Amazon Fire TV Welcomes Alexa With $50 Stick Voice Remote Bundle

Amazon is bringing Alexa, its virtual assistant from the Amazon Echo, to its Fire TV range, and celebrating with a new $50 bundle. Part of Fire OS 5, Alexa's presence means users will be able to ask for weather and traffic reports, ask for definitions and Wikipedia explanations, request tracks from Amazon Prime Music, and look up sports results.

Later this year, Alexa will support reordering of previously purchased items by voice. That'll be followed, in 2016, by the ability to request specific movies or TV shows by voice, including saying things like "play next episode" of whatever you've been binging on.

Of course, pressing down the microphone button requires you have one to press, something many Fire TV Stick owners might not. By default, the streaming dongle came with a non-microphone-enabled remote control and, while that will remain on-sale for $39.99, for $10 more Amazon will now throw in the voice remote.

Those existing owners who don't want to cough up for a new remote will be able to use the free Amazon app for iOS and Android.

Having played briefly with the functionality, it works much as we've seen on the Echo – unsurprising, since the cloud-side processing is the same. The main difference is that you get a related information card on the TV at the same time, which does make it easier to quickly consume the results.

For instance, sports scores not only show the outcome but a breakdown of the game and when the teams are next playing. Weather results have both the current conditions and a seven day forecast.

The $49.99 Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote is up for preorder now, and will ship on October 22. As for the firmware update for existing Fire TV and Fire TV Stick owners, that's expected to roll out in the coming months.