Amazon’s New Fire TV Stick HD Doesn’t Have to Plug Into the Wall


Amazon is expanding its lineup of streaming devices with a new Fire TV Stick HD, a slimmer stick that you can power via a TV’s USB port and included cable.

The new device is about 30% narrower than the previous-gen HD stick, according to Amazon. The device’s Direct Power feature lets you use it without a wall adapter.

Those new features may make it easier to tuck the device away on the back or side of your TV without wires or devices sticking out, Aidan Marcuss, vice president for Fire TV at Amazon, told CNET in an interview.

“It’s a pretty capable thing to upgrade any TV in your house,” Marcuss said. “And so, if you’ve got the kitchen TV that’s perfectly placed for where it is, like, here’s a way to upgrade it.”

The new Amazon Fire TV Stick HD close-up shows how the Fire TV Stick can use a TV port to power up, rather than plugging into a wall.

Amazon

The device comes with Alexa Plus (for customers in the US, Canada, and the UK), and Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 support. Amazon says it turns on and opens apps more quickly than the previous-gen HD stick. If the stick isn’t getting enough power, it will alert you on screen and give you options to fix it.

The device is available for preorder now for $35 and scheduled to ship by the end of April to Canada, Mexico, the US, the UK, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. If you’re in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain or Switzerland, you can sign up on your local Amazon website to get more details.

Amazon said it will add a new accessibility feature to the Fire TV Stick HD in the coming weeks that makes it easier to see content on screen. The Adaptive Display setting allows you to enlarge small text and menus while proportionally scaling artwork and will allow multiple size options. 

The company on Wednesday also announced that its Amazon Ember Artline TV, revealed at CES, is now available for preorder in 55-inch and 65-inch models starting at $900. The TVs will begin shipping on April 22 in the US and Canada and in May in the UK and Germany.





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Virtually every new SUV will depreciate in value over its life as the miles rack up and components start to wear out. However, some of them depreciate much faster than others. At one end of the spectrum, there are some models from the likes of Cadillac, Tesla, and Infiniti, all of which can lose close to two-thirds of their value after just half a decade on the road. That makes them some of the worst-depreciating SUVs on the market. At the other end, there are SUVs like the Toyota Land Cruiser.

The exact resale value of any used car will depend on factors like its trim, condition, and mileage, but on average, Land Cruiser owners can expect a higher trade-in value than most rivals will fetch. According to data from CarEdge, a new Land Cruiser can be expected to lose around 35% of its original value after five years on the road, assuming it covers around 13,500 miles annually.

Estimates from iSeeCars make for equally encouraging reading for Land Cruiser owners, with the outlet estimating that after five years, a new example will lose just 34.4% of its sticker price. Even after seven years on the road, iSeeCars estimates that the average Land Cruiser will still be worth a little over half of what buyers originally paid for it.

The Land Cruiser holds its value well

The estimate from iSeeCars puts the Land Cruiser slightly ahead of average for value retention in the large hybrid SUV segment, and significantly ahead of the overall market average for new SUVs. According to the same data, the average new SUV can expect to lose 44.9% of its value over the same period, over 10% more than the Land Cruiser. That said, a different Toyota SUV is forecast to retain even more of its value.

Since the 2025 model year, both the Land Cruiser and the 4Runner have shared their platform and hybrid powertrains. However, according to current estimates, the 4Runner is the clear winner when it comes to resale value. Data from iSeeCars forecasts that a new, non-hybrid 4Runner is likely to lose only 25.4% of its value after its first five years, and CarEdge predicts almost exactly the same figure. According to the former outlet, a hybrid 4Runner will lose slightly more of its value over the same timeframe, shedding 28.6% on average.

While the 4Runner is the better choice purely for value retention, that only forms part of the equation for most buyers. The Land Cruiser remains appealing thanks to its mix of off-road capability and on-road refinement, with even the base 2026 trim offering plenty of standard features, despite missing out on the luxuries that higher trims include.





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