Connect with us

Published

on

In this article

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Amazon

Amazon’s first TV sets, which you can talk to and control without a remote, go on sale this week. I’ve been testing the $830 Amazon Fire TV Omni Series for a few days. It’s a good TV for the money, and Alexa can be useful, but the software interface doesn’t look as sharp as it should on a 4K TV.  

Amazon has traditionally sold Fire TV Sticks and Fire TV Cubes that plug into existing sets, or partnered with other device makers who integrate its Fire TV software. Usually, there are buttons on the remotes that let you use Alexa to control the TV. With the Omni Series, however, Amazon brings its Alexa assistant right into the TV.

Amazon’s Jason Parrish, who led the product management of the Omni series TVs, told me the goal of the TV is to make living rooms smarter through what he calls ambient computing, with Alexa at the center of how we watch TV, listen to music and interact with our smart homes. The higher-end Omni Series has generated about two-thirds of all of Amazon’s pre-orders for TVs, Parrish said, showing it’s more popular than the more affordable 4-Series so far and that, seemingly, Amazon fans like the idea of talking to their televisions.

Amazon makes most of its money from its AWS cloud business and is better known as an online retailer. But its hardware, which ranges from tablets to e-readers and smart speakers, helps bring people right to its storefront and its ecosystem of ads and services.

I tested the 65-inch Amazon Fire TV Omni Series television, but there’s also a lower-end cheaper TV known as the 4 Series, which starts at $370.

What’s good

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Amazon

The Omni Series has a high-end physical design with an edge-to-edge 4K screen that’s sharp and, with the right adjustments, colorful. I like the slim metal bezel on the bottom, and the fact that I can just ask it to do what I want.

A remote is included, but even without touching it I could ask Alexa to play TV shows or movies, to tell me the weather (which pops up in a small bar at the bottom of the screen) or to tune to a specific channel on YouTube TV. It works even if I’m standing across the room. 

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Todd Haselton | CNBC

This is different from Amazon’s Fire TV Cube, which also had Alexa but required the TV screen to be switched on before it could respond.

Parrish said Amazon found when customers walk into the room and say “‘turn on the lights,’ they don’t want their TV to turn on and just stay on.”

“Or if you say ‘what time is it?’ you don’t need a 65-inch screen to tell you that. So that was the type of thing that we wanted to rethink,” he added. Parrish explained customers interact and engage with content more when they use voice instead of a remote.

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Todd Haselton | CNBC

There are four microphones along the top of the TV that are always listening for “Hey Alexa.” Parrish said the microphones are as far away from the speakers as possible so that they can still hear you if you’re playing music or watching TV.

“The goal there is to be able to make a request while you’re watching TV and not just kind of halt everything that you’re doing. You should be able to do it while you have that show going on and we also want to make sure that we’re not impacting your TV watching when it comes to responses,” Parrish said.

I liked that I could say “Alexa, pause” instead of trying to find the remote when I wanted to get up off the couch. It’s also useful to give commands like “Alexa, mute” or “Alexa, turn up the volume,” and I started to get used to not using the remote as often.

As with Amazon’s Echos, there’s an easy toggle to switch off the microphones. It’s right under the TV screen.

The microphone switch on the bottom.
Todd Haselton | CNBC

Alexa can do all sorts of other things, too, like switch inputs to your Xbox or cable box (which it can also control with an included cable), help you shop for things (“Alexa, shop for soap,”) or show you the current stock price of a company even while a show is playing. It’s useful. There’s a smart home dashboard, too, so you can see all of your cameras and lights.

Alexa will pop up some responses at the bottom of the screen, which is useful.
Todd Haselton | CNBC

The Omni TV, unlike the 4-Series, supports webcams through a USB port in case you want to video chat with other folks who own the same TV or who have other products with Alexa installed, like phones, Amazon tablets or Amazon’s Echo Show smart screens. It worked with a Logitech webcam Amazon sent me to test. Likewise, you can check in on cameras around your home by giving commands like “show the nursery camera,” for example. And a small video feed will pop up over the show you’re watching if someone rings the doorbell.

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Todd Haselton | CNBC

Movies and TV shows looked really good on the LED display, considering the TV’s sub-$1,000 price. The 65-inch model I tested and the larger 75-inch version support the clearest standards, like Dolby Vision, HDR 10, HLG, and Dolby Digital Plus, for good balance in bright scenes and better color and contrast than cheaper sets. I liked the image best after I turned up the color saturation a little bit from the presets. Also, the blacks aren’t as pure black and inky as you might find on much more expensive TVs with nicer miniLED or OLED screens.

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Todd Haselton | CNBC

The built-in speakers are better than most TV speakers and get nice and loud, but I still prefer a soundbar for deeper bass and richer sound.

What’s bad

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Todd Haselton | CNBC

Alexa understood most of my commands just fine, especially general ones that you’d typically give to an Echo.

However, there are some things that it just doesn’t support on a TV, and I had to learn those limitations by trial and error. For instance, you can adjust the TV color modes, like presets for movies or sports, but you cannot adjust the brightness with Alexa. 

Likewise, it works well if you say “Alexa, play the movie ‘Hackers,'” but didn’t correctly understand “Alexa, play the latest episode of ‘Succession'” — instead, it began playing the very first episode of the show. Amazon explained those inconsistent results can come down to how some apps — in this case, HBO Max — catalog their shows.

Parrish explained how Alexa tries to understand the user’s intent when a voice request is made. Amazon optimized the TV to understand that you probably want to view something instead of listening to it.

“‘Hamilton’ is obviously now on Disney as a movie, but it’s a very popular soundtrack as well,” Parrish said. “So a Fire TV, when you ask to play ‘Hamilton,’ it will get you to Disney Plus. It will bias towards video. Whereas on an Echo it will send you to Prime Music or Spotify or whatever your preferred music player is.”

Alexa is good, but it’s still learning.

I’m not a fan of the ads, like the “Jet-Puffed” food ad on the main screen, or the 1080p UI.
Todd Haselton | CNBC

My biggest gripe with the Omni Series TV is that the home screen and user interface still render in 1080p, a quarter of the 4K resolution. This isn’t a big deal if you sit about nine feet away from the TV, but I sit closer. The icons were blurry when I sat about four to five feet from the screen. You may never notice this unless you walk up close, but I look at nice screens for a living and it bothered me.

Amazon said the software is kept at a lower resolution to make sure the user interface is smooth and optimized. In fact, the TV felt sluggish and temporarily froze when I was moving through menus at first. Amazon advised me to do a factory reset and that fixed my problems. Still, it’s concerning that the experience wasn’t perfect out of the box.

You can avoid the lower resolution user interface by ignoring the Fire TV home screen altogether and using something else, like an Xbox Series X, a PlayStation 5 or an Apple TV through one of the HDMI inputs. An Apple TV 4K user interface looks nice and crisp as expected. But that sort of defeats the main purpose of buying an Amazon TV. 

Then, there were the ads. I don’t mind sponsored ads on Fire TVs and other cheap gadgets that plug into TVs, like the Google Chromecast and Roku devices. But I don’t like when an $820 TV displays ads for sponsored TV shows and movies, and subscription apps and channels I might want to buy. There was even a big ad on the home screen for an Amazon TV Fire stick — something you wouldn’t need if you bought this TV. Most TVs with a smart interface do this, too, and it’s how Amazon makes money, but it’s not a great experience.

“Having content promoted in our UI is kind of core to our experience,” Parrish told me. “We’ll probably have a lot of customers that are familiar with Fire TV and we’ll probably have some that aren’t. We look forward to hearing what they have to say.”

Should you buy it?

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Amazon

The Amazon Fire TV Omni Series is a nice TV set for $830. TV shows and movies look great once you adjust the picture to your liking. It’s easy to do in settings.

Alexa is convenient to have and it grows on you once you get used to doing some things by voice and others with the remote. It’s fun to just walk into a room and say “Alexa, tune to CNBC” without knowing where the remote is.

You’ll get the most out of Alexa on the Omni Series if you have lots of Amazon Echos and a smart home that’s tied in with Amazon’s ecosystem. It works well once you get the hang of what it can and can’t do.

I’m just bummed about the lower resolution home screen UI, even though movies and TV shows look good in 4K. I understand most folks may still end up watching full HD content anyway, since so much live TV isn’t even 4K, but the software should still look sharp even up close.

Continue Reading

Technology

Amazon deploys its 1 millionth robot in a sign of more job automation

Published

on

By

Amazon deploys its 1 millionth robot in a sign of more job automation

An Amazon logistics center in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Dummerstorf, Germany, on Nov. 27, 2024.

Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Amazon announced Monday its millionth worker robot, and said its entire fleet will be powered by a newly launched generative artificial intelligence model. The move comes at a time when more tech companies are cutting jobs and warning of automation.

The million robot milestone — which joins Amazon’s global network of more than 300 facilities — strengthens the company’s position as the world’s largest manufacturer and operator of mobile robotics, Scott Dresser, vice president of Amazon Robotics, said in a press release

Meanwhile, Dresser said that its new “DeepFleet” AI model will coordinate the movement of its robots within its fulfillment centers, reducing the travel time of the fleet by 10% and enabling faster and more cost-effective package deliveries.

Amazon began deploying robots in its facilities in 2012 to move inventory shelves across warehouse floors, according to Dresser. Since then, their roles in factories have grown tremendously, ranging from those able to lift up to 1,250 pounds of inventory to fully autonomous robots that navigate factories with carts of customer orders.

Meanwhile, AI-powered humanoid robots — designed to mimic human movement and shape — could be deployed this year at factories owned by Tesla.

Job security fears

But although advancements in AI robotics like those working in Amazon facilities come with the promise of productivity gains, they have also raised concerns about mass job loss.

A Pew Research survey published in March found that both AI experts and the general public see factory workers as one of the groups most at risk of losing their jobs because of AI.

That’s a concern Dresser appeared to attempt to address in his statements. 

“These robots work alongside our employees, handling heavy lifting and repetitive tasks while creating new opportunities for our front-line operators to develop technical skills,” Dresser said. He added that Amazon’s “next-generation fulfillment center” in Shreveport, Louisiana, which was launched late last year, required 30% more employees in reliability, maintenance and engineering roles. 

However, the news of Amazon’s robot expansion came soon after CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC that Amazon’s rapid rollout of generative AI will result in “fewer people doing some of the jobs that the technology actually starts to automate.”

Jassy said that even as AI eliminates jobs in certain areas, Amazon will continue to hire more employees in AI, robotics and elsewhere. But in a memo to employees earlier in June, the CEO had admitted that he expects the company’s workforce to shrink in the coming years in light of technological advancements. 

The decline may have already begun. CNBC reported that Amazon cut more than 27,000 jobs in 2022 and 2023, and had continued to make more targeted cuts across business units. 

Other big tech CEOs such as Shopify’s CEO Tobi Lutke also recently warned of the impact that AI will have on staffing. That comes as a vast array of firms investing in and adopting AI execute rounds of layoffs. 

According to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks technology industry layoffs, 551 companies laid off roughly 153,000 employees last year. And a World Economic Forum report in February found that 48% of U.S. employers plan to reduce their workforce due to AI.

Continue Reading

Technology

Chipmakers get larger tax credits in Trump’s latest ‘big beautiful bill’

Published

on

By

Chipmakers get larger tax credits in Trump’s latest ‘big beautiful bill’

U.S. President Donald Trump (right) and C.C. Wei, chief executive officer of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (left), shake hands during an announcement of an additional $100 billion into TSMC’s U.S. manufacturing at the White House in Washington, DC, U.S., on March 3, 2025.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The latest version of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” could make it cheaper for semiconductor manufacturers to build plants in the U.S. as Washington continues its efforts to strengthen its domestic chip supply chain.

Under the bill, passed by the Senate Tuesday, tax credits for those semiconductor firms would rise to 35% from 25%. That’s more than the 30% increase that had made it into a draft version of the bill. 

Companies eligible for the credits could include chipmakers such as Intel, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Micron Technology, provided that they expand their advanced manufacturing in the U.S. ahead of a 2026 deadline

The new provisions expand on tax incentives under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which provided grants of $39 billion and loans of $75 billion for U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturing projects. 

But before the expanded credits come into play, Trump’s sweeping domestic policy package will have to be passed again in the House, which narrowly passed its own version last month. The president has urged lawmakers to get the bill passed by July 4.

Trump versus Biden

The chip industry wants more clarity around policymaking, says 'Chip War' author Chris Miller

Trump has previously stated that tariffs, as opposed to the CHIPS Act grants, would be the best method of onshoring semiconductor production. The Trump administration is currently conducting an investigation into imports of semiconductor technology, which could result in new duties on the industry.

In recent months, a number of chipmakers with projects in the U.S. have ramped up planned investments there. That includes the world’s largest contract chipmaker, TSMC, as well as American chip companies such as Nvidia, Micron and GlobalFoundries.  

According to Daniel Newman, CEO at tech advisory firm Futurum Group, the threat of Trump’s tariffs has created more urgency for semiconductor companies to expand U.S. capacity. If the increased investment tax credits come into law, those onshoring efforts are only expected to accelerate, he told CNBC. 

“Given the risk of tariffs, increasing manufacturing in the U.S. remains a key consideration for these large semiconductor companies,” Newman said, adding that the tax credits could be seen as an opportunity to offset certain costs related to U.S.-based projects.

Continue Reading

Technology

Tesla shares drop on Musk, Trump feud ahead of Q2 deliveries

Published

on

By

Tesla shares drop on Musk, Trump feud ahead of Q2 deliveries

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., during a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.

Jim Lo Scalzo | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Tesla shares have dropped 7% from Friday’s closing price of $323.63 to the $300.71 close on Tuesday ahead of the company’s second-quarter deliveries report.

Wall Street analysts are expecting Tesla to report deliveries of around 387,000 — a 13% decline compared to deliveries of nearly 444,000 a year ago, according to a consensus compiled by FactSet. Prediction market Kalshi told CNBC on Tuesday that its traders forecast deliveries of around 364,000.

Shares in the electric vehicle maker had been rising after Tesla started a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in late June and CEO Elon Musk boasted of its first “driverless delivery” of a car to a customer there.

The stock price took a turn after Musk on Saturday reignited a feud with President Donald Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the massive spending bill that the commander-in-chief endorsed. The bill is now heading for a final vote in the House.

That legislation would benefit higher-income households in the U.S. while slashing spending on programs such as Medicaid and food assistance.

Musk did not object to cuts to those specific programs. However, Musk on X said the bill would worsen the U.S. deficit and raise the debt ceiling. The bill includes tax cuts that would add around $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.

The Tesla CEO has also criticized aspects of the bill that would cut hundreds of billions of dollars in support for renewable energy development in the U.S. and phase out tax credits for electric vehicles.

Such changes could hurt Tesla as they are expected to lower EV sales by roughly 100,000 vehicles per year by 2035, according to think tank Energy Innovation.

The bill is also expected to reduce renewable energy development by more than 350 cumulative gigawatts in that same time period, according to Energy Innovation. That could pressure Tesla’s Energy division, which sells solar and battery energy storage systems to utilities and other clean energy project developers.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that Musk was, “upset that he’s losing his EV mandate,” but that the tech CEO could “lose a lot more than that.” Trump was alluding to the subsidies, incentives and contracts that Musk’s many businesses have relied on.

SpaceX has received over $22 billion from work with the federal government since 2008, according to FedScout, which does federal spending and government contract research. That includes contracts from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and Space Force, among others.

Tesla has reported $11.8 billion in sales of “automotive regulatory credits,” or environmental credits, since 2015, according to an evaluation of the EV maker’s financial filings by Geoff Orazem, CEO of FedScout.

These incentives are largely derived from federal and state regulations in the U.S. that require automakers to sell some number of low-emission vehicles or buy credits from companies like Tesla, which often have an excess.

Regulatory credit sales go straight to Tesla’s bottom line. Credit revenue amounted to approximately 60% of Tesla’s net income in the second quarter of 2024.

WATCH: Threats to SpaceX & Tesla as Musk, Trump feud heats up

Threats to SpaceX & Tesla as Musk, Trump feud heats up

Continue Reading

Trending