I have an Amazon Fire TV Stick on one of my LCD TVs in my house. I’ve used Fire TV Sticks in different locations over the years with minimal complaints or issues. However, I recently installed a Fire TV Stick in a new TV in a new location and was having terrible performance issues with it.
My Fire TV Stick was showing these bad performance signs:
- Slow to boot up
- Absolutely sluggish (to the point of not being usable) when simply navigating between screens and app icons
- Sluggish to launch apps, stream music, watch movies
- Could barely install new apps etc
To troubleshoot the issues, I verified a strong wifi signal in the new location, ensured the Fire TV Stick was up to date on software updates and other usual steps. I even went as far as factory resetting the device to clear out any cache or related issues.
Finally I figured out my my Fire TV stick was slow!
My device wasn’t getting enough power. If you have a Fire TV Stick or similar device, you know it needs access to USB power. My TV has a USB port on the back which was super convenient, so I was using it to plug into my Fire TV Stick.
So, yesterday, I plugged the USB cord into a cell phone USB power brick and low-and-behold – the FireTV Stick is zippy fast again.
The morale of the story: always plug your Amazon Fire TV Stick into wall USB power, even though the location may not be convenient for running such cords. 😀