Amazon Fire TV Stick to take on Google Chromecast in India, priced at Rs 3,999

Amazon has launched the Fire TV Stick – the competitor to Google’s Chromecast – in India at Rs. 3,999 on Wednesday.

Like Google’s Chromecast, the Amazon Fire TV Stick plugs in directly into your TV’s HDMI port, though it works a bit differently. Instead of using your phone to cast, the Fire TV Stick will ship with a voice remote that you can use to navigate the interface, or search by speaking to it.

If you’re a Prime member, it will ship with your credentials configured, and net you Rs. 499 cashback via Amazon Pay. You can also get it from physical retailers such as Croma and Reliance Digital starting Thursday.

“Fire TV Stick offers access to a vast selection of movies and TV shows, popular apps, and features designed specifically for customers in India including powerful voice search for Amazon Video titles in Hindi and English,” claimed Marc Whitten, Vice President, Amazon Fire TV. “Fire TV Stick also offers Data Monitoring and other features to help customers in India get the most from their data plan and stream more content using less bandwidth.”

Amazon also talked about the various technological innovations that Fire TV Stick is capable of. For one, it has ‘ASAP’ i.e. advanced streaming and prediction, where the device learns what you watch and starts pre-fetching to reduce wait times. Amazon claims this can speed up streaming by 50%