 A few years ago, streaming video boxes were these magical band-aids for the eyesore that is your smart TV interface. By plugging one of these into an HDMI port in the side of your TV, you suddenly had very easy access to things like Netflix, YouTube, HBO Go, social media apps, streaming sports, I mean literally thousands of options. Now this category of devices is even more accessible. They're cheaper and smaller. I mean some of them are in different boxes. They're sticks that you just stick into the side of your TV and they make great stocking stuffers. So our guess is that you might be considering one this holiday season. Now really all of these streaming sticks and tiny boxes do the same basic stuff, but there is one sub $50 streaming stick that gets our top recommendation and that is Amazon's Fire TV Stick. This is actually Amazon's second generation Fire TV Stick, but it has one thing that sets it apart from Roku and Chromecast, an Alexa-enabled Fire TV remote. Now previously you could use an Alexa remote with Fire TV sticks and boxes, but you had to buy it separately or it was more expensive. Now it's all bundled in for $40. In case you haven't used it before, Alexa is Amazon's voice-controlled virtual assistant. When you're talking about Alexa and the TV, you're talking about something that's meant to help you find stuff to watch or listen to. So you press the button on the remote and you say Alexa find hateful 8 or Alexa pull up the night manager and she'll help you pull up the content that you want to watch or open the app that you need to watch it. But that's not the only reason why the Amazon Fire TV Stick is the best deal. It's a fast little stick and Amazon Fire TV has pretty much every app or channel you could want to watch with the exception of iTunes, which is only on Apple TV. Also Amazon's Fire TV interface has gotten better, but it's still not my favorite. My runner-up to the Amazon Fire TV Stick is the $50 Roku Streaming Stick. Now I should note that I've also been testing the Roku Express box, which is this tiny little set-top box that also plugs into the side of your TV, but I didn't like it as much as the Roku Stick. That's because it's so light that it was actually hard to keep in place and I had to use adhesive to keep it on my entertainment console, but also it felt really slow compared to the Roku Streaming Stick, which has a quad-core processor. Roku's biggest claim to fame is that it has an absurd number of streaming channels for you to watch. More than 3,500 to be exact. Now that's a lot of channels, and I hardly expect that anybody's going to use all of them, but if you're looking for niche stuff, then Roku's a good bet. A lot of the TV and movie recommendations will be available through Fandango, but you can also see where you can watch on Amazon Prime Video, HBO, Sling, and others. The stick does come with a remote, but unlike the higher-end Rokus, it doesn't have a Find My Remote feature, and it does not have a voice controlled assistant. You can download the free Roku app on iOS and Android, and there's voice search in there, but in my experience, it's just not as intuitive as using Alexa on Fire TV. When it comes to streaming devices in this price category, there actually aren't that many options. So I've been looking at the Amazon Fire TV Stick, the Roku Stick, the Roku Express Box, and Google's second-generation Chromecast, which came out last year and cost $35. What can I say about the Chromecast? I mean, some people really like it because of how cheap it is, and also they just like having the ability to just throw the stuff they're already watching on their phone onto their TV. And it's great if you're looking for YouTube content, especially. But overall, I still can't get super excited about Chromecast. Most of the time it works okay, sometimes the video stutters. Also, I like having a dedicated remote and not necessarily having to use my phone as the remote. And finally, Chromecast doesn't officially support Amazon Prime Video, which means you have to go to Chrome browser on your laptop, pull up Prime Video, and cast it that way, rather than doing it through the app. So you can't go wrong with any of these, but if you want a dedicated remote and you want a remote with good voice search, rather than having to punch in a bunch of characters with tiny arrow keys, and you're a Prime subscriber who watches a lot of Amazon Prime Video, then you can't go wrong with the Amazon Fire TV Stick. But did I mention these are all pretty cheap? So you have no excuse. Get streaming. And they make great stockings stuff. They just go right in the stockings. It's just whoo! I'll start from the top.