We’ve officially turned the calendar to October, meaning spooky season is in full effect. That also means we’re a week away from Prime Big Deal Days, which starts on October 8th. There were already plenty of early Prime Day deals to consider, but now we’re seeing steep discounts on Amazon’s stick-style streaming devices. Right now, for instance, the latest Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K is going for just $24.99 ($25 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target, while the speedier Fire TV Stick 4K Max is down to $34.99 ($25 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target.
If you can spare another $10 in your budget, we’d recommend stepping up to the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. It’s a fair bit snappier than the base model thanks to an upgraded processor and support for Wi-Fi 6E, which offers ample bandwidth for 4K streaming. It also has double the storage as the base model (16GB versus 8GB) and comes with a slightly more helpful Alexa Voice Remote that adds a couple of new functions, including a nifty find-my-remote feature and a button that lets you quickly view recent content.
The Max doesn’t offer many other advantages over the standard Fire TV Stick 4K, though. Both support Dolby Vision (in addition to HDR10 and HDR10 Plus) and Dolby Atmos on the same set of compatible apps. The latter parity wasn’t always true of the previous-gen models, but you can enjoy a run of scary movie nights with the best possible viewing experience no matter which of the 2023 models you go with.