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DAY 01
TWO WEEKS WITH THE APPLE TV 4K (2ND GEN)
from £169 / stuff.tv/AppleTV4KCan a spec bump and a new remote persuade Matt Tate that Apple’s TV box still
has a future? To find out, he spends a fortnight watching films on work time...It’s been four years since Apple
first introduced a 4K TV box.
That’s so far back its own TV+
streaming service didn’t exist
at the time – and nowadays
TV+ is baked into many tellies’
own smart platforms.
You might think that makes
this latest version of the Apple
TV 4K even less of a must-buy,
especially given the most exciting
thing about it is the new remote
control. We’re talking about an
incremental upgrade in a world
of affordable Roku sticks andChromecasts... but this still
promises to be one of the best
all-round video streamers.
It’s not tall, so it slips into our
entertainment unit with ease, and
an HDMI 2.1 socket means 4K
HDR content at 60fps – a jump
from 30fps – only there’s no
HDMI cable with it and we need
a new one to support the higher
framerate. Tsk.
This remote, then. We liked the
old one, with its clicky trackpad
and coin-thin build, but it was
also maddeningly easy to
lose, and not always intuitive.
Unwrapping the new Siri Remote,Don’t stream it’s over
The new Colour Balance feature uses
an iPhone’s sensors to match your
TV’s picture to ‘industry standards’The Apple TV
app offers a fine
curated selection
of shows across
various services...
but not Netflix.it’s immediately chunkier and
heavier – and has an actual power
button, which is universal for your
TV and home cinema setup too.
You get a mute button, while the
Siri button moves to the side. But
it still charges via Lightning, not
USB-C, which is a shame.
There’s still a touch-sensitive
centre button for navigating tvOS
but now it’s surrounded by an
iPod-like directional click-wheel
that anyone can get the hang
of. Disabling the touchpad
functionality is possible too.
Oh, this is a nice touch: the
wheel can scroll through videos,slowing down or speeding up at
the whim of your thumb.
Time for a bit of late-night
viewing, but the lack of remote
backlighting makes jabbing the
wrong button a little too easy,
and there’s no input button for
switching to a different HDMI
source on your TV.
We’ve noticed you can’t use the
Siri Remote as an Apple Arcade
game controller like you could
its forerunner either, but was
anyone doing that anyway? It’s
worth noting the remote can be
bought separately if you want to
upgrade an existing box.