The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is $84.99 now and that kills the easy recommendation

[Fit_Acanthisitta_475]

Went to replace a dying Fire TV Stick 4K Max last week and did a double take at checkout. It was $59.99 the last time I bought one. It is $84.99 now. That is not a rounding adjustment, that is a different product category. The plain Fire TV Stick HD only moved from $34.99 to $39.99, so if all you need is something cheap for a guest room the damage there is survivable.

Amazon's line is that memory and storage component costs went up and they absorbed it as long as they could. Fine, and it is not only them. The Echo Dot went from $49.99 to $79.99, the 16GB Kindle from $109.99 to $149.99, Nintendo pushed the Switch from $349.99 to $399.99, and the PS5 went up back in April. The reporting I read says the RAM squeeze runs through 2027 and only settles in 2028, which is a long time to be told to sit tight.

Here is what actually changes. At $59.99 the 4K Max was the default answer for anyone who did not want to think about it, cheap enough that the ad-stuffed home screen was a fair trade. At $84.99 it lands close enough to boxes I would genuinely rather own that the default is simply gone. And notably Ring doorbells took no increase at all, which tells you where the margin really lives.

Has anyone here actually paid the new price yet, or are we all just nursing the old sticks until they brick?

 

[Serena Anderson]

$84.99 for a stick that still puts sponsored rows on my home screen is a hard no. I'll run the old one until it bricks.

 

[sai]

Switch and PS5 went the same way. The whole industry is quietly passing the memory bill down and calling it an adjustment.

 

[JJoker23]

Devil's advocate here - it's still cheaper than an Apple TV and it does DV and Atmos fine. The price went up, the product didn't get worse.

 

[PlayStationPepe]

Bought two at $59.99 in the spring purely because I hate setting up new hardware. Accidentally good timing.

 

[Hensas-Y]

Did anyone check whether the Cube moved? That's the one I actually care about and nobody lists it.

 

[LLLisa]

2028 before this levels out. Great. Half my rack will need replacing twice before then.

 

[Bread Pitt]

Counterpoint to the gloom: sticks are the one category where buying used is genuinely fine. eBay is full of barely touched 4K Maxes right now.

 

[Venus]

The Ring thing is the tell. Nothing to do with RAM, everything to do with which product already has a subscription attached to it.

 

[LouiseWinner]

Picked up a Stick HD for the spare room at $39.99 and for 1080p it's honestly still fine. It's the 4K tier where this stings.