN. For accessibility, Fire TV's VoiceView, Roku's audio guide and Apple's VoiceOver read the interface aloud, audio description and subtitles are on most major services, and voice control removes the need to type — for someone with failing eyesight or arthritis, a stick with a voice remote can make television usable again.

Subscription Tiers — Which Plans Include 4K

Buying a 4K stick and a 4K television does not guarantee 4K programmes. Netflix and Disney+ both limit their standard and advert-supported plans to Full HD and require the top tier for 4K, HDR and Atmos; HBO Max and Paramount+ follow the same pattern. Apple TV+ includes 4K Dolby Vision in its only plan. YouTube streams 4K free, although its higher-quality 1080p option is reserved for Premium subscribers. Prime Video is the one to check locally: in some countries 4K and Atmos are included with Prime, in others they have moved to a paid add-on tier, and the rules are changing.

Live television is a different matter. Most broadcaster streams and much live sport are delivered in Full HD at 50 or 60 frames per second, with Ultra HD reserved for selected events, so a 4K stick spends a good deal of its time playing Full HD sources perfectly well — and cannot invent detail that is not in the stream. That is one reason a Full HD stick on a smaller television is a sound purchase rather than a compromise.

Hacked, "Fully Loaded" and Jailbroken Devices — What You Should Know

Search for a streaming stick online and you will meet adverts for "jailbroken" or "fully loaded" sticks, "dodgy boxes" and cheap subscriptions promising every channel, every film and every match. The language is designed to blur the line between something legitimate and something that is not, so it is worth understanding exactly what these are.

Sorting the Terms Out

Installing an app from outside a device's official store — sideloading — is not itself wrong; Fire OS devices allow it, and plenty of legitimate software is distributed that way. Kodi, the media-centre software often mentioned in these adverts, is legal open-source software whose own developers have publicly condemned the sellers who abuse it. A "fully loaded" or "hacked" stick has had apps or add-ons pre-installed that pull in pirated streams, and a cheap "IPTV subscription" is access to a server that redistributes pay-television and streaming content without paying for it. There is no clever loophole: these services take programmes that someone else has paid to produce and license, and resell them.

The Legal Position

Laws vary by country, but the direction is the same everywhere. Selling pre-loaded devices or illegal subscriptions is a crime: in the UK it is prosecuted as fraud and copyright offences carrying up to ten years, and sellers have received prison terms of several years; in the US, operating a commercial pirate streaming service is a federal felony; and the European Union's highest court has ruled that selling such players is copyright infringement. For viewers, watching is unlawful in most jurisdictions — the same EU ruling covers streaming from an obviously unlawful source, UK law treats dishonestly obtaining a paid service as fraud, and Italy fines subscribers directly — but prosecutions of individual viewers remain rare. One UK viewer has been convicted alongside a seller, and the industry body there has written to more than a thousand customers of another convicted seller to warn them their details were on his records; US law, by contrast, is explicit that it targets operators rather than people who watch.

The Practical Risks

For most people the law is less immediate than three practical problems. The first is malware. Security researchers and law enforcement have documented more than a million cheap, no-name Android streaming boxes that left the factory with hidden software making them part of a criminal network — routing strangers' internet traffic through the owner's home connection and committing advertising fraud in the background. The FBI's public warning lists the tell-tale signs: unbranded devices advertised as "unlocked" or able to access free content, and setup instructions that ask you to switch off security protections. Devices from Amazon, Roku, Google and Apple were not involved; the risk sits in the anonymous boxes.

The second is your money and your details. Subscribing to a pirate service means handing a card number, an email address and often a password to an anonymous operator with no consumer protection whatsoever. A survey commissioned by the UK's industry-backed anti-piracy campaign found that around two in five people who had used illegal streams reported some financial loss afterwards. Allowing for the source, the mechanism is not in doubt: card fraud, phishing and reused passwords are the predictable consequences of dealing with criminals.

The third is that the service disappears. Pirate servers are seized and sellers arrested regularly; the subscription simply stops, there is no refund, and the customer list may end up with investigators. Amazon now blocks known piracy apps on Fire TV, sideloaded ones included, and its newest sticks do not allow sideloading at all. Add uncertified power supplies, which consumer-safety testing consistently finds to be a fire and shock risk, and no security updates ever, and the bargain looks rather different.

What You Can Watch Free, Legally

The honest answer to "why pay" is that you often do not have to. Free advert-supported services, the broadcaster apps, YouTube in 4K, the cheaper advert-supported plans most subscription services now offer, and the simple habit of subscribing to one service at a time and rotating each month together cost less than most pirate subscriptions, work reliably, and put nothing at risk.

Choosing the Right Device for Your Home

With the technology understood, the choice usually comes down to the television it is joining, the ecosystem the household already uses, and where the router is.

Setting Up — and Buying One as a Gift

Few technology presents are given more often than a streaming stick — small, useful every day, and welcome for a birthday, a new home, a student leaving for university or a grandparent whose television has lost its apps. A few points make the difference between a gift that delights and one that sits in a drawer.

Every Device Needs an Account

Fire TV asks for an Amazon account at setup, Google TV for a Google account (and a phone to run the setup), and Apple TV for an Apple ID. If the recipient has none, help them create one — it is free — rather than lending yours, since the account is what purchases, profiles and parental settings belong to. Buying a Fire TV device from your own Amazon account can pre-register it to you; the gift option at checkout, or deregistering it in the settings before wrapping, hands it over cleanly.

Country and Region

App stores show the apps for the account's country, so a stick set up with a UK account in another country has UK broadcaster apps and not the local ones. For relatives abroad or a holiday home, set the device up with an account registered where it will be used.

Power, Ports and Placement

Check the box contents: some sticks include a mains adapter and a short HDMI extender, while the Full HD Fire TV Stick and Roku's sticks run from the television's USB port and ship without one. On a wall-mounted television the extender lets a stick hang clear of the wall for better Wi-Fi reception.

For Older Relatives

Set the device up before giving it: sign in to the services they already pay for, add the free broadcaster apps, put their favourites on the front row and remove the rest. Show them the voice button — "play the news", "open BBC iPlayer" — which is far easier than navigating menus, and a remote with television power and volume built in means the old remote can go in a drawer.

The Honest Limitations

A streaming device is a small, cheap and effective upgrade, but it is not a cure-all. It adds another remote and occupies an HDMI socket, which on a television with two ports may already be a squeeze. Fire TV and Roku home screens carry advertising that cannot be fully switched off. Every device is tied to an account, and the platform learns what you watch. Amazon's newest sticks, on Vega OS, have a markedly smaller app selection than the models they replace, and that gap will take time to close. Support cut-offs eventually reach sticks too: services have withdrawn apps from older streaming boxes as well as older televisions, so a device bought today should be expected to last a good number of years, not forever. In the UK, Freely is not on the mainstream sticks. And no stick can improve a dim, low-contrast panel or a broadband connection that cannot sustain the bitrate — for those, the fixes are a better television and a better network.

Why Buying Through Amazon Is a Smart Option

Every Platform in One Place

Amazon stocks not only its own Fire TV range but Roku, Google and Apple devices too, alongside the Ethernet adapters, HDMI extenders, power adapters and mesh networking kits a good installation sometimes needs — so the four platforms can be compared side by side in a category where model names change often.

Reviews That Answer the Real Questions

Customer reviews on streaming devices tend to answer exactly the questions this guide raises: whether a particular app is available on that model, how the device copes with weak Wi-Fi, whether it runs from a television's USB port, and how the remote holds up. A listing's questions-and-answers section is often where the Vega-versus-Fire-OS question is settled.

Delivery, Returns and Renewed

A stick is a small parcel that arrives quickly, and Amazon's returns window covers the most common regret — an HDMI port that turns out not to support 4K, or an essential app missing on that model — with a straightforward exchange. For the pricier boxes, Amazon Renewed offers professionally refurbished units covered by the Renewed Guarantee. Purchases are protected by the A-to-z Guarantee, including those from third-party sellers — one more reason to buy a branded device from a mainstream listing rather than an anonymous box from a marketplace advert.

Your Pre-Purchase Checklist

Check the Television's Ports and Formats

Is it 4K, which HDMI socket supports HDCP 2.2, and which HDR formats does it accept? This decides whether a Full HD or 4K stick is the right buy and whether Dolby Vision is worth paying for.

Run a Speed Test Beside the Television

Test the Wi-Fi speed on a phone where the stick will live. Under 25 Mbps at that spot means a stick with better Wi-Fi, a mesh node or an Ethernet-capable box — or, realistically, a Full HD stick.

Confirm the Apps You Need Exist on That Model

Mainstream services are everywhere, but regional broadcasters, sport services, games and niche apps are not — particularly on Amazon's Vega OS sticks. Check the listing's questions and answers or the platform's app store first.

Decide on the Ecosystem

Prime and Alexa point to Fire TV; iPhones to Apple TV; Android and Google Home to Google TV; a preference for a plain, neutral screen to Roku.

Plan the Account and the Power

Know whose account the device will be registered to, especially for a gift, and check whether the box includes a mains adapter or expects the television's USB port to power it.

Buy Branded, from a Mainstream Listing

A recognisable brand from a recognisable seller, with apps from the official store, is the whole of the security advice. Anything advertised as unlocked, fully loaded or all-inclusive is best left alone.

Check the Return Window

The only sure test is the stick on your own television, on your own Wi-Fi, with your own apps — and Amazon's return period gives you that test with nothing at stake.