A few weeks ago I was standing in front of the old Sony in the lounge room — about ten years old at this point — trying to open YouTube. It wouldn’t load. Not “slow to load.” Wouldn’t load, full stop, because the TV had literally run out of memory to run the app. Ten years of YouTube getting bigger and more demanding, and a TV that was never going to get bigger to match it.
My first instinct, like most people’s, was: right, time for a new TV. I even had a few tabs open comparing 55-inch models. Then I stopped and asked myself what was actually broken.
The picture was still fine. Ten years on, the panel itself hadn’t done anything wrong — it just didn’t owe anyone anything. The problem wasn’t the screen. It was the little app-running computer bolted onto the back of it, built for a decade-old internet and never given the memory to keep up with even a handful of app updates, let alone ten years of them.
So instead of a new TV, I bought a $59 stick.
Table of Contents
The Actual Purchase
I went with the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus. Amazon’s Fire TV range has quietly turned into four different models now, which I didn’t expect and which annoyed me for about ten minutes while I worked out the differences — there’s a cheaper HD-only one, a base 4K one, this one, and a beefier “Max” version. The Plus was the one that made sense: 4K, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, Wi-Fi 6, and an Alexa remote that can control the TV’s power and volume too. RRP is around $99, but it was sitting at $59 when I bought it, which is less than what I’ve spent on takeaway in a single bad week.
I nearly went a different way, for what it’s worth. If your household is deep into iPhones, Apple TV 4K is the obvious pick — it does the HomeKit smart-home thing and AirPlay is genuinely seamless, but it’s $299+ and I wasn’t paying triple the price for integration I wasn’t going to use. And if I’d been leaning Google, I would’ve reached for a Chromecast out of habit — except Chromecast doesn’t actually exist as a current product anymore. Google killed it off and replaced the whole line with the Google TV Streamer, a proper set-top box rather than a dongle, sitting at $159.99. Still solid if you’re a Google Home household, just not the “hide it behind the TV” gadget it used to be.
Setting It Up (Genuinely Ten Minutes)
This is the part that made me feel a bit silly for considering a whole new TV. I plugged the stick into the HDMI port, plugged the power cable into the wall, switched the TV input, and it walked me through Wi-Fi and sign-in. Ten minutes, maybe twelve including the bit where I couldn’t find the remote batteries.
Then came the part I actually want you to notice: I didn’t add a single new subscription. I logged back into Netflix, Prime, Stan, and Kayo — everything we already paid for — and then bolted on the free stuff for good measure. 9Now, 7plus, ABC iview, 10 Play, SBS On Demand. Same monthly spend, noticeably more stuff to watch.
What Actually Changed
Apps open almost instantly now. That’s the whole review, really — it’s not more magical than that, it’s just fast, which is apparently all I wanted the entire time. The Alexa remote replaced two other remotes that were living on the coffee table for no reason. Voice search works better than I expected — “Alexa, find something with Idris Elba in it” is a genuinely faster way to decide what to watch than scrolling.
The one thing I didn’t predict: our old TV now runs Xbox Game Pass Ultimate through the stick, cloud-gaming style, no console required. I plugged that into the spare TV in the study more as a “should I bother” experiment and ended up losing an evening to it.
The Bit Where I Do the Maths
A new mid-range 55-inch TV starts somewhere north of $700 once you’re not buying the absolute bottom of the range. I spent $59. Even if I’d paid full RRP, that’s under $100 — and the panel I already own is not meaningfully worse than what I’d have gotten in a budget new TV anyway, because manufacturers cut corners on the smart features long before they cut corners on the actual screen.
So the maths isn’t close. I fixed the actual problem — a slow, outdated smart TV interface — for about a tenth of the price of replacing something that wasn’t broken.
If You’re Standing Where I Was
Go check the back of your TV. If there’s an HDMI port and it can do at least 1080p, you don’t need a new TV, you need a new brain for the one you’ve got:
- Cheapest, no-frills fix: Amazon Fire TV Stick HD (~$79) if you’re not on 4K, or the 4K Select (~$89) if you are.
- The one I’d actually get: Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus (~$99 RRP, often discounted to $59).
- Google household: Google TV Streamer (~$159.99) — pricier than the old Chromecast days, but it’s now a real smart-home hub too.
- Apple household: Apple TV 4K (from ~$299) — worth it if you’re already in the ecosystem, overkill if you’re not.
Ten minutes, one HDMI port, no new TV. That’s the whole hack.
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