[vee-kay]

I use an Amazon FireTV Stick on my old non-smart LG TV. And the advantage is that the FireTV has a simple cute little remote control device. There is a nifty Setting in the Amazon FireTV UI to allow its remote to turn on/off the TV too.

So it's been a long time since I had to wrestle with the TV's built-in OS.

I just use the pleasant UI of the FireTV Stick to watch Netflix, Prime, Disney+, etc. on that decade+ old TV. That FireTV becomes sluggish if I keep multiple apps open, so I have learnt to exit out of an app before switching to the new one.

I may get a new FireTV stick this year, rather than splurging for a new TV, since the old TV is still doing well.

As the Americans say: If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

[unbalancedevh]

I have this setup, and the Firestick UI is horribly slow. Sometimes it takes 30 seconds or more for it to give any response to a button press. It's worst when I'm trying to watch something on Amazon Prime, to the point that I hardly watch that anymore because the UI is so annoying.

[vee-kay]

This sounds like either your FireTV stick is too old or your TV is.

My LG TV is more than a decade old (non-smart LED TV), the FireTV stick is around 6 years old.

But apart from the FireTV stick (whose remote controls the TV too) taking 15 seconds for a cold start (the TV tends to go to deep sleep mode after idle for long time or when switched off via remote), or 5 seconds for a warm start, the FireTV GUI is quite snappy thereafter (I can briskly move the cursor/selection across icons/thumbnails, menus and apps), till I switch it off again. Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Discovery+, Apple TV - they all work well on this old setup.

You may want to uninstall some apps on the FireTV stick to give it some breathing space when it runs.

Try the FireTV stick on a PC monitor having HDMI input. If you face same issues there, then it may be time to buy a new FireTV stick or Chromecast, or splurge for a new smart TV.