‘You’re interfering with Wi-Fi,’ experts say as Amazon’s ’50 foot’ rule unveiled Fire TV

You can unlock much faster internet on your Amazon Fire TV device by following a simple rule.

It’s linked to your Wi-Fi settings – and where your Fire TV Stick or device is physically located in your home.

Your Wi-Fi connection affects how well your Amazon Fire TV Stick performs.

If you have a poor Wi-Fi connection, you may find that videos load slowly or not at all, take a long time to download, and dramatically decrease the visual quality of the content.

So improving your Wi-Fi can make your TV viewing experience much better.

One way is to look at the type of Wi-Fi network you are connecting to.

It’s becoming increasingly common for your home Wi-Fi network to actually offer two networks: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.

In fact, these will default to showing 2.4GHz and 5GHz in the network names.

But you can go into your Wi-Fi router’s settings to tinker with exactly what these networks look like.

An easy way to check your Wi-Fi settings is to type your router’s IP address (found on the back of the device) into a web browser and press Enter.

A 5GHz network typically delivers much faster internet speeds to your devices, including an Amazon Fire TV.

But 5GHz networks are intended for short distances, while 2.4GHz is better suited for larger-scale internet throughout the home.

“5GHz is a faster band, but it cannot penetrate walls as well as the 2.4GHz band,” Amazon explains in a support note.

“The device connects to the 2.4GHz band by default because it has greater signal strength.”

FEET FIRST

So make sure you’re using the right network for how close your Amazon Fire TV device is to your router.

It may not be easy to move your router or your Amazon Fire TV, but you do have control over the network you connect to.

And if your router is close enough to your Fire TV to support a good 5GHz connection, you’ll want to use that.

“Many people are hindered from accessing Wi-Fi at home solely because of the location of their router,” notes networking company EPB in a memo.

“Wi-Fi signals usually reach about 150 feet or more than 45 meters for a frequency of 2.4 GHz.

“If you use a frequency of 5 GHz, you get a range of about 50 feet or about 15 meters.”

So if your Amazon Fire TV Stick is closer than 50 feet to your router, you may be better off connecting to the 5GHz network.

If it’s much closer – say six meters – or you live in a small apartment, then a 5GHz network will almost certainly be better.

However, 2.4GHz can be a much better choice if you live in a large house where your gadgets are far from the router.