Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini LED Review

Price

The 55-inch Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini LED that I’ve tested has an RRP of £849, but also comes in 65- (£1149) and 75-inch sizes (£1599).

In the US it’s priced at $819 / $1089 / $1499 respectively, and there’s an 85-inch model not available in the UK that costs $2099.

Of course, prices on both sides of the pond come down during Amazon’s discount extravaganza. At the time of review the 55-inch is £699 and you can expect a similar price during a Prime Day or Black Friday sales event.

Design

• Quick to assemble
• Smart looks
• Decent enough viewing angles

The design of the Fire TV Mini LED is not too different from the Omni QLED. Like the older model it’s easy to assemble, taking less than two minutes to attach the feet.

The feet can only be inserted on either side, so a wide perch to set this TV on is needed.

Aesthetically it’s smart. The frame that encases the screen is silver giving it a slightly more premium look. At 68mm it’s not the slimmest, but the Fire TV Omni Mini LED feels well-built – better than both the Omni QLED and cheaper Fire TV 4-Series.

Below the Fire TV logo is a switch to turn Alexa off if you don’t want her snooping.

Viewing angles are fine but blooming and black levels get worse at wider angles. The anti-glare/matte screen makes a decent fist of obscuring background reflections.

Connectivity

• HDMI 2.1 support
• Wi-Fi 6E

The Fire TV Omni Mini LED has four HDMI inputs – two HDMI 2.0 and two HDMI 2.1. There’s eARC support for hooking up a soundbar that supports spatial audio – I’m sure Amazon would love you to partner it with the Fire TV Soundbar Plus.

The other HDMI 2.1 input supports VRR – more on that below.

The rest of the inputs cover USB 3.0, a digital optical port, RF antennae, Ethernet and a 3.5mm input. Wirelessly, you’re covered with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth support. Other streaming options such as Google Cast and AirPlay 2 aren’t on the spec sheet.

User Experience

• Fire TV Ambient Experience
• Hands-free Alexa
• Freeview Play

I have a like/dislike relationship with Fire TV. I find it overwhelming. There are so many rows that ‘death scrolling’ becomes a fait accompli – I just stop looking for something to watch.

Alexa speeds up the process, but only if you know what you’re looking for. I feel Fire TV could do with fewer rows or at least a greater emphasis on personalising the experience.

It doesn’t help that Fire TV is all focused on Amazon. There’s a row (somewhere) for iPlayer and one whittled out for Netflix – Fire TV lays all its content out there but it could benefit from a curate’s eye. Sky OS this is not.

You do, at least, get all the apps from the big, mainstream ones to the smaller, independent apps – you’re not lacking for choice. Navigating the interface is speedy while hands-free Alexa responds quickly and accurately – most of the time.

Up to six profiles are supported, including kids’ profiles.

All UK catch-up and on-demand apps are presented within the Freeview Play umbrella rather than Freely.

Freely is available on select Amazon Fire TV models (Omni QLED and Fire TV 2-Series), as well as Fire TVs from other brands (Panasonic W95A) but the Fire TV Omni Mini LED misses out.

There’s live on-demand content from the likes of Eurosport and Discovery, although you won’t find live broadcasts from iPlayer and ITVX integrated in the EPG.

Amazon’s Fire TV Ambient Experience turns the display into a massive wallpaper a la Samsung’s The Frame, and when in standby mode there are over 2000 pieces of art to stare at.

And with the Mini LED model, the screen changes over time. One image of flowers changed colour and waved in the gentle (virtual) breeze. The TV senses your movement, switching on from standby mode, and with the Interactive Art Feature the artwork shifts in with your motion – supposedly.

The remote should be familiar to anyone with its Alexa button and clickable D-pad for navigation. Buttons are spaced out well enough with shortcuts to apps such as Freeview Play, Prime Video and Netflix. One thing that does bother me about the remote is that there isn’t a specific settings button – I have to hold down the Home button to access.

Gaming

• Up to 144Hz
• AMD FreeSync Premium Pro

While the Omni QLED supported refresh rates up to 60Hz, the Omni Mini LED ramps it up to 144Hz. With games consoles such as the Xbox Series models and the P5S refresh rates only go up to 120Hz, but with PC titles the 144Hz refresh rates allow for a smoother, faster, and more stable performance.

Other online reviews have mentioned Dolby Vision Gaming but scouring the Amazon website and there’s no mention of it. I’ve asked Amazon for confirmation.

There’s also ALLM for putting the TV into its lowest latency when a gaming signal is detected. AMD FreeSync Premium Pro for PC titles offers improved HDR performance and less tearing.

Amazon’s Luna is another option, and you can (wirelessly) plug in the gamepad (sold separately).

Input lag is 13.2ms, as fast as an LG OLED but slower than the Omni QLED’s 10.1ms.

Features

• Full HDR support
• Filmmaker Mode
• Adaptive light sensor

HDR support covers HDR10, HLG, HDR10+ Adaptive (HDR10+ Gaming) and Dolby Vision IQ. With 512 dimming zones, Amazon say the Fire TV Omni Mini LED can reach up to 1400 nits.

That’d put this TV alongside the LG QNED93 and Panasonic W95A, though behind the likes of the Samsung QN90F and Hisense U7Q Pro. That said, the Amazon is not nearly as dear on the wallet as the Samsung and Hisense TVs.

Filmmaker Mode provides the most accurate picture out of the box, while the TV’s built-in light sensor adapts the picture depending on room brightness.

There’s Dolby Atmos audio support through the speaker’s 2.1 sound system, with a built-in subwoofer on the back. Amazon is less than forthcoming in terms of how much power these speakers output, though.

Picture Quality

• Rich, saturated colours
• Black levels can be inconsistent
• Respectable motion processing

The Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini LED’s picture is rich and colourful, and when given some encouragement, a bright enough image. What it lacks to join the best TVs is that last bit of nuance and subtlety.

There is something odd about the TV’s brightness. On the sample I received, images were darker than I expected. Measuring the brightness in the TV’s Standard mode with my colorimeter, I ended up with 294 nits. In fact across all modes it was strangely low.

Playing with the settings – the Adaptive Light Sensor seemed the offender – resulted in a brighter performance; 797 and 950 nits on 5% and 10% HDR window respectively, although not up to the numbers Amazon quotes.

Kicking things with test disc favourite Alien: Romulus, the sets offers rich red colours and deep blacks in the film’s opening but there’s a lack of precision in how it describes the outer space starfield compared to other TVs. It’s a little fuzzy.

Side by side with a Panasonic W95A, it’s also not as natural both in skin tones and colour, while dark detail veers between good and crushed (lack of detail) for reasons I can’t decipher. When dealing with bright images, the Amazon looks good but darker HDR images? Not so much.

That trait continues with Disney’s Soul. There’s not the same level of depth to black levels when Joe wakes up near The Great Beyond. But weirdly in some moments, it has a better grasp of black levels than the Panasonic W95A. At least there’s no backlight bleeding.

With Across the Spider-Verse, the Fire displays a rich sense of colour but not as wide a range of tones and shades. White tones are bright and pure on the Amazon but the Fire TV embellishes colours a little too much. Turning Adaptive Colour and Intelligent HDR off brings a more natural performance to bear.

The Amazon Mini LED has a bold sense of colour but not the subtlety to go with it. There’s tweaking to be done to the settings in most modes to get the picture I’d like. There’s also a weird issue with Dolby Vision content where it looks dimmer than it should with First Man. Usually restarting the app or ejecting the 4K disc would result in the proper look.

The motion processing is respectable. With settings maxed out there’s judder, image break-up, softness, plus some noise and stutter when there’s plenty of people on the screen. All the usual stuff, but it doesn’t descend into a mess.

Dropping the Action Smoothing settings to 8/8 and the softness remains, but judder is reduced. The best setting is 6/6 with no noticeable judder, stutter or noise unless you’re looking for it. It’s the setting I’d leave the TV on if Action Smoothing was enabled.

Upscaling

• Colours feel slightly inaccurate
• Solid levels of detail and clarity

Kicking off with Prime Video’s Invincible and the richness of the Omni Mini LED’s performance with HDR content loses its lustre with SDR content. Colours look brighter but less punchy and stand out less.

It’s similar result with a Blu-ray of Disney’s Tomorrowland – lighter shades, higher brightness – but levels of sharpness, clarity, black levels, and detail all seem the equal of the Panasonic W95A. If anything, in some scenes, the Amazon looks more defined.

Dropping down to a DVD of Hellboy and it’s where the Omni Mini LED’s colour performance goes awry. Blue backgrounds have a pink tint to them, the Movie Bright mode has a green tone to it; while skintones, colourful though they are, have a pink-ish quality to them.

Sound Quality

• Decent bass
• Not the sharpest or clearest sounding

I don’t expect much from a flatscreen TV’s sound system but in general, whether this TV is fed 5.1 or stereo sound; bass is weighty, voices clear and it sounds solidly big.

With Dune: Part Two I’m impressed by the weighty low end performance that opens the film. With Civil War there’s decent punch to explosions and in that film’s more challenging sequences, the TV doesn’t suffer from bass distortion.

With Dolby Atmos soundtracks it’s not as sharp, detailed or as clear as the Panasonic W95A. Dialogue is not always the most natural-sounding or clear, sounding a little compressed. But dialogue near enough matches its placement on screen.

Flip Dialogue Enhancer on and it makes dialogue louder but also slightly raises background noises. With the High setting engaged, it’s all just a bit noisy.

A soundbar would elevate the TV’s sound and there’s the option of the Fire TV Soundbar Plus.

Should you buy it?