Don't buy this Fire Stick, even if it's on sale

However, the most confusing aspect of Amazon's Fire TV Sticks is the differences between the four models, as the names don't exactly spell it out. If you're trying to decide which Fire TV Stick to buy this Black Friday, let me make it easier by telling you which model to avoid altogether and which offers the best deal.

The Fire TV Stick to avoid

You don't want to add this Fire TV Stick to your cart

The Fire TV Stick you should definitely avoid this Black Friday is the Fire TV Stick 4K Select. Although it's Amazon's newest Fire TV Stick, that doesn't mean it's the best one. Here's why.

Amazon released the Fire TV Stick 4K Select earlier this year as an affordable entry-level 4K streaming device, priced at $40 -- $10 less than the Fire TV Stick 4K Plus and $20 less than the 4K Max.

The 4K Select has only 1GB of RAM, supports Wi-Fi 5, and offers 8GB of storage. It also lacks Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support, making it the least capable among Amazon's 4K streaming options. However, it has another major setback right now: its operating system.

When Amazon introduced the Fire TV Stick 4K Select, it highlighted that it's the first Fire TV device to run Vega OS, a new Linux-based operating system built from scratch by Amazon, which it claims is "responsive and highly efficient" and can launch apps "remarkably fast."

Vega OS looks exactly like Fire OS, and if you compare them side by side, visually you won't notice any difference -- the home screen, settings, and app library all look the same. The main difference is that Vega OS runs Linux rather than Android, so it has far fewer apps available in the Amazon Appstore and doesn’t support sideloading additional apps. All the streaming apps you'd expect are available, but if you want to download extra apps outside of streaming, you're out of luck until developers start porting their apps to Vega OS.

I highly recommend skipping the 4K Select for now until Amazon improves Vega OS. Right now, to me, Vega OS feels more like an experiment than a finished product.

Furthermore, Vega OS still doesn't support VPN apps, even though services like IPVanish and NordVPN already have their apps ready, but they can't launch because Amazon hasn't updated Vega OS to support VPN protocols yet. An update was expected to arrive "mid-November," but there is still no sign of it yet.

Finally, as someone who owns a 4K Select, I can tell you that its performance compared to the 4K Plus and 4K Max is lacking. While it's not slow, it's definitely not as fast as the 4K Plus and 4K Max I have, which both have 2GB of RAM.

So, while it's currently on sale on Amazon for $20 -- half off its regular price of $40 -- I highly recommend skipping the 4K Select for now until Amazon improves Vega OS. Right now, to me, Vega OS feels more like an experiment than a finished product.

The best Fire TV Stick to buy this Black Friday

And the winner is...

Since the Fire TV Stick 4K Select isn't the best choice for Black Friday, which one is? The answer, in my view, is simple: the Fire TV Stick 4K Max.

I know it's easy to just recommend the top-tier 4K Max Fire Stick, but with its Black Friday sale price of $35 -- $25 off the regular $60 price -- it's hard not to recommend it.

For only $10 more than the 4K Plus and $15 more than the 4K Select, you get a streaming stick with 16GB of storage (double the 8GB of the 4K Plus and 4K Select), Wi-Fi 6E, 2GB of RAM, and a faster clocked quad-core CPU at 2.0GHz, making it the fastest Fire TV Stick. It also supports Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos for the best picture and sound quality. You spend the little extra now, and you'll get a Fire TV Stick that lasts you much longer.

Additionally, since the Fire TV Stick 4K Max runs on the Android-based Fire OS, you can download lots more apps from the Amazon Appstore compared to Vega OS on the 4K Select, and you can sideload any apps you want that aren't on there.

If you're curious about all the differences between each of Amazon's Fire TV Sticks, you can check out the chart below.

The Fire TV Stick 4K Max also supports cloud gaming, which is still marked as "coming soon" for Vega OS and the 4K Select. This means you can play many games from either Amazon Luna or Xbox Game Pass without needing a console -- just a Bluetooth controller and a subscription to either service.

I've used the Fire TV Stick 4K Max as my main streaming device for nearly a year, and I have very few complaints about it. Yeah, Amazon's ads on the home screen can be annoying at times, but I've never run into any deal-breaking problems, whether during setup or while watching 4K HDR streams, likely thanks to its Wi-Fi 6E support and beefier hardware, as it easily handles everything I throw at it without buffering or lag.

In my opinion, the best choice for a Fire TV Stick this Black Friday is the 4K Max. Although the 4K Select is the newest model in the lineup, it currently has the fewest features, and until Vega OS catches up with Fire OS, it’s best to avoid it.