Apple TV 4K

14owners with an opinion

71%of verdicts positive

9/4positive/negative since 2024

0happy after 3+ years

Praised for ease of use and reliability; criticized for value and sound.

What owners wrote

Doesn’t like it

I'm a little surprised at the price (especially when their newly-announced HomeView is the same price, and it has a screen!). I love this product: it's the one box I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data. I have two older ones and was looking to get something that supported 4K but waited for this to come out. $300 might be a decent price if you use it for all of the things that it can do, but if all you're doing is launching streaming apps, $200 was already on the high end for that. $300 seems...a bit much. Anything I'm missing here? The silver lining is that this product is almost certainly still in the "pay money then forget about it for a decade" tier, which is nice. I'm also wondering if/how the "add up to four homepods" feature compares to "getting a soundbar". In the other thread for this someone noted that the HomePods only work with this box; so if you're running a game console that's no bueno. But apart from that, if $600 on an Apple TV + two HomePods mini delivers something comparable to a ~$500 soundbar, that's a decent value proposition.

Likes it

I bought an Apple TV 4K a few months ago (Google TV's ads were too much) and there's nothing here that might even slightly tempt me to upgrade. * Siri - no thanks * Far field microphones - no thanks * Faster performance - unnecessary for me (I watch TV, movies and YouTube - it's never not smooth) * Home theatre with homepods - I already have Sonos surround * Even smarter home hub - I have a non-Apple smart home * Facetime, Fitness+, Apple TV app - just not for me The one thing I feel like I'm missing is audio passthrough, but DD 5.1 is _fine_.

Doesn’t like it

Yeah it's way too expensive. I would like to upgrade my 4K ATV to a more powerful chip but not for $300. I only use mine for streaming and already have a home theater Atmos setup. Couldn't care less about Siri, AI features, microphones, etc.

Likes it

Apple TV 4k has an idle power draw of 0.49W and a 4k streaming power draw of 2.31W. That mini desktop will likely run at around 20W idle and approaches 30W under relatively light load and up to 60W on high loads. Plus keyboard and mouse are generally terrible couch devices. I've already got a NAS and plenty of devices I can stream from. The Apple TV is an almost perfect small and efficient device to stream to .

Recommends it

For similar reasons many years back when I broke the bank for a G2, I decided to disconnect it forever. Besides the always-on spyware, every update broke something, which is incredibly frustrating considering the amount I spent. For instance, I got a GX soundbar for free with the TV which worked fine for 1–2 months until some update borked it and made it glitch out randomly. To date, none of their updates seem to have fixed it. I now only connect it back to the web — if needed — once a year or so but even this needs plenty of careful research across the web to see if the update package breaks something else I take for granted. Hooking up an Apple TV 4K to this thing was the best decision I ever made and the sheer performance of this thing puts every TV vendor to shame. I would recommend everyone to do the same if they're already in the Apple ecosystem.

Likes it

That might be something wrong with your particular device - we've had two Apple TVs over 10+ years and they've been remarkably stable. I didn't even know how to "force quit" - I looked it up when you mentioned it. Edit: Did have one problem where the centre channel would occasionally drop out - this would go away if you changed the volume and didn't happen that often so wasn't a big deal. I had assumed it was a problem with the Denon receiver we use but when we replaced our original Apple TV earlier this year wit a 4K model it stopped so must have been something to do with the device.

Likes it

I started out using XMBC on the original XBOX. Eventually evolved it to Kodi and various HTPC setups when HD video became popular. These days I’ve settled on AppleTV 4K with Infuse. It’s just so much more polished and reliable than anything else. While I appreciate what Kodi can do, it’s UX is stuck in 2005. And decisions like how it handles the BACK button while playing is just so odd to me.

Likes it

Let need explain. Windows user for 28 years. I decided to try macOS and got hooked (no more WSL). Moved from Android to iPhone because of tight integration with macOS. 1. Universal copy (copy from/to Mac) 2. Automatically fill OTP from phone to mac 3. Passwords app integration means I don’t have to fill 2FA manually (mac or iPhone) 4. I use Apple TV 4K and I can use my iPhone as a remote, use it for color calibration, use it as a dedicated camera for FaceTime on TV 5. I use Apple Watch to receive important calls/ notifications when my phone is not around. When you are using Watch, macOS does not ask you to enter system password for when you are changing system settings, installing/uninstalling apps etc. These are the things at the top of my mind, I’m sure I can come up with much more. Photo sync and iCloud are pretty easy to replace with Google Photos/G drive, so I’m not worried about that part. It’s these small things that add up and make the whole experience better.

Doesn’t like it

I have two Apple TV 4Ks and both started dropping Bluetooth connections every minute or so after a recent upgrade. My headphones will cut out and when I go to pause the video I’ll be clicking frantically because the remote isn’t working either. Or I’ll be in the menu and the remote will pin to the left or right and scroll to the end of some massive YouTube list. Reboots, resets, nothing fixes it. My Apple Watch regularly has a glitched Home Screen too. I defended Apple’s quality recently, right before everything started breaking for me.

Likes it

Apple TV+ is great on Roku (have an older 4K box that still has Toslink output). Also liked the experience on a newer Apple TV box that now has buttons for scrolling (only other Apple TV box I've used is the first generation which is touchpad only and I'm not a fan of)

Likes it

I also quickly ditched mine. I mean it worked sorta fine - but the usability was absolutely terrible. Often apps lost connection with it so any requests to pause or resume the media was several seconds delayed. If I got a phone call I often wanted a quick way to pause my media but chromecast made this super inconvenient, slow and stressful when the phone is blurting out it's ringtone. App support was also spotty at best. In the end I realized that since I've already chosen between a rock and a hard place (went with the Apple ecosystem), I could just screenshare using an old Apple TV. This ended up working much better in practice (although lower quality video stream) than Chromecast. Today I don't cast much video anymore for some reason, not really sure why. I have an Apple TV 4K and just mostly use the native apps from various services. Having a remote to a system that is completely detached from your phone is much nicer usability wise IMHO.

Doesn’t like it

And despite using Atmos, I still have so many issues with audio mixing for SFX and dialog tracks. How is this so hard to get right? I have a Apple TV 4K (and Roku doesn't do much better, to be clear), connected to a Marantz Cinema 70s (8K, Dolby Atmos, 7.2), and little to nothing that is done either on the receiver, ATV, or playback source does anything to alleviate the huge frustration that is "being able to hear dialog cleanly without rupturing a speaker, eardrum or both when there's an explosion". As for Roku... I have the Roku Ultra hooked up to the same... but, since Plex released an ATV app, I don't really need it...

Likes it

After over 25 years of building various HTPCs (with various assortments of timeshiftimg PVRs like Windows Media, XBMC, Kodi, SageTV, SnapStream, MythTV, TVheadend etc, and futzing with MPEG video-in cards on Windows, RSS feeds, etc), various other TV boxes like Popcorn Hour, and nasty Android TV boxes, I finally settled on the AppleTV 4K paired with Plex server running on Debian on an old HP EliteBook laptop. Life is too short for messing around with these sort of sub-optimal workarounds in 2024, when there are now finally great affordable fuss-free tech out there.

Likes it

Prime 4K is nice, but if you have a decent sound system with Atmos, then Amazon Prime is not the place. Apple TV has been the best platform so far for 4K and Atmos content, if you also want an option to purchase a title. https://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/everything-on-amazon...

Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it

I’d argue Apple TVs were one of the few cost subsidized items they sell, as when people could get 15$ Fire TV sticks anywhere they had to at least look competitive. Now that costs have gone up significantly and it’s basically an iPhone 17 without a screen it’s tough to keep the costs down.

Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it

Any vanilla android TV box with an Amlogic chip will not have ads, and will run circles around this overpriced headless iPhone.

Likes itHasn’t owned it

Where has the competition caught up? Arent Apple's chips still by far best-in-class from the laptop down to the watch? Its an honest question, I would love an arm based laptop running NixOS that is competitive with the upcoming M5 Pro's but I dont see it anywhere. Case in point: Google's newest Google TV box (released this year) is an absolute turd when compared with an 8 year old 4k Apple TV box.