Amazon is looking to sell its Fire TV Edition smart televisions in a big box store, but thankfully it’s not Whole Foods. Instead, Amazon will be tapping a retailer whose life it has made incredibly difficult over the years, Best Buy, to begin selling smart televisions with its Fire TV capabilities baked in.
The displays from Toshiba and Best Buy’s own Insignia brand will come in 4K and HD varieties, with Best Buy exclusively partnering with Amazon to sell more than 10 models of TVs starting this summer.
“Amazon and Best Buy have a long history of working together, and today we take our partnership to a new level,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement.
There are a host of smart TVs already being sold at Best Buy stores, Amazon’s Fire TV products do pretty much everything that those do, but the direct integration of Alexa, which can be used with the included remote control, is definitely a major selling point.
Buying a TV remains one of the few technology purchases where an in-store visit feels pretty essential. Reviews are only so helpful and as resolutions climb, viewers need to see 4K televisions in real life to see if it’s something they need. Even as the prices have come down on the large screens, Best Buy has continued to devote a sizable section of their store space to TV gallery-viewing.
Though Amazon’s growth has been well-documented in the last several years, Best Buy has also had a surprising amount of success on Wall Street, with the company more than doubling its share price in the past two years.