All products and promotions are independently selected by our experts. To help us provide free impartial advice, we will earn an affiliate commission if you buy something. Click here to learn more
Amazon's brand-new Fire TV Stick 4K Select landed on store shelves earlier month without access to any VPNs. Despite these popular apps being a staple on Fire TV Sticks for years, the category was entirely absent from the new arrival. But this isn't a ban on VPNs, like the one purportedly being mulled over by the UK Government, it's due to a complete overhaul of the operating system that powers the new Fire TV Stick.
Until now, every Fire TV Stick has been powered by a version of the Android operating system.
Dubbed FireOS, it looked completely different to the likes of Android TV and even boasted its own Alexa voice assistant and Amazon Appstore to download streaming services, games, and apps.
But the fact that it was running on the same underlying code meant that developers could use a lot of the existing work to develop their Android apps. The switch to Vega OS has allowed Amazon more control over the operating system, which it says has enabled smoother performance from less powerful chipsets.
NordVPN: Get 3 months FREE + 74% off
For a limited time, NordVPN is offering a generous 74% discount on its VPN subscriptions. That drops the effective monthly price of this award-winner to just £2.29. Since you'll need to commit to a two-year plan to unlock the maximum savings, Nord offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all subscriptions
NordVPN
$8.69
$2.29
"Vega is a new operating system built specifically for our devices. It’s highly responsive with an efficient footprint, enabling fast app launches and smooth navigation. Our new Echo devices also run on Vega," Amazon explains on its developer website.
"We adopted Linux components as our foundation. We built Vega to be scalable across a variety of devices, from small footprint devices, like a Fire TV Stick, to our most advanced devices with on-device AI processing, like our Echo Show."
Switch to the new Fire TV Stick 4K Select on Amazon
This new model arrives with several features that were previously reserved for pricier models, like the ability to play console-quality games like Call of Duty, Fortnite, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Gears of War via Xbox Game Pass. The new Vega OS promises speedier performance when streaming boxsets, live sports, and blockbusters. You can also ask Alexa to read out player stats, trivia about the show, or identify songs playing in the background of a scene
Fire TV Stick 4K Select
$49.99
But the break with previous Fire TV Stick devices means that Vegas OS apps are completely different from Android apps, making them incompatible. This means that you can't download any apps powered by Android, and there's no option to download apps outside of Amazon's official store.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Fire TV Stick 4K Select launched this month at £49.99. It's the first device in Amazon's portfolio to run its new Vega OS operating system | AMAZON PRESS OFFICE That means developers must start from scratch, leading to no VPN compatibility at launch.
The team at NordVPN is one of the first to launch a Virtual Private Network on the Fire TV Stick 4K Select, which is running the Linux-based operating system. The official NordVPN client was built from scratch for the new Linux-based platform on Amazon's latest streamer.
It will offer full server coverage and the fastest NordLynx protocol, a proprietary system developed by NordVPN that's designed to be a high-speed and secure alternative to older protocols like OpenVPN.
NordVPN's brand-new app is finished and ready to deploy. The company says it'll be available to download and install immediately after Amazon rolls out the latest software update to its Fire TV Stick 4K Select.
A spokesperson for NordVPN told GB News: "Our app is ready, and we’ll make it available in the Amazon Appstore for the new Fire TV devices as soon as that update goes live."
More From GB News