amazon luna review 

        Today we're going to be taking a look at a new game streaming service directly from amazon called luna i've always referred to it as project luna but i'm pretty sure they never said anything about project luna.

     It's invite only you do have to request to access to it and it's seven bucks a month for the base setup now what i have here is actually the amazon fire stick light which was recently on sale for 18 but luna also works on windows ,mac, android and ios, i've also picked up the luna controller which can only be bought if you're accepted into the beta personally i love the look of this thing it connects over bluetooth wi-fi or usb it's also compatible with alexa does have a microphone built in and the 3.5 millimeter audio jack so you can do sound out through your headphones on the controller itself so let's go ahead and get this thing out of the box now if you're not familiar with streaming services basically just think stadia or xcloud.

amazon luna review

     This is nothing like geforce now because geforce now allows you to play games that you already own on steam and other platforms this basically has pre-loaded games up on their server and you can stream them to basically any device so straight off the bat i like the way it feels it's got a lot of heft to it takes two double a batteries and i believe they include them in the box uh analog sticks are great i love the coloring here i'm a big fan of purple buttons feel awesome there's not a lot of travel on the triggers but i can definitely get used to it it definitely looks like their older amazon controller and unfortunately that wasn't even bluetooth but this one does connect over bluetooth usb and wi-fi so you can connect this to pretty much any device and it definitely has kind of a switch pro controller feel to it and just as i thought this little home button here has that circle led around it i think it looks great and definitely feels premium.

 But right now it's 5.99 for luna plus unlimited hours of play you can stream on two devices up to 1080p 60fps and 4k is coming soon but right now since it's in beta there's only 51 games to choose from but amazon has promised over hundred games with the official launch so we will be seeing more games come to luna but it's also compatible with ubisoft plus and this is 14.99 a month but you can stream games on luna from ubisoft plus i'm not sure if the whole ubisoft library is there but they do have watchdogs legion they have valhalla the new phoenix rising game and a few older ubisoft games are available on luna but you have to pay that extra 14.99 a month and in my opinion i just i don't think it's worth it right now

    So i'm just going to go ahead and start this up and it's going to bring us right into the library and by the way these fire sticks do have ac wi-fi built in i am connected to my wi-fi 6 router but when it comes to game streaming i personally prefer using ethernet unfortunately without an adapter on the fire stick we just don't have access to ethernet most people will want to do this wirelessly so that's the first test i'm going to be running so here we are in the luna app like i mentioned right now in beta there's 51 games to choose from and to tell you the truth there's not a lot of stuff that i really want to play here i will leave a link to the initial game list in the description but this will be updated as soon as it comes out of beta they're promising over 100 games .

so i hope to see some really good stuff but we do have metro exodus control sonic mania grid i mean kind of the basic stuff that these game streaming apps do have included with most of them and like i mentioned you can also gain access to ubisoft plus so you'll get some newer games like assassin's creed valhalla phoenix rising watchdogs legion and some of the older stuff like the crew far cry 5 new dawn and games like that but at 15 dollars a month personally I'm probably not gonna be picking up this subscription okay so like i mentioned i connected the luna controller to my fire stick over bluetooth and that's really just to navigate the whole interface itself in order to get the best performance out of luna you will need to connect this to wi-fi.

    This is one of the best experiences that i've had so far with input latency but it needs to be connected in cloud direct mode so here we are back at the amazon fire stick as soon as i turn this on you'll see it's going to connect in bluetooth mode because i want to be able to control the whole operating system here just give it a second it should pop up there we go so we have the luna controller connected over bluetooth but as soon as i start up the luna app itself it knows that i've started the luna app and it's going to switch to cloud direct mode so this controller is now actually connected over my wi-fi network to the server i'm going to be using with these games running luna and i did test this strictly over bluetooth connected to the amazon fire stick but the input latency was really bad and i was actually getting really frustrated.

     when it's connected to cloud direct mode it feels like this game is running natively on the unit i have here and like i said i mean i've tested a lot of these game streaming services or these cloud streaming services and this is definitely some of the lowest latency that i've experienced with stadia geforce now vortex and i believe there was another one called shadow but this cloud direct mode here is absolutely amazing unfortunately in order to get this kind of performance out of luna you do have to purchase one of these controllers for 50 bucks but the controller can also connect over bluetooth to windows pcs android even your raspberry pi so if you do want to play other games with this besides luna.

    It works great now as for video and audio i do notice a couple hiccups here and there but overall this is still in beta and it's only going to get better over time the biggest letdown for luna right now in my opinion is the game selection i mean there's really not a lot of great games here that i personally want to play unless i want to pay 15 a month for that ubisoft subscription and in order to exit all you have to do is hit that main menu button it'll bring up a little menu on the left hand side and we can exit the game it'll bring us right back into the game selection menu and we can start playing something else i'm actually going to go with a racing game we'll try out grid here because his is the kind of game that really does require precise inputs.

        So this also works on windows or mac there's a dedicated app at least for windows i haven't tested it on mac yet i think they also have a dedicated app but we'll go ahead and launch it here and i haven't had to connect this controller to this specific pc because i have it set up in cloud direct mode or wi-fi mode so as soon as i start this up i sign in it's automatically gonna detect that this controller is ready to use with luna so i didn't have to connect it to bluetooth or anything like that on this pc unfortunately when you have it set up this way on pc you can't control the app so you will need a mouse and keyboard this might be changed down the road but you start a game and then you can use the controller from there so far i'm pretty impressed with the performance of luna as it sits right now.

        We only got 1080p60 i mean that's totally fine for an amazon fire tv like this i still think it looks great every once in a while i do notice a hiccup here and there especially with the sound got some crackles going on but i think this could turn out to be an awesome little game streaming service they definitely need a wider selection of games and i personally think this should be included with prime i don't think we need to be paying another six dollars a month for something else another subscription service if they added this in with prime i personally wouldn't mind picking up two of these 50 controllers and using this on a daily basis and when it comes down to it you could always use let's say an xbox controller connected over usb or bluetooth but it's definitely not going to perform as well as a controller like this connected over wi-fi to that cloud direct service i mean it makes a world of difference setting up your controller correctly with luna.

    But that's going to wrap it up for this review really appreciate you . If you're interested in learning more .Hopefully this will be released in quarter one at 2021 with those hundred games but we'll have to wait to find out and if there's any more big updates on this i will do another article if anybody's interested but that's it for this one if you have any questions let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for reading.