Experiencing problems with your Amazon Fire Stick? Wondering if you’re setting it up correctly? You’re probably experiencing problems with your power supply. You don’t have to worry because it’s normal to experience this issue. Our team will walk you through the important Amazon Fire stick power requirements to help you solve such issue.
Recommended Power Requirements for the Fire Stick
The Fire Stick usually requires a voltage of 5V and current of 900mA. To explain this more thoroughly, we’ll break down the simple ports and auxiliary cords you’ll need for setting up your device.
What’s in the Box
Here are the items you should expect to receive in your Amazon package:
- Amazon Fire TV Stick
- Amazon Fire TV Stick Remote Control and AAA batteries
- USB Cord and Power Adapter
The Fire TV Stick is what you would expect a USB flash drive to look like. However, it isn’t anything of the sort and only serves as a streaming player that turns your device into a Smart TV.
We should also clarify as early as now that the Fire Stick connects through the HDMI port of your device and not the USB port.
That said, there are two options for powering your Amazon Fire TV Stick.
How to Use Amazon Fire Stick
For this part, we will present both options to inform you of how most users power their own Fire Sticks. However, the latter option is not something we recommend, and we will discuss this further in this article.
Method 1: Plug Directly to an Outlet
The package comes with the disclaimer to “use the included power adapter and USB cable”. This is something our team would highly recommend you to follow:
- To do so, you first need to connect your Fire TV Stick to your TV
- Plug one end of the USB cord in the Fire TV Stick
- Attach the Power Adapter to the other end of the USB Cord
- Plug the Power Adapter to an outlet
This is the recommended procedure as it takes into consideration the power supply you’ll need for the stick. You reduce the risk of losing your Fire Stick to overheating and underperformance.
However, people still tend to not follow this method because of poor wire management and inconvenience
As such, users would often resort to the next and only other possible method available.
Method 2: Plug It Straight to Your TV
This method is straightforward with the following steps:
- Connect your Fire TV Stick to your TV
- Plug one end of the USB cord in the Fire TV Stick
- Connect the other end of the USB cord into the USB port of your TV
While this may work seamlessly for some, most USB ports on our televisions aren’t usually designed to provide the power the Fire Stick needs.
The best thing you can do to mitigate this is to get yourself a stronger cable. Otherwise, just do the first method and plug it to an outlet to be safe.
You’ll know your setup works if the Amazon home screen appears on your TV shortly after plugging everything in.
Why Avoid Plugging the Fire Stick Directly to Your TV?
Remember how the Fire Stick is recommended to use at least 900mA? Well, the TV can only do so much as to provide you with around 500mA of current.
Your Fire Stick will still work under this setup because normal activities such as streaming only require around 500mA too.
However, the Amazon Fire Stick maximizes its idle time by constantly updating its software system in the background. These updates include faster Amazon processing; access to newly updated shows and streams; and packing, reading, and rewriting of data.
The updates would require its power requirement up to its recommended 900mA, which the TV simply cannot provide. You’ll start to notice your HD content lagging and decreasing in frame quality by then.
This isn’t the result of your Fire Stick’s poor quality. You’re simply overworking your Stick by not providing it with its needed power. You should be worried because a disruption during a software update could result in device damage. Our simple advice is not plug your Fire Stick directly back to your TV.
(Looking for the ideal way to manage your home theater wired connections? Then, you can check the best home theater power manager listed here for you)
Conclusion
The Amazon Fire TV Stick is an accessory we definitely recommend. Just make sure that you take care of it well by meeting and adhering to the Amazon Fire Stick power requirements and remember to plug it to an outlet and not the TV.
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