Amazon’s Fire TV Stick Basic Edition wants you to pay an extra $10 to get Alexa out of your life
We’re not sure whether to chalk this up to some genius strategy by Amazon or simple disconnect between divisions, but the company’s new Fire TV Stick Basic Edition makes little sense.
While it has a snazzy new name, the Basic Edition is really just a 2nd generation Fire TV Stick with a 1st generation remote, which means you don’t get Voice Search + Alexa. Despite those changes, Amazon wants you to pay $49.99 for it, which is $10 more than the third generation Fire TV Stick with all the bells and whistles goes for.
Our most plausible guess is that this is mainly for markets that didn’t already have Fire TV Stick available before Amazon began its big global video expansion. But Amazon says the Basic Edition is available for purchase in more than 100 countries and territories, including ones we know for a fact have had the better option (such as, you guessed it, the US).
So yeah. This is great if you, like, really hate Alexa and wouldn’t mind paying Amazon an extra $10 to get her out of your hair. And even then, grabbing this version and giving her the silent treatment would probably be your best bet.