“They had gone to the trouble of getting all her shots, her spay surgery and microchip … [then] they just dumped her at the closest shelter after having her for months,” Jennifer Jessup, an independent dog rescuer based in New York City, told The Dodo. “She basically lost everything she’s ever known, and at 1 year old, [she] found herself in a loud, scary place where they euthanize for space.”
The shelter was a terrifying experience for Ellie, and she spent most of her time snuggled up against a teddy bear, which her former family had left with her.
Sharon Stead, CEO of the Amalinda Safari Collection, believes that trophy hunting around Hwange National Park also has negative effects on tourism.
“Whilst I understand the role that hunting has in Zimbabwe, I personally feel that hunting iconic pride lions around Hwange National Park, especially those who are collared, is counterproductive to the species and the landscapes in which they play a roll,” Stead told The Dodo. “These lions have become relaxed around photographic vehicles, are born and bred in the park, and the consequence of them being removed from their social structure has far-reaching repercussions which is not deemed good conservation practice. They are known to photographic operators and their value to them, National Parks and our guests, who come to Africa to photograph these iconic species, has far more financial benefit then that of its trophy fee in the long term.”
Carleto lives in Brazil where, last year, he suggested to his parents that they rescue a shelter pup. Neither was thrilled with the idea initially; in fact, his dad was outright opposed. “I don’t want a dog in the house,” Carleto recalls him saying. But that wasn’t a huge surprise.
“My dad is old and grumpy, always frowning,” Carleto joked to The Dodo.
However, Carleto did not give up. He arranged for his mother to meet the dog he had in mind, a sweet pup named Pitoco, and she quickly joined his side. With her now on board, Dad conceded defeat and reluctantly accepted his family’s new pet.
Even though she’s already 18 years old, which would be 126 years old in human years, and is completely blind, Isabella still has so much love left to give. Due to her age, the staffers at the RSPCA Thanet branch let Isabella spend her days in reception, greeting every new visitor who stops by, instead of sitting in a kennel.
“She is adored by everyone who meets her,” Emily Mayer, an animal care assistant at the RSPCA Thanet branch, said in a press release. “She loves to be around people, being cuddled on their lap or being groomed. She is currently living in reception as she has become our unofficial greeter and she gets lots of attention there, but we would really like to see her live her retirement days in a home where she can feel special every day.”
But the puppy, who was named Albert Eyestein (Albert for short), managed to pull through. After his surgery, Olivarez took Albert home and kept him for a few days, feeding him through a syringe. Then on Monday, Wood’s friend Berni Gutierrez took over Albert’s foster care, and he’ll keep him until Albert goes to a forever home.
“He’s still very quiet just because he’s so weak, but he’s developing his personality,” Wood said. “He loves to play with toys. He loves to eat now. He’s very sweet.”
In a rare but not unprecedented acknowledgement of fault in one of its products, Apple announced Friday that it would cover the cost of repair of recent MacBook and MacBook Pro keyboards, for free, for four years from the date you purchased it. It won’t keep your keys from succumbing to a speck of dust, but at least you won’t have to pay for the fix.
Apple’s keyboard woes have been well-documented, if anecdotal; The Outline was a vocal critic as early as last October. Complaints have plagued the so-called butterfly style keyboard since its launch; recent models have suffered key failure with no apparent catalyst. Apple faces no fewer than three class action lawsuits over the apparently flawed design.
The program should provide at least some peace of mind to MacBook owners, although it remains to be seen if future versions of Apple laptops will address the underlying issue.
Because the problem seems inherent to how the butterfly keyboard is constructed—once debris gets under the keyboard, it can’t get out again, neutering presses—there’s no simple solution, and certainly no at-home fix. So instead, Apple will let you bring your laptop in for repair, either at an Apple Store or an authorized service provider—or mail it to an Apple repair center—and the company will fix your faulty keyboard for free.
“Today we launched a keyboard service program for our customers that covers a small percentage of keyboards in certain MacBook and MacBook Pro models which may exhibit one or more of the following behaviors: letters or characters that repeat unexpectedly or don’t appear when pressed or keys that feel “sticky” or aren’t responding in a consistent manner,” Apple said in a statement. “Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider will examine the customer’s device to verify eligibility and then perform the service free of charge. Service may involve the replacement of one or more keys or the whole keyboard.”
Nine models are eligible for the repair, including Retina MacBooks dating back to 2015, and MacBook Pros from 2016 onward. Apple also appears open to offering refunds to anyone who paid for a keyboard repair out of pocket until this point; you can see full details about the program at this website.
The program should provide at least some peace of mind to MacBook owners, although it remains to be seen if future versions of Apple laptops will address the underlying issue, or if Apple will soldier on with a butterfly design that, while sleek and slim, seems to cause semi-regular headaches.
It’s also the latest in a very occasional series of Apple copping—sort of—to its mistakes. When iPhone 4 owners decried apparent signal loss, Cupertino first told customers, essentially, that they were holding it wrong. The eventually gave out free “bumper” cases that negated the issue. More recently, Apple acknowledged that it slowed down older iPhones in an effort to preserve battery life; it went on to offer a discounted battery replacement plan instead.
As in those previous incidents, the problem appears to stem from prioritizing design over functionality. And as before, the fix comes only after a sustained outcry. Still, better to be late to an accommodation than not to offer one at all.
This week Instagram rolled out a new, long-form video feature called IGTV, which lives both within the regular Instagram app and exists as its own app. On this week’s Gadget Lab podcast, Mike and Arielle chat about how the new format works, what long videos (up to 60 minutes!) will mean for Instagram and its creators, how IGTV will stack up to YouTube, and most importantly, whether this means our vertical video futures have officially arrived.
Some notes: You can read Lauren Goode and Louise Matsakis’s story here about IGTV and whether it can compete with YouTube.
Recommendations this week: Arielle recommends The Habitat, a new non-fiction podcast series from Gimlet Media, about a group of people who volunteered for a year-long mission that simulated living life on Mars. Mike recommends this story in WIRED by Lisa Wood Shapiro, about a technology called Grammarly that helped her cheat dyslexia.
Send the Gadget Lab hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. Lauren Goode, who returns to the podcast next week, is @laurengoode, and Michael Calore is @snackfight, and Arielle Pardes is @pardesoteric. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. Our theme song is by Solar Keys.
How to Listen
You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here’s how:
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Cold brew coffee, if made right, is simply divine. It’s the smoothest, loveliest summer refreshment I’ve ever had. Sadly, it always tastes better at the coffee shop or from a bottle. I’ve found that homebrew can be incredibly tricky to get just right.
So many guides and products seem to have a wide variety of advice on how best to go about it. They’ll recommend different makers, different methods, different coffee grounds, different water ratios, different brew times, and different temperatures for your water. After filling my fridge to test 16 different cold brew makers, I still haven’t made what I’d consider my perfect cup of cold brew coffee, but I’m a lot closer to cold brew nirvana than I was a few months ago.
Below are the best cold brew coffee makers I’ve tested so far. I’ve tried pot immersion (tea style) pots, big immersion buckets, slow drip makers, French presses, mason jars, and even a couple automated brewers. In them I’ve tested more than half a dozen different cold brew friendly coffee blends to try and find a combination I could recommend to our readers.
There’s nothing insanely unique about Coffee Gator’s 47 fl oz glass immersion cold brew coffee pot. It’s similar to many others you’ll find from other brands, but Gator made almost all the right design decisions. After steeping for 24 hours, coffee came out smooth and flavorful without too much bitterness (though you won’t need to add a lot of water) and the filter is fine enough that there was very little sediment left at all, which can ruin a good cold brew by adding a gritty mouthfeel and aftertaste.
Filling the Gator, like other pots, is slower because you have to pour your water through the grounds and let it settle through, but the included metal scoop and collapsible funnel made adding grounds and water an easier, tidier process. I liked them so much, I began using these handy accessories with all the other cold brew makers. Cleanup is also faster than other brewers because you can quickly detach the grounds filter, which has a twist-off bottom for easy rinsing.
It’s hard to find a simpler way to make cold brew than with the Coffee Gator, and its customer service is responsive, too. Since the Gator seems to keep selling out (then coming back in stock), I also tested a nearly identical (seriously, identical) Cold Brew Coffee Pot by Vremi ($16) that is almost as good. It doesn’t have the scoop and funnel, but it does have a spout that seals, which is nice, and a fruit infuser if you like to make tea or flavored water.
The WIRED Gear team has liked OXO’s cold brew coffee maker for years (we ranked it highly, giving it an 8/10, and our WIRED Recommends seal of approval). It’s a cold brew connoisseur’s dream rig that’s meant to sit proudly on your kitchen counter, and it’s the best purchase if you want bucket-style immersion brewing that allows for greater experimentation.
Not only does it look classy, OXO’s maker produces up to 32 fl oz of very fine coffee with minimal sediment that can come out far more concentrated (which means you’ll get more out of it) than the Coffee Gator and other pot-style brewers. It also has the potential to produce richer, more robust flavors, thanks to the design, which includes a “rainmaker” lid. You’ll have to tinker with your recipe, though, and make sure to dampen your grounds before you begin or things will get bitter, quick.
After sitting on the counter, or in the fridge, for 12-24 hours, you flip a switch and your brew cleanly drains into the graduated decanter, which may give you flashbacks to high school chemistry class. It also comes with a measuring lid. Perhaps most importantly, the coffee it makes is fantastic.
Cuisinart’s 7-cup machine does not produce cold brew coffee that I found to be as tasty as other machines on this list, but it’s foolproof by comparison, and the coffee is totally acceptable. You fill the filter cylinder with coffee grounds, then use the glass pot to fill the water reservoir with cold water.
Hit the brew button and listen to it twist and violently shake the flavor out of your grounds for 25 – 45 minutes. Out of its three modes, and I preferred the bold setting. You can always water it down if your bean juice turns out too strong. Flip the switch when it’s done, and out pours your cold brew.
Cleaning the grounds cylinder can be annoying if you let it sit for too long, and the coffee that comes out will have a lot of sediment (protip: add a small paper filter in the carafe’s mesh filter to catch it), but it still tastes decent and takes approximately 23.5 hours less time to make.
I’m going to be honest with you—I didn’t love this Filtron-made brewer. It’s similar to the OXO brewing system, just not as good in most ways that count.
It’s basically a big bucket with grounds in it, and a smaller bucket above that drips water into it. It’s made of cheap plastic, requires paper liners and filter pads that you’ll have to keep buying (filter pads last about 10 brews), and I had tons of trouble getting the water to completely drain into the grounds. You also have to use a rubber stopper to drain the coffee after 24 hours, which will always get your hands messy, and cleanup is time consuming. The instruction manual also looks like it was made by a 5th grader learning how to print with Microsoft Word. It’s filled with low-res images and poor formatting.
Unfortunately, it makes rich, full-bodied cold brew coffee that has the least sediment of any product I’ve tried so far. Those pads and paper filters are annoying, but they do work. If you’re okay with a little inconvenience, the Filtron will make a damn good cold brew concentrate. It’s similar to the Toddy Cold Brew System, though that one at least has a glass carafe with a spout.
County Line Kitchen is a family-owned business in Wisconsin. Its Cold Brew Maker uses a trusty ol’ 2-quart mason jar and stainless steel filter basket to brew. It works much like the Coffee Gator, but you can make a ton of joe with it. You fill the basket with a lot of coffee grounds, pour up to 64 fl oz of cold water through it slowly, and let it sit for 24 hours. When it’s done, take out the filter basket and use the lid to pour.
In my tests, the County Line produced relatively smooth cold brew coffee, though it was somewhat gritty, likely because the steel filter is a bit too porous. The instructions also tell you to shake the jar after adding water, but I found that a bit of coffee can leak out even if it’s sealed tight, which seems to be a common mason jar problem. Lingering grounds aside, if you want enough cold brew to last a week, this is a good way to get it.
I used French Presses as a quasi-control in my testing, and the Secura is the nicest I’ve tried. To my dismay, I haven’t yet been able to get any French press to produce cold brew coffee with flavor that’s as smooth or rich as with other methods. It’s usually a little bitter and gritty for my tastes. But it’s still quite drinkable, and if you play around enough or find the right coffee grounds, you can probably make a batch that suits your tastes.
You might very well already own a French press for hot coffee, but if you don’t, I recommend the Secura. It’s made of stainless steel and well-insulated to keep cold brew cold or hot coffee hot, and the handle doesn’t get too hot.
In my quest to make the perfect cold brew coffee, I tried at least half a dozen different types of coffee. Stone Street’s Arabica Columbian Supremo dark roast was my favorite. It’s made specifically with cold brewing in mind. They come coarsely ground (a coarse grind is best for cold brew) or whole bean if you own a grinder, and the 1 lb bag isn’t too expensive.
Stone Street was less bitter than some brands I tried and got closest to delivering that perfect, smooth cold brew flavor I was craving. Cold brewing requires a lot more grounds than normal hot brewing, so I appreciated its lower price, as well.
I had high hopes for a few other cold brew coffee makers that didn’t quite make the cut. Some of them are below, along with why I didn’t endorse them.
Takeya Airtight Cold Brew Maker ($19): This maker has earned high marks from reviewers, but in my tests it just didn’t stack up to competitors like the Coffee Gator. The airtight seal is fantastic and lets you shake your coffee, but no matter how tight everything was, I found that a good deal of gritty sediment ended up outside the filter. It’s also tougher to clean the filter than competitors because its bottom doesn’t screw off, and the plastic container works, but isn’t as nice as glass.
Gosh! Dripo ($20): The Dripo made delicious coffee with no grittiness or sediment, which I credit to the slow drip brewing method, but the instructions were confusing and the setup was a lot of work for how little coffee it produces. On top of that, if you don’t pre-wet your grounds, it may not work at all. The intent is that you can take the cup with you to work, but it’s not a great to-go cup because of the lid design, which doesn’t drain the coffee back into the cup well. Overall, it’s too much setup and work for too little coffee.
Simple Life Cycle Mason Jar ($18): This compact brewer is fun, but the filter is too porous and lets through a lot of sediment. I also had issues with coffee seeping out, and the wooden lid developed a crack on the side. Maybe I tried to seal it too tight? Either way, the coffee it brewed was not as tasty as other makers.
Hario Mizudashi ($27): There is absolutely nothing bad about the Mizudashi, though its grounds tray sits a little high. It’s a good cold brew pot, but just isn’t as good as the Gator and others I tested.
Gourmia Automatic Cold Brew Maker ($60): I tested two automatic cold brew machines, and the Cuisinart bested this Gourmia by a long shot. I wanted to like the Gourmia, and though it can produce clear, relatively smooth coffee with minimal sediment, but setup is a chore and the controls are confusing. Despite it saying it brews in 10 minutes, you have to run it multiple times, and the results were scattered and still seemed watery after several brewing rounds. The ice chilling cycle also doesn’t seem to add much, but does water the coffee down further. It’s also prone to clogging.
Cold Brew Q&A
How did you test each cold brew coffee maker?
Jeffrey Van Camp
Each cold brew coffee maker was tested multiple times. First, I followed each brewer’s included instruction manuals precisely. Then, I did a simultaneous test where I put the same exact type of grounds and kept the ratio of grounds to water (tap, refrigerated and filtered) as equal as possible. Generally, I used 32 fl oz of water and 3/4 cup of coffee grounds. They all sat for 24 hours in the refrigerator before removing the grounds.
I noted how easy they were to operate and clean up, and how good the coffee tasted and looked in head-to-head tests both plain and with some half and half, which is how I like to drink my cold brew. My wife and some friends provided additional tasting assistance. Some units were tested extra times if the results seemed off.
How do you make cold brew coffee?
Many of the brewers I tested work in different ways, but generally, you use a ratio of 1 part coffee grounds (coarse grind preferred) to either 4 or 5 parts water depending. Pour a little cool or cold water over the grounds to wet them, wait a minute, then pour the rest through, preferably using some sort of filter to separate the water from the grounds. The better the filter, the less sediment there will be at the end, which adds a gritty mouthfeel to your coffee, which is undesirable to many.
Some recipes have you stir or shake it, and you usually let it sit and steep for 12-24 hours, either on a table or in the fridge. I used refrigeration, though many experts recommend brewing at room temperature. You should remove the grounds when brewing is complete and refrigerate. You’ll probably want to dilute it some with milk or water when drinking. If you don’t like the taste, adjust the methods a bit or use different coffee grounds/beans. If it’s gritty, buy some paper coffee filters and filter the finished coffee one last time after brewing is complete.
Does cold brew coffee have more caffeine?
Yes, sort of! It will give you the shakes if you’re not careful. The caffeine content of coffee varies wildly, but a cup of cold brew coffee can have more caffeine than regular coffee if you don’t dilute it too much.
How long does cold brew coffee last?
If it’s refrigerated, it should last up to two weeks, though the flavor may get worse after a week or so, from my experience. Whether you’ll actually taste the difference depends on your palette. If you’ve already added water, it may cut the shelf life down, so try to leave room for some water after you’ve poured it into a glass.
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“Xena was treated like royalty,” Hickey told The Dodo about past flights. “Our flight wasn’t full so they moved people around so she could have her own seat. They gave her ice chips and truly cared about her.”
They also gave Xena a pair of Delta wings to wear on her vest like the flight attendants wear. But now, she and Jonny will no longer be allowed to fly with the company.
“She was very proud to wear her Delta wings,” Hickey added. “The real issue here is not the animals, but the people. We are paying the price because others have taken advantage of the ability to get an animal certified. Now, those who are really in need of their support animals, such as my son, are being restricted.”
“As soon as she realized she wasn’t in danger, she was doing great,” Garcia said. “She’d already started building a web, and as soon as we offered her some fruit flies, she ate them immediately.”
Although black widows are usually very shy, Broccoli seems naturally adventurous, spending a lot of time outside of her cave.
While black widow bites can be painful, black widows aren’t as fatal as people think they are. Human deaths from being bitten by a black widow are actually extremely rare — and in many cases, the spiders don’t even emit venom. They have the power to control whether a bite administers it, so unless they feel threatened, they usually won’t bother you.
“It takes a lot for them to actually make venom, so they use it very wisely,” Garcia said. “You literally almost have to squish them for them to release it. They don’t just go around biting people for fun. They’d much rather use their energy to eat.”
“Animals are just routinely dumped out there to die,” Laurie Kardon, a board member for the rescue, told The Dodo. “It’s a very dangerous place because there are a lot of trucks going through there at high speeds. It’s just heartbreaking. So many don’t make it.”
Because Susanna couldn’t walk, Zapata and others lifted her onto a tarp to get her into their truck. She was in such bad shape — but she was finally safe.
The rescuers rushed Susanna to the nearest animal hospital, where they started her on fluids and ran some blood work. It appeared that she was paralyzed, and no one knew the cause. It wasn’t clear if she’d ever be able to walk.
“They are wider than they are tall, unlike every other turtle species,” Fabio German Cupul, a researcher studying the turtles, told AFP.
It’s taken quite a long time, but the miniscule animals are now getting the official recognition they deserve — and it’s come just when they need it most.
Despite being newly discovered, the species is already considered endangered since all their known habitats have been damaged or destroyed by human development.
“Fulmars will often glide alongside the boat, but this one had just lifted off the sea and was shaking itself to dry off whilst flying,” she said. “It’s always great to capture something different. Over the last few days I have had many people commenting on the ‘Happy Bird Photo’ and how it made them smile.”
It’s not hard to imagine, however, that seeing their carefree counterpart had other, less cheery fulmars feeling …
Koko learned over 1,000 signs and understood 2,000 English words, and exhibited self-awareness by recognizing her own reflection in the mirror — and these kinds of achievements shot the gorilla to fame. She graced the cover of magazines and was featured in several documentaries. She met celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and the late Robin Williams.
In 1974, Koko even got her own kitten, All Ball, after asking her caretakers with sign language for a kitten the previous Christmas. Koko was gentle with All Ball, carrying her around like a baby and even trying to nurse her. All Ball sadly passed away, and when caretakers told Koko about the death, she began to whimper and make a hooting noise — a sign that she was grieving.
Presumably, Gerard Pique, a defender for the Spanish national team who normally plays for Barcelona, had a lot on his mind just before Wednesday’s game against Iran — but not so much that he could ignore something he spotted on the field in the minutes before kick-off.
From next month two Google StreetView cars will be driving around London’s streets fitted with sensors that take air quality readings every 30 meters to map and monitor air quality in the UK capital.
There will also be 100 fixed sensors fitted to lampposts and buildings in pollution blackspots and sensitive locations in the city — creating a new air quality monitoring network that Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, is billing as “the most sophisticated in the world”.
The goal with the year-long project is to generate hyperlocal data to help feed policy responses. Khan has made tackling air pollution one of his priorities.
It’s not the first time StreetView cars have been used as a vehicle for pollution monitoring. Three years ago sensors made by San Francisco startup Aclima were fitted to the cars to map air quality in the Bay Area.
The London project is using sensors made by UK company Air Monitors.
The air quality monitoring project is a partnership between the Greater London Authority and C40 Cities network — a coalition of major cities around the world which is focused on tackling climate change and increasing health and well-being.
The project is being led by the charity Environmental Defense Fund Europe, in partnership with Air Monitors, Google Earth Outreach, Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants, University of Cambridge, National Physical Laboratory, and the Environmental Defense Fund team in the United States.
King’s College London will also be undertaking a linked study focused on schools.
Results will be shared with members of the C40 Cities network — with the ambition of developing policy responses that help improve air quality for hundreds of millions of city dwellers around the world.
While the vet was shocked by Blue’s condition, she was also hopeful that with the right care, he would eventually transform into a happy, healthy dog. She gave Peskey a few different medications to give to Blue, including a special shampoo to wash him with. Peskey then took him home, and began the process of showing the sick, scared pup that he was finally loved.
In late 2016, Wildflower was rescued from the streets of South Carolina, where she’d been living the sad, hopeless life of a stray. From there, she was taken in by Carol Skaziak, founder of the Throw Away Dogs Project, an organization that trains rescue pups for service in law enforcement.
Right away, Skaziak saw Wildflower’s potential as a narcotics detection dog.
Kvitka has spent most of her life in a cage. The 8-year-old bear has spent the past six years at this “station.” And before that, she lived in another place like this in Eneyko. When she’s allowed outside of her cage, she’s used for a practice called “bear baiting.”
“She was used for dogfights and bear/dog training at the baiting station. The current manager of the station confirmed this when our team initially visited the station,” Claire LaFrance, communications director at Four Paws International, told The dodo. “According to the manager, around 30 dogs are kept at the baiting station ([our] team could hear them barking), also badgers and boars. Selected dogs are sent for baiting contests from time to time to various regions of Ukraine.”
If you’re thinking of buying the Amazon Fire TV Cube because you’re delighted by the idea of having an Amazon Echo and a Fire TV device mashed into one device, let me stop you right there. Alexa on a TV interface demands a level of conversation like no other streaming TV product I’ve used before.
“Alexa, show more.”
“Alexa, show more.”
“Alexa, select option one.”
“Alexa, go back.”
“Alexa, scroll right.”
“Alexa, go home.”
After a few nights of using the Cube, I began to hate the sound of my own voice. Maybe you’ll still be delighted by the Cube at first if you buy one. Maybe if you have kids, they’ll love shouting at the TV to get their cartoon fix. But there’s a good chance you’ll end up doing what I did: going back to the fuddy-duddy Fire TV remote, because that’s the easiest way to scroll through multiple media options. Even if you really enjoy chatting with your TV, your significant other or roommate may very well move out within a week.
It turns out Amazon’s promise for the future of TV doesn’t quite come through in its earliest form. And while the company deserves a lot of credit for democratizing a pleasant-sounding virtual assistant in our homes, this next push in voice feels like a strange combination of features, none of which stand out as exceptional.
Cube Tube
The promise of the new Amazon Fire TV Cube is a voice-first TV experience. You can bark commands at your Cube and tell it what streaming video you want to watch, or what games you want to play. You can also tell Alexa to turn your TV on and off, and ask it to switch inputs. (Amen to that.)
Amazon
The Fire TV Cube has the full microphone array of an Echo, with a new design—most Echos are round, the Cube is square. It’s shiny, with sharp edges and four physical buttons on its matte-black top. There’s an LED strip that runs across the top of the cube’s face, which lights up blue when you’re talking to Alexa. On the back of the box there are ports for HDMI, microUSB, and an IR extender. It doesn’t ship with an HDMI cable, though it does come with an Ethernet adapter.
The Cube runs on an Amlogic quad-core 1.5GHz processor and a Mali-450 MP3 GPU, the same family of chipsets that powers some Android TV boxes. It supports 60Hz 4K, HDR10, and Dolby Atmos. In many ways the Fire TV Cube is similar to last year’s $70 Fire TV Stick. But the Cube has the Echo functionality, as well as HDMI-CEC support and IR emitters.
Amazon also borrowed features from the Echo Show, its voice-controlled gadget with a screen, to create the Cube’s UI. You don’t need a remote to control the Echo Show, goes the thinking, so why not apply some of the interactions to a voice-first TV device?
The results of this feature combo are mixed. The Fire TV Cube is indeed an Echo, but not a good Echo. The speaker quality is on par with the Echo Dot puck. You can ask Alexa on the Fire TV Cube to tell you a joke or set a timer, and Alexa will oblige—but it also interrupts whatever you were just watching on TV. Somehow I didn’t mind this, but maybe that’s because that was the least irritating thing about it.
I found Alexa on the Fire TV Cube to be just slow enough to interrupt the flow of what I was trying to do. Normally, when I’m using Alexa on other Echo devices, this cadence feels natural: “Alexa.” (Short pause.) “Set a timer.” On the Fire TV Cube, Alexa comes across as mildly hungover, with an elongated pause between “Alexa, search for Atlanta” and the results appearing on screen, accompanied by Alexa’s response.
From there you’re supposed to say, repeatedly, “Show more” or “Scroll to the right,” to see more options, which is around the time I started to question voice control for a TV interface. Amazon has also come up with a method of numbering the programs that appear on the screen, which appear in a grid-like format. So you can say something like, “Alexa, select option four,” rather than saying, “Alexa, select Black Panther” or “Alexa, play The Shape of Water.” This part was useful. It was getting to the thing I wanted to watch that wasn’t as intuitive as promised. There were also comical mishaps. At one point, when I tried to use voice to select Atlanta, the Audible app launched and a voice began to read aloud from the book Atlanta Noir.
Amazon says that it anticipates this product getting better over time, like the original Echo. And the company says, in terms of latency, it’s working on an update that will go out as early as next week to help improve Alexa’s wake word responsiveness, and bring it on par with other Echo devices.
Some third-party apps are also expected to roll out deeper voice integration so they’ll work well on the Cube—including Netflix, ESPN, Showtime, Starz, CBS All Access, and Hulu. Amazon says Netflix should be launching these voice controls right around the time the Fire TV Cube launches. Right now, if you ask Alexa to search for Netflix’s Santa Clarita Diet, it will show you the result for the show, but you’ll have to pick up the remote from there. With regards to Hulu, an update to the app was rolled out the day before I filed this review, and I wasn’t able to test how well it works yet.
In terms of content, the Cube offers all the same stuff that other Fire TV devices do. You can count on a healthy promotion of Amazon-produced series, some of which are really good. There’s also a taxonomy that shows options for watching videos on services you already subscribe to, before it pushes Amazon’s own services. Fire TV has literally thousands of video and game options, as well as music apps like Spotify, so you’d be hard-pressed to find something missing. But there are some holes. You can’t watch your iTunes-purchased movies and shows on the Fire TV, and YouTube still isn’t natively supported.
The Cube does have its upsides. The first is IR. While IR may seem like the oldest TV trick in the book, it means the Cube can control and communicate with most other gadgets crowded around your TV, from other streaming media boxes to a soundbar. And not all TV sets support HDMI-CEC, so IR is a nice option. I know some people get riled up about IR blasters, but I am not one of those people.
Also, despite the fact that I had two Amazon speaker devices in close proximity, the Fire TV Cube never responded to a command I meant for the other speaker, and vice versa. Amazon has said before that it uses echo spatial detection technology to make sure that the Echo closest to you is the one that responds. In my experience, this has improved a lot from a year ago, when I last had two Echos at home.
By far my favorite feature of the Fire TV Cube was using voice control to turn the TV on and off, and to switch inputs. It underscores what Amazon does best: simplicity. When you arrive home, exhausted after a long day, being able to say, “Alexa, turn on the TV” feels like a sweet reprieve. Having to go back and forth with Alexa 16 times after that to find something to watch is extra.
There is, of course, the remote that comes in the box. You can always go back to using that when you don’t feel like using voice, which is what I did. But if you’re going to do that, and you’re not drawn in by the Echo features, then there’s probably no need to spend $119 on a Cube. Just get a less expensive Fire TV Stick, which also supports 4K and comes with an Alexa remote for when you really want voice.
Amazon, over the past decade, has established itself in hardware by making low-cost, simple, and incredibly useful products, whether that’s been e-readers, TV sticks, or Echo speakers. The Fire TV Cube is an oddball in the mix. It’s a bet on our voice-filled future, but in its initial form, the stuff beyond basic commands gets lost in translation.
Update, Thursday June 21, 7 am PDT: Due to a publishing error, this review of the Fire TV Cube went live with the wrong rating. It’s been corrected to show the proper rating, which is 6 out of 10.
