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Video streaming is now part of our modern daily lives, which means no more TV schedules and much more choice. If you’re trying to decide between Netflix and Amazon for your streaming needs, we’re on hand to help. Our Netflix vs Amazon Prime Video comparison review looks at price, devices, content, offline viewing and more to help you make up your mind. Plus, we also take a look at Netflix and Amazon’s lesser-known rivals including non-subscription options. Also see: How to avoid the latest Netflix scam.

Jump to: Price | Features | Devices | Content | Rivals

Note: Amazon Prime Video was once called LoveFilm Instant. For information about when LoveFilm ended and Amazon Prime Video took over, visit our What is Amazon Prime Video article.

Netflix vs Amazon Prime Video: Price

Netflix and Amazon Prime Video both offer a 30-day trial, so we’d strongly suggest starting with these as a way of seeing which one you prefer. You can go ahead and kick off your free trials by following the links below:

Amazon Prime Video free trial
Netflix free trial

Netflix’s pricing starts at £5.99 per month, and that’s for the basic subscription that only lets you watch on one screen at a time (you can’t share this with friends or family) and doesn’t offer HD content. The standard subscription model costs £7.49 per month, offering HD streaming on two devices at once. For Netflix Premium, you’re looking at £8.99 per month for 4K Ultra HD quality and the use of four devices at once.

Amazon Prime Video is a bit cheaper than Netflix, at £5.99 per month. Or, you can sign up to Amazon Prime for £79 per year, which also includes extras such as free next day delivery, Amazon Prime Music and more. This works out at £6.58 per month and is better value than Netflix if you order from Amazon fairly regularly and are happy with the video library on offer. Like Netflix, with Amazon Prime Video, you can stream to two devices at once.

Check out our Sky Q review for Sky’s latest set-top box and TV platform.

Netflix vs Amazon Prime Video: Features

You probably already know the basics, but we’ll sum them up here just in case. Both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are subscription-based media streaming services that you pay for monthly in return for unlimited streaming of TV shows and films. They’re accessible via the internet on Smart TVs, games consoles, set-top boxes, desktop computers, laptops and mobile devices, and are regularly updated with new things to watch.

They also now both offer offline streaming, but both have limitations. Not all content is available to download to view offline, but the catalogue of downloadable content is continuously growing for both. You can find out more about how to download content by following the links below:

How to watch Amazon Prime offline
How to watch Netflix offline

Taking a closer look at the differences now, and you’ll find that Netflix offers better account features for anyone sharing their subscription. You can set up multiple accounts for different users to keep your recommendations and watch lists separate, and there’s also a dedicated kids section for child-friendly content.

One key difference that can be tricky to get your head around to start with is that, while everything you see on Netflix is available to stream, only Prime Video content with a ‘Prime’ banner can be watched as part of the subscription. Other videos are available to watch but come at an additional cost to buy or rent.

It’s also worth noting that the basic Netflix subscription at £7.49 doesn’t include 4K content, while the Amazon Prime Video service does at no extra cost.

You’re probably thinking that it’s an easy decision now, right? After all, we’ve said that Amazon gives you more for your money, but the issue is that it all comes down to compatible devices and available content, and that’s where things get tricky and will be different for different people. Read on to find out more.

See also: How to watch US Netflix in the UK.

Netflix vs Amazon Prime Video: Devices

To access Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, you’re going to need a compatible device. That could be a phone, tablet, laptop, games console or set-top box. See also: Amazon Fire TV Stick vs Chromecast vs Roku Streaming Stick.

We’ve put a table together below to show you the compatibility of each service (support may be limited to certain models, especially for TVs and Blu-ray players). Aside from the device listed below, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video can be used via a web browser on a PC or laptop, whether or not they are connected to an external display like a monitor or TV.

	Netflix	Amazon Prime Video
Smart TV	Sony, Samsung, Sharp, LG, Philips, Panasonic, Toshiba	Sony, Samsung, LG, Panasonic
Games Console	Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Wii, Wii U	Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Wii, Wii U
Tablet	Android, iPad	iPad, Android, Amazon Fire
Smartphone	Android, iPhone, Windows Phone	Android, iPhone
Blu-ray player	Sony, Samsung, LG, Philips, Panasonic, Toshiba	Samsung, Sony
Home cinema system	LG, Sony	LG, Samsung, Sony
Set-top box	Sony, YouView, Virgin Media, TalkTalk	Samsung
Media streamer	Apple TV, Philips, Roku, Western Digital, Virgin Media, Google Chromecast	Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, Apple TV (via AirPlay from iPad or iPhone)

Netflix used to be the obvious choice because of the breadth of devices, but it’s now too close to call. You’re likely to have a number of devices which can access either service.

For full list of devices and models check Netflix and Amazon (and here).

Netflix vs Amazon Prime Video: Movies and TV shows content

Price, features and device compatibility is all well and good, but they mean nothing if there’s nothing you want to watch. Films and TV shows are on offer with both services, plus original content you won’t be able to find on rival services. Which is better in this respect will depend on your personal taste.

Examples of original series on Netflix include Better Call Saul, Orange Is The New Black, House of Cards, Bloodline, Daredevil and popular documentary series Making a Murderer. See our list of the best TV shows on Netflix and our round-up of the best Netflix movies here.

Over on Amazon you’ll find originals including The Man in the High Tower, Ripper Street, Black Sails, Bosch, Constantine and Extant.

It’s a bit easier to browse Amazon’s current library without having a subscription, so you can get a better idea of the content without even having to sign up for the free trial. Just search in Amazon’s website in a browser. You’ll find that it too is high quality, and offers a broad range.

They each have around the same amount of content, with close to 4,000 films and TV shows each, too.

As mentioned before, we think it’s well worth signing up to both trials in order to get a better idea of which has the offering that’s best suited to you.

Amazon Prime Video free trial
Netflix free trial

Netflix and Amazon Prime Video rivals

Of course, streaming is not just limited to Netflix and Amazon. There are plenty of other places you can go to watch on-demand movies and TV shows if you’d prefer.

A key rival to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video specifically for films is Sky Movies which provides titles via Now TV for £8.99 per month if you’re not a Sky customer. There are fewer movies on offer (over 1,000) but they are much newer. Now TV is available on a wide range of devices including TV, mobile and media streaming boxes.

There are various non-subscription options available if you want more of a pay as you go service. This way you can rent or buy to keep only the titles you really want to watch. Prices vary so you often need to shop around to find the best price and they are available on a range of devices, too.

Key players in the non-subscription streaming market (apart from Amazon) include Wuaki TV, TalkTalk TV (formerly Blinkbox), Sainsbury’s Entertainment, Google Play and iTunes.

Follow Chris Martin and @PCAdvisor on Twitter.

Best streaming services poll

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Far as I can tell, Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a 30-50 hour game. PCWorld received a review code late on Friday (during GDC, no less) and I’ve only managed to play maybe 10 hours. So yeah, as you might expect we’re not reviewing Wildlands today.

Even so, I’m here to offer up my impressions from those first ten hours—mostly PC performance, but also an abbreviated section about the game itself.

Performance

If nothing else, Wildlands is a technical feat. I’m not going to say this is the largest map I’ve seen in a modern game, but it certainly feels that way at times. It’s enormous, with the game often asking you to travel upwards of six kilometers from one end of a province to another—and there are 20-odd provinces in the game, with no load screens as you travel.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands

It’s stunning—and taxing. Even with a GeForce GTX 980 Ti I’ve had to dip certain settings to hit a steady 60 frames per second, and that’s at 1080p. At 1440p or 4K? Good luck. This game is brutal.

And I don’t think it’s Ubisoft’s fault. There will doubtless be some performance gains over the next few months, a bit more optimization both from both Ubisoft and the big graphics card companies. For the size of the game though, and the amount going on, Ghost Recon: Wildlands doesn’t seem poorly-optimized at launch. Just punishing.

For what it’s worth, I only saw major gains from changing two settings: Level of Detail and Vegetation Quality. Everything else netted me a frame or two extra performance, but dipping those two was enough to jump me 5-10 extra frames on average. Start there if you’re having issues, and make sure to take advantage of the in-game benchmarking tool. It’s accessible from the Options menu, and I found it a pretty reliable indicator of performance.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Performance aside, the game is buggy as hell—some of which I first noticed months ago and which haven’t been rectified. Particularly in co-op, Wildlands seems to have all sorts of issues. I played about two hours this weekend alongside my colleague Adam Patrick Murray and in that time saw an error involving him repeatedly falling out of and respawning into a helicopter I was flying; an issue where he couldn’t revive me because my corpse had fallen under a pillar; a weird disconnect where I could see what he was doing but on his end my character had been replaced with an AI that was doing something totally different; and the list goes on and on.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Zoom in, and you can see Adam standing outside this helicopter as I fly it.

One last note: I don’t have an AMD graphics card at home, and haven’t tested on one yet. There was a note with our review code though saying that AMD’s drivers would update on Monday. If we notice any widespread AMD issues we’ll be sure to let you know.

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For Dawn of War fans, the wait is nearly over.

The wait is nearly over for Dawn of War fans. Relic Entertainment just announced that Dawn of War III is scheduled to release on April 27.

The release date marks nearly a year since the game was announced in May 2016. In addition to the release date, the company, along with its publisher Sega, revealed three editions of the game. A pre-order on any of the three variants will give you access to the “Masters of War” skin pack.

Aside from the Standard Edition, which just includes the game, there’s also a $65 Limited Edition, which includes a disc book, the game’s soundtrack, and a lenticular art card that showcases all three factions. There’s also the $130 Collector’s Edition for die-hard fans. It features everything from the Limited Edition as well as three cloth banners, each with their own symbol and slogan, to represent the factions, and a 25″ x 15.2″ (HxW) replica of the Godsplitter Daemon Hammer, the weapon used by the Space Marines hero Gabriel Angelos.

If you want more Dawn of War III content to keep you excited for the next month, we’ve got you covered. You can check out our previews of the game from last June and during PAX West.

Name	Dawn of War III
Type	Real time strategy
Developer	Relic Entertainment
Publisher	Sega
Platforms	PC
Release Date	April 27
Where To Buy

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Usenet services can vary in many ways – some are easier to operate and get the job done quickly, while others are more complicated and suited for users who have some measure of technical expertise. 

Sunny Usenet is a European provider that sits at the lower end of the market. The company aims to make Usenet affordable for everyone, with prices starting at €1.43 (around £1.25, $1.50, or AU$2) a month. Although it may not be the most powerful platform on the market, it’s vying for the attention of people who haven’t used a Usenet provider in the past.

This may be a European Usenet service, but that doesn’t mean it’s exclusive to people living in Europe. In fact, the company accepts users from all around the world. It’s not necessary to have a European IP address in order to sign up.

Performance

Competing European Usenet provider Eweka, on the other hand, expects users to be using a European broadband service – and that’s an unfortunate limitation. The latter does have the upper hand over Sunny Usenet in one respect, though. It boasts over 3,000 days of binary retention, while Sunny only offers 900. 

That’s a clear difference. However, Sunny still works across 120,000+ newsgroups, and the completion rate is respectable. You’ll still be able to access thousands of articles and messages, and of course post your own.

Speed is another important factor when you’re considering signing up to a Usenet platform. With such a large amount of newsgroups available, you’ll want to access them with ease. Depending on the plan you go for, speeds range from 5Mbps to 90Mbps. There’s also an unlimited plan available, so there’s a decent selection of options here.

The amount of connections available also varies. They start at 5 and go up to 20, which is pretty reasonable. Just to compare, Eweka only offers a maximum of 8 connections, although there are still providers out there that offer around 50 connections. Realistically, you only need a certain amount depending on the data allowance you have from your ISP. And if you’re only planning to be a light user, then you needn’t worry anyway.

Data options

As mentioned, there is a wide variety of plans here, and none of them break the bank. The cheapest costs €1.43 per month (around £1.25, $1.50, or AU$2), and for that, you get 5Mbps of data and 5 connections. If you want to choose something in the middle, you can go for Sunny 30, which offers 30Mbps of data and 10 connections. That’d set you back €3.83 a month (around £3.30, $4.05, AU$5.35). Sunny Unlimited is the most expensive plan at €6.23 per month (around £5.40, $6.60, AU$8.70), and it gives you unlimited speed and 20 connections

Like many other Usenet providers, Sunny takes security and privacy seriously. As is the norm for modern Usenet services, you can connect to the platform using 256-bit SSL for free. To make the most of the encryption and ensure your data is always safe, it’s best that you use port 563. If you want to avoid encryption, you have the option to connect to the platform via port 119. Sunny’s servers are all based in Europe.

Final verdict

Sunny is on the lower end of the Usenet provider spectrum, offering budget prices. There are certainly more powerful options out there, but that’s not to say Sunny isn’t capable. It sports a variety of handy features, and it’s still speedy.

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IBM quantum computerIBM and Google announced roughly at the same time that they plan to start to commercialize quantum computing technologies over the next few years, which would signal the exit of universal quantum computers from lab exclusivity and their entrance on the market. The two companies also predicted that in the next few years “quantum supremacy” will be achieved, which means that quantum computers will be able to solve at least some problems that can’t be solved by today’s fastest supercomputers.

A Race To Build The First Practical Quantum Computer

As nature itself seems to operate based on quantum mechanics, it makes sense that a quantum computer will eventually be better suited to simulate chemical reactions with better accuracy. This will result in better materials, better medicine, and better technologies, in general.

As we’ve recently seen from a Google paper, the company was able to accurately simulate a hydrogen H2 molecule. This was possible with only a 9-qubit quantum computer, so we should be able to see much more impressive simulations as the number of qubits in quantum computers grows. Both Google and IBM are expected to ship 50-qubit quantum computers in a few years.

Of course, we’ve also seen D-Wave reach as many as 2,000 qubits, but D-Wave is not a universal quantum computer; it’s more of a specialized type of quantum machine, called a quantum annealing computer. D-Wave could still turn out to be useful for certain optimization tasks, but because we’re in the early days, more experimentation will be needed to prove that usefulness.

Microsoft has also recently entered this market, with plans to build a topological quantum computer. The idea is that the qubits are more stable in a topological quantum computer, so it could bring a practical quantum more quickly to market.

Meanwhile, both Google and IBM use superconducting quantum computing technology, and other companies have invested in trapped-ion quantum computers that also promise to have better stability (but inferior performance) than superconducting quantum computers. It remains to be seen which technology will win, but so far IBM’s and Google’s projects seem to be the most promising.

IBM To Commercialize A 50-Qubit Quantum Computer Soon

Although IBM has been working on universal quantum computers for about two decades, D-Wave has started to steal some of its thunder by being the first to market with its quantum annealing computer. Even as IBM was the first to give everyone access to its 5-qubit universal quantum computer, we learned that Google already had a 9-qubit universal quantum computer, and that it planned to soon upgrade to a 50-qubit quantum computer.

IBM doesn’t seem to want to be left behind and forgotten in the quantum computing market, before it even materializes as a real market. For now, the company has released an easier to use Application Programming Interface (API) so that more developers can take advantage of its quantum computer over the internet without quantum physics knowledge. It has also built a 20-qubit simulator, so that the developers can already start building applications that use 20 qubits. IBM also plans to commercialize a 50-qubit quantum computer over the next few years.

It seems that both Google and IBM believe that 50 qubits are necessary to achieve “quantum supremacy.” That’s the point when a quantum computer will be able to solve problems that even the fastest supercomputer can’t.

For instance, IBM said that although the Watson AI, powered by classical computers, can find patterns by looking at vast amounts of data, quantum computers would be able to see patterns. Classical computers are great at processing vast amounts of data–as long as it has all the data–whereas quantum computers can infer and fill in the gaps. Classical computers would need to compute an enormous number of possibilities to get to the same results that quantum computers could achieve much more easily.

Google To Sell Access To Its Quantum Computers

The engineers at Google’s Quantum AI Laboratory published a report in Nature in which they also see a path forward to commercialization of quantum technologies within the next five years. The company was initially expected to release a 50-qubit quantum computer by 2018, but it’s not clear whether it still intends to do so or whether it wants to wait a few more years.

Either way, the company said that although it could take another decade before full error correction can be brought to quantum computers, the early quantum computers could still be of use to at least to the financial and healthcare industries. The financial industry could use quantum-assisted optimization for more accurate stock price prediction, while the healthcare industry could better simulate chemical reactions to create more effective medicine.

Google’s engineers said that for quantum computers to evolve, both better hardware and better algorithms will be needed. The company said that this is why academia and industry will need to work together over the next decade to bring more useful quantum computers to market. Google believes that in less than five years, it should be able to commercialize access to its quantum computer, as well.

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Rather like Samsung’s successful SmartThings home monitoring kit, Panasonic has launched its own system that puts the emphasis on security and in this starter pack – priced at £250 (around $305, AU$405) – it concentrates on surveillance. Another difference is that it uses DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecoms) to communicate between the hub unit and the two bundled cameras, making it virtually hack-proof and giving it a much wider range (up to 300m), which better suits commercial premises.

With two wireless IP55-spec waterproof cameras included, you can keep tabs on the perimeter or interior of your property, with alerts being sent to your smartphone, or indeed, your DECT landline if you wish. 

Once you have your cameras set up – and this is surprisingly easy thanks to the ‘push-pairing’ procedure – you might be tempted to add Panasonic’s window lock and water leak sensors, but for now, we’ll concentrate on what’s in the box.

Design and installation

Unlike most of the CCTV cameras we’ve tested, like the Nest Cam Outdoor to give an example, Panasonic’s wireless cameras require a communication hub unit. This square plastic device looks rather smart mounted on the wall, where it can be wired to your Wi-Fi router and the mains. 

The hub connects via Wi-Fi to your phone, but to the two cameras by the more energy-efficient and secure DECT protocol. The cameras have a smooth plastic waterproof design, and can be mounted on their metal pivoting brackets for wall or ceiling mounting, inside or outdoors. Their dangling power cables are fixed and quite long, so they should reach back inside the property before connecting to their respective power adapters, which are not weather-resistant.

After we had chosen suitable locations for the cameras and screwed them in place, the rest of the installation process took just a few minutes thanks to the helpful companion app. Panasonic’s Home Network app is a free download to your iOS or Android device, and it walks you through the connection of the hub to your home network. The cameras are even quicker to connect thanks to the aforementioned push-pairing nature of the DECT communication system. In short, it’s slightly simpler to install than Samsung’s SmartThings setup.

Features

Each identical camera is equipped with IR motion sensors that can detect movement up to 12 metres away in the dark. You can choose between VGA image quality and even lower resolution, but we wouldn’t recommend compromising the very limited picture quality even further. These cameras also offer two-way sound.

The hub unit’s microSD card slot is crucial because it allows you to store up to 32GB of video locally, so you don’t need to sign up to any expensive cloud storage subscriptions as with Nest and the like. A 4GB microSD card is supposedly bundled with the pack, although there wasn’t one in our review sample, sadly.

Using the app, you can choose to record seconds or minutes of video whenever the motion sensors are triggered and/or set off the hub alarm. Yes, the hub on the wall also acts as a flashing, bleeping burglar alarm.

Performance

The cameras worked successfully in sensing motion and capturing video of ourselves pretending to burgle our own office, both in daylight and in the dark. However, the big downfall here is the picture quality. In an era of 4K resolution, VGA just doesn’t cut it anymore. The image quality is too low to identify faces or car registration plates, and in low light there’s a further drop in quality. The 0.3-megapixel sensor that Panasonic is using here simply isn’t good enough. 

It’s a similar story with the audio. The microphone and speaker can just about get the message across, but you can expect to sound like a Dalek (mind you, that might have its advantages when trying to scare intruders).

The motion detection worked every time, recording video clips on the microSD card and sending alerts to our iPhone. However, there’s quite a delay, which meant that on some of the recorded video clips, the pretend burglar had already dashed past, and didn’t appear on film at all.

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