Amazon joined in the smart TV race on Wednesday when it unveiled Amazon "Fire TV," a powerful streaming box that offers some features that the competition, Google, Apple, and Roku, does not. Nevertheless, at $99, is Fire TV enough to win over couch potato-tech enthusiasts?

Amazon Fire TV is the latest in Amazon's push to provide high-spec gadgets that compete with some of the best hardware out there. Previously, its new line of tablets, in the Kindle Fire HDX, showed that Amazon could be serious about hardware - rivaling some of the best tablets in the market in its speed and display resolution, for example. Now the Fire TV brings impressive specs to the home theater.

Specs

"Tiny box, huge specs, tons of content, incredible price-people are going to love Fire TV," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO in the company's release.

He's not kidding. The Fire TV comes with a quad core 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, with a dedicated video processor and 2GB of RAM. It comes with dual-band WiFi, which the Apple TV also features, but Fire TV uses MIMO technology (which stands for multiple input/output), which will ensure the fastest WiFi transfers possible. Amazon is saying that the Fire TV is three times faster than Apple TV, which only sports a single-core chip and half a gig of RAM.

Streaming Services

Great specs or not, Amazon's new box wouldn't be worth much without compatibility for enough streaming media. Amazon has locked down a lot of the basics, including Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video and Mp3 (of course), Pandora, and iHeartRadio. It also brings more niche content providers like Vevo, Showtime and WatchESPN, but it's missing HBO Go, which Apple TV and Google Chromecast have, and does not offer quite as many little streaming services as the all-you-can-eat trove of Roku.

As far as screen mirroring, Amazon is only allowing that ability with Kindle Fire HDX tablets, which reinforces the Amazon device ecosystem, but won't be much of a draw for those with other Android tabs and smartphones.

Amazon is debuting an interesting feature called ASAP (advanced streaming and prediction), which "predicts which movies and TV episodes you'll want to watch and buffers them for playback before you even hit play," as the company describes it. It sounds innovative, as long as it doesn't eat into streaming bandwidth willy-nilly, but at most, a curious, little advantage. Amazon FreeTime is another little feature that's coming soon to the Fire TV: it's a content and time-limiting mode for parents with kids, who will undoubtedly find the feature useful. Voice searching (though likely limited in functionality) rounds out the Fire TV's unique little additions to the smart TV market (weirdly promoted by Gary Busey, no less).

Gaming

Amazon has an optional ($40, sold separately) game controller, and its working with developers like EA, Ubisoft, 2K, Sega, and others to bring their games to the Fire TV.

Currently, the Chromecast doesn't offer much in this arena, other than experimental beta games, and Apple is only rumored to be adding more support for gaming in its next set top box. Roku offers only offers a few simple games like Angry Birds.

In this way, Fire TV gets the better of the other streaming sticks, especially because buying games on Amazon for the Fire TV costs, on average, less than $2 per game. But the gaming experience is not going to come close to consoles, and is stuck in a middle ground between casual apps and PC games. It's likely anyone who's interested in spending a total of $140 on a game system would find Ouya or another Android-based box more useful.

Price

Speaking of spending $140 on a game system, the place where Amazon's Fire TV comes up shortest is the price. It's worth noting that, besides Apple TV, Amazon's Prime streaming service is already available on lots of other devices, including game consoles like the Xbox 360.

The Fire TV, at $99, seems like a weak price point for entering a market late - especially when the Apple TV firmly has an ecosystem for iOS users at the same price point, and Chromecast and Roku are picking up Android users for $35 and $50 per device, respectively. Not giving Prime members a discount on Fire TV, after raising the price by $20 per year, also seems like a slight, or at least an oversight.

Time will tell how well Amazon's TV box does, but it's just entering in a field where Apple and Roku dominate, and where Google's Chromecast is off to a good start and gaining ground every week.