I discovered a secret accent that might make your Hearth TV Stick quicker

Nothing is extra irritating than streaming a present and being minimize off by buffering at an important second. Or making an attempt to observe one thing in 4K and experiencing fixed high quality drops. These issues can occur if you’re streaming over Wi-Fi, particularly in case your connection is not sturdy.

One draw back of utilizing a streaming stick is that it depends completely on Wi-Fi. So in case your Wi-Fi sign struggles to achieve your machine, your streaming expertise might endure. Nevertheless, if you happen to’re utilizing an Amazon Fire TV Stick and encountering these issues, there’s a viable answer.

For years, Amazon has offered a little-known accent referred to as the “Ethernet Adapter for Amazon Hearth TV Gadgets.” As its title implies, this adapter means that you can join an Ethernet cable to your Hearth TV Stick, offering a extra steady connection. I bought one in every of these adapters for $15 to try it out, and whereas it’d seem to be a good way to hurry up your Hearth TV Stick, your outcomes might differ.

The pace of Amazon’s Hearth TV Ethernet adapter is proscribed

It might solely attain a most pace of 100 Mbps – not even near gigabit

For starters, if you happen to’re interested in how this adapter works, it instantly connects to the Micro USB port on the facet of your Hearth TV Stick, the place the ability cable often connects. It then extends to a hub with an Ethernet port and one other Micro USB port used to produce energy. The setup could be very simple, and the one difficult half is simply getting an Ethernet connection to it. If you have already got an Ethernet cable related to your router close by, this will probably be easy. Nevertheless, if you have to wire one your self, it might make the setup extra complicated relying on the place your router is and the way far it’s out of your Hearth TV Stick.

Now, often, if you hardwire one thing on to your router, you may anticipate to see higher connection speeds. Whereas this is likely to be true if you happen to use this Ethernet adapter on a Hearth TV Stick, it may not all the time be the case. Let me clarify.

The Ethernet adapter Amazon sells for its Hearth TV gadgets has a really clear limitation: it solely helps 10/100 Ethernet. This implies its connection pace maxes out at 100Mbps, not gigabit. For reference, for 4K streaming, Netflix recommends having a connection pace of 15Mbps or greater, so in concept, this adapter gives greater than sufficient pace.

In case your Wi-Fi is not the best, and also you take care of buffering or high quality drops lots, getting this adapter and hooking it to your Hearth TV Stick might clear up a number of points for you, granted you are in a position to wire up an Ethernet connection to it with out a lot trouble. I examined it out with my Hearth TV Stick 4K Max, and all my streams loaded up shortly, and it had no points sustaining 4K high quality. Nevertheless, since I’ve a stable 5Ghz Wi-Fi connection, I seen just about no distinction in comparison with utilizing the Hearth TV Stick 4K Max’s Wi-Fi 6E capabilities. So, how will you simply discover out if this adapter is value buying for you? Fortunately, all Hearth TV Sticks have a built-in solution to determine that out.

The way to discover out if the Hearth TV Ethernet adapter is value it for you

You’ll be able to carry out an web pace check in your Hearth TV Stick to search out out

To find out if this Ethernet adapter is value buying to your Hearth TV Stick, Amazon presents a helpful software on all its Hearth TV Sticks that allows you to check your Wi-Fi connection pace. You’ll be able to entry this characteristic by navigating to Settings > Community. From there, hover over your Wi-Fi connection and press the pause/play button in your Hearth TV distant. You may then see a display screen seem the place you may check the Wi-Fi pace in your Hearth TV Stick.

If you happen to run this check and your Wi-Fi pace is beneath 100Mbps, then this Ethernet adapter might be value shopping for to get a quicker, extra steady connection — assuming your web pace out of your ISP is able to that. Nevertheless, in case your pace enormously exceeds 100Mbps, this adapter is not that useful as a result of, as I discussed earlier, it maxes out at 100 Mbps attributable to its 10/100 Ethernet connection. My Wi-Fi pace examined at 308Mbps, so after I join the Hearth TV Stick Ethernet adapter to my Hearth TV Stick 4K Max, I am truly bottlenecking its most connection pace, as with the Ethernet adapter plugged in, I used to be solely getting a most of round 90Mbps obtain.

General, that is why I say Amazon’s Hearth TV Ethernet adapter might enhance your streaming expertise along with your Hearth TV Stick. In case your Wi-Fi sign is unreliable and your obtain pace is beneath 100 Mbps, this $15 adapter may very well be a game-changer, considerably boosting your Hearth TV Stick’s web connection and streaming high quality. Nevertheless, in case your Wi-Fi is steady and quick, utilizing this adapter would possibly unintentionally decelerate your web to the Hearth TV Stick attributable to its pace limitations. However if you happen to desire to maintain your Hearth TV Stick wired always to keep away from any points, then this $15 Ethernet adapter is value it for the peace of thoughts that comes with a constant connection.