Lately, you may have noticed your Fire TV Stick taking a beat longer to respond, or that the Netflix scrubber lags where it didn't before. Apps hesitate to load where you remember them being snappy. None of that is your imagination, and it isn't the stick aging out, either — both the Apple TV 4K and the Fire TV Stick 4K Max are still among the best streaming devices you can put behind a television.
What's changed, mostly this spring, is what the major streaming services are putting on top of that hardware. Netflix, Disney+ and others have stepped away from native platform players, and instead. have started to ship custom video engines with their streaming sticks.
