Amazon has a new Fire TV Stick 4K, and honestly, it looks so damn cool.

The new streaming stick brings faster performance, a slimmer design, and Amazon’s Vega operating system, while the bigger surprise is the redesigned Fire TV Remote that comes with it. Amazon has given the humble remote a surprisingly thoughtful makeover, with physical shapes and textures designed to help you find important buttons without looking down.

That sounds like a small thing. It also sounds like exactly the kind of small thing you appreciate when you’re sitting on the couch in the dark trying to find the damn Home button.

The new Fire TV Stick 4K is Amazon’s latest mainstream 4K streaming device. The company says it can get from powering on to actually playing content nearly 20% to 40% faster than a similarly priced 4K streaming stick from another leading brand. Amazon says apps launch more than 35% faster, while content begins playing nearly 20% faster.

Amazon also compared the stick against the built-in software on three 4K smart TVs and says the Fire TV Stick 4K started playing content faster than all three in its testing. As always with manufacturer performance comparisons, those numbers come from Amazon’s own testing rather than an independent benchmark.

The hardware itself is slimmer than previous Fire TV Stick designs. Amazon is also adding Direct Power, allowing the stick to draw power from a compatible TV’s USB port using the included cable. That means fewer cables hanging around behind the television and makes the little streamer easier to take with you when traveling.

Inside, the Fire TV Stick 4K has a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, 8GB of storage, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, and Bluetooth Low Energy. It supports 4K output at up to 60 frames per second, along with HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, H.265, H.264, VP9, and AV1 formats.

The stick runs Amazon’s Vega operating system, which is becoming a much bigger part of the Fire TV ecosystem. Amazon says it has added more than 2,000 apps to Vega since launching its first Vega-based Fire TV product last year, including Spotify, Xbox, VLC, and several VPN apps. Netflix, Disney+, YouTube, Prime Video, HBO Max, Peacock, Tubi, Pluto and other major services are also supported.

Alexa+ and Amazon’s redesigned Fire TV experience are included out of the box, too. That means the new stick arrives as part of Amazon’s broader push to make Fire TV faster to navigate and more conversational rather than simply acting as a traditional streaming box.

But let’s talk about that remote.

The Fire TV Remote finally gets some personality

Amazon’s new Fire TV Remote has an asymmetric design with a flat top and curved, weighted bottom. The idea is simple: you should be able to tell which way you’re holding the remote without staring at it.

Several buttons have also been redesigned with distinct shapes and surfaces. The Home button gets its own metal surface, while other controls are indented or shaped differently so they can be identified by touch. Amazon says the Home button is pressed more than 100 million times per day across Fire TV devices, so apparently it decided that button deserved some special treatment.

And yeah, it looks good.

There’s something oddly satisfying about seeing Amazon take a familiar plastic rectangle and actually think about how people hold and use it. Instead of just moving buttons around for the sake of calling something a redesign, the company is using tactile differences to make the remote easier to operate without looking.

The new remote also gets the customizable star button that was previously reserved for Amazon’s more premium remote. You can configure it to open a favorite app or toggle functions such as closed captions or Screen Magnifier. It retains dedicated power, volume, and mute controls for compatible TVs, soundbars, and receivers.

And the nice part is that you don’t necessarily need the new Fire TV Stick 4K to get it. Amazon is selling the redesigned remote separately, and it works with Amazon Ember TVs and Fire TV streaming devices launched from 2019 onward.

Amazon is also planning a more premium Fire TV Remote Plus for early 2027. It will have an aluminum body, backlit buttons, and a built-in Find My Remote feature. Say “Alexa, find my remote,” and the remote will play a sound so you can track it down. It will replace the existing Alexa Voice Remote Pro.

Amazon is simplifying the Fire TV lineup

The new Fire TV Stick 4K also gives Amazon a cleaner three-tier streaming-stick lineup.

The Fire TV Stick HD sits at the entry level, the new Fire TV Stick 4K becomes the mainstream option, and the Fire TV Stick 4K Max remains the higher-end model aimed at gamers and home-theater users. The Max offers more storage, higher performance, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and Alexa+ Home Theater. Amazon is also keeping the Fire TV Cube around for people who want its most capable Fire TV hardware and hands-free Alexa+ controls.

The new Fire TV Stick 4K is priced at $59.99 and is shipping today in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Mexico, the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Australia, with more markets coming later in October.

For Prime Big Deal Days, which runs October 6–7, Amazon says U.S. customers can get the new Fire TV Stick 4K for $29.99 for a limited time. That’s half off the regular price, and the package includes the new Fire TV Remote, Alexa+, and the redesigned Fire TV experience.

The standalone Fire TV Remote is available for preorder for $14.99 and is expected to begin shipping in late October.

The Fire TV Stick 4K itself isn’t exactly a radical reinvention of the streaming stick. It’s faster, slimmer and more capable, but those are fairly predictable upgrades.

The remote, though, is where Amazon has done something much more interesting. It looks like a remote designed by someone who has actually lost the remote in the couch cushions at 11 pm and then tried to operate it in complete darkness.

And honestly? It looks so damn cool.