I recently made the decision to ditch my Apple TV 4K after running into technical issues like audio pops and rampant tvOS lag. In my quest to hunt down a new main streamer, I picked up a Fire TV Stick 4K Max. While the device is far from perfect, for $60 (it's often on sale, too), it's a pretty solid streaming stick as long as you're willing to deal with a few ads, a home screen that's not very customizable, and a remote that feels like it might break if you press its buttons too hard (you sort of get what you're paying for here).

With that in mind, as soon as I hooked my new Fire TV Stick 4K Max up to my TV, I changed several key settings. Some of them are more obvious than others, but they all significantly improved my experience with Amazon's streaming stick, particularly with regard to taking advantage of my Hisense U8H TV's higher-end video features and cleaning up Fire TV OS' very busy home screen.

Turn on Adaptive HDR

Get rid of those washed out colors

The first thing I noticed when I hooked up my Fire TV Stick 4K Max was that some content looked very washed out, especially the main Fire TV OS menu. I initially assumed that there was something wrong with my TV, but then I remembered that High Dynamic Range (HDR) is a thing that exists. With the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, there's an option that's turned on automatically called Always HDR that takes all content and forces it to display High Dynamic Range. While this works with most movies and TV shows, it also often results in washed-out menus with some streaming apps and in certain cases, oddly colored content.

To solve this problem, I switched the Fire TV Stick 4K Max's Always HDR setting to Adaptive by navigating to Settings > Display & Audio > Display > Dynamic Range Settings. With this setting turned on, the streaming device only uses HDR — whether it's HDR10 or Dolby Vision — with content that officially supports the high-quality color format. It's also important to ensure your TV features some form of real HDR before turning on High Dynamic Range. If it doesn't, flipping HDR off entirely is the best option. That said, most modern televisions offer HDR, so it's likely your TV features at least HDR10.

Switch to 10-bit color depth

If you plan to use Dolby Vision or HDR10, make sure to change this setting

This tip won't matter for everyone, but if you have a newer TV that features true HDR like HDR10 or Dolby Vision, you'll want to make sure you change your Fire TV Stick 4K Max's color settings to 10-bit from 8-bit, especially if some content looks a bit weird. This feature controls the amount of color information your TV can display and is key to high-quality, high dynamic range working properly.

First, make sure your TV supports 10-bit color (if it's even a couple of years old, at this point it probably does). Next, make sure your Fire TV stick is set to 10-bit color by navigating to Settings > Display & Audio > Display > Color Depth. In this menu, you'll see options for 8-bit, 10-bit, and 12-bit color depth. Select 10-bit Color Depth, and you're good to go.

Turn off that awful AI art

You can select from a variety of far more chill ambient background options

I don't hate all things AI, but I am getting very tired of companies shoving it into products where it doesn't make sense. This is where the Fire TV Stick 4K Max's Titan Image Generator model-powered AI Art feature comes in. Every time I turn on the streaming stick, I'm greeted with the annoying option to turn on AI Art right in the middle of my TV.

I've tried the Fire TV Stick 4K's take on AI Art, and while it isn't quite as bad as I expected, I'd prefer real screensavers appear on my Fire TV Stick 4K Max, rather than overly slick-looking pictures of cats or a ridiculously polished cyberpunk city. I also just don't want to constantly type in prompts to create these images so that a variety of different AI screen savers show up on my device.

To change this setting, wait for the Ambient Experiences screen to appear (by default, this takes 15 minutes). Next, highlight AI Art, press the three-line button on the Fire TV remote, and select Remove Widget (you used to be able to turn AI art in the Ambient Experiences > Ambient Preferences menu, but that setting seems to be gone).

If you want to change your background settings, head to the Ambient Preferences Menu through the Settings app, and scroll down to Change Background. Here you can select from a variety of collections like Seasonal Photography, Featured, Regional Motion, and more. Amazon's Fire TV screensavers aren't quite as good as the Apple TV 4K's excellent screensavers when it comes to quality, but they're still decent and fun to look at. My favorite so far is Regional Motion.

Make those obnoxious autoplay ads disappear

The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max's ad carousel can be very annoying

I've enjoyed my time with the Fire TV Stick 4K Max so far, but it's undeniably full of ads. Sometimes, when I turn it on, I'll be blasted with a loud autoplaying ad by the time my TV flips on because commercials play when your cursor hoversg over them. For example, the other day, I sat down to catch up on Landman on Paramount+ and a Maynard Mayonnaise commercial started blaring in my face as soon as I turned my TV on.

As you may have already guessed, I very quickly turned this often frustrating feature off by navigating to Settings > Preferences > Featured Content. Under this menu, there are two options: Allow Video AutoPlay and Allow Audio Autoplay. I disabled both these settings and thankfully, I haven't encountered an autoplay ad on my Fire TV 4K Max since.