Yes the firestick with its lag and crappy interface will annoy you.

I disagree with most here. We have a Firestick in the bedroom and a Shield in the living room. The firestick makes me want to throw the remote. It's the opposite of snappy. Each button press seems delayed, the interface is silly, they still don't have HBOMax (unless you side load).

Of course it comes down to how important the money difference is for you, so we can't totally answer that part.

This sub loves their shield tvs and its obviously a great device. However a Fire tv stick 4k is pretty snappy and and feature rich, while being a fraction of the price of the shield TV, especially when it's on sale (I got mine for 30€) For streaming, it is the better value without any doubt.

I also have both. I'm perfectly happy with the Firestick 4K (and I DO MEAN the 4K. I have it on a Full HD TV - do not buy the non-4K firestick) in my vacation house, in fact I love it. I can change channels fairly easy and it's mostly a problem-free experience.

At home I have the nvidia Shield with a Harmony companion remote and it's of course better and faster to change channels, but yeah I do think it's a waste of money just for that.

The Shield TV is overkill if just streaming and if you have a 4K HDR TV it has the disadvantage of no V9.2 support so no HDR on Google Play Movies & TV or YouTube. I can't suggest the Fire TV stick at all and would go with the TiVo Stream 4K or the upcoming Google "Sabrina" device.

I'd go with a shield. Mainly unrelated, but is it worth supporting amazon, a company that treats staff poorly and pay next to no tax. Plenty of other Android boxes that aren't amazon

Take a look at Verizon stream tv (no usb port though) and tivo stream 4k. The Mecool km1 is pretty neat as well as it offers 4gb ram but no Netflix though. Mi box s and jetstream box specs are bit outdated, ui is buggy. Btw those are all certified google box with Chromecast builtin

Stay away from firestick if possible. Unresponsive remote (mine is crap) and messy ui. It is snappy though and cheap, i give it to that. As you do more sideloading apps, i think you're gonna be glad being on android tv ui.

Get a Mi or TiVo Stream. Better than Firestick and similar pricing.

order both and return.

Isn't better wait for the new Google Android TV dongle?. Better than the Firestick but not he highest performance as the Shield.

I have a firestick and a mi box s they are both ok but the mi box is easier to load apps on to because it is pure Android app unlike the firestick which restricts you to the Amazon app store unless you know how to sideload. I wasn't impressed enough with the shield to justify it's huge price compared to the other options

If you are using daily in your sitting room the shield will be much faster. I have mi box s in bedroom n it's fine for streaming things apart from kodi which runs really slow compared with shield.

Off topic. FINALLY got shield 2019 on Amazon.de and ordered it for being the best box on the market. I wanted hdr and atmos but my raspberry pi 4 still (after a year) doesn't have HDR

Two very different devices even though very similar. I have both and it really depends what you are doing. If you are planning to take full advantage of the Shield, pay extra. If it's just for streaming purposes, Fire TV is more than enough. You can sideload apps, use browser, Netflix is pretty snappy.

firestick 4k is all you need. I run iptv on tivimate and implayer, kodi and some movie apks no issues.

I moved on from the Shield to an Apple TV 4K. My shield is operating as a server for my DVR. The Shield is really incredible. When I got it, I had no idea how much I was going to enjoy using it.

Just for streaming these days I would get a $50 TiVo Stream 4K.

However I would not use one of those on a 4K HDR TV until TiVo sort out Firmware bugs. Otherwise everything will be output as (false) HDR.

Chromecast Ultra solves all issues

I had a Firestick 4K. I had so much buffering on it, even after changing VPNs. It would stall a lot. I quickly returned it and got the 2019 NVidia Shield. I haven’t looked back. I’ve had no problems with the shield. Very little buffering if at all.

Can someone explain why you would need one of these? I mean I have a 4K Sony android TV and Plex server hooked to PC

Just curious, and I guess a bit naive in this area

You only need a shield if you are gaming, or really really into high quality audio and video. When I say high quality audio I mean making very good use of 5.1-7.1 surround sound etc.

For standard streaming purposes a fire stick or Roku is plenty.

no games? then no.

I would say no.