Apple TV 4K! THE Biggest Upgrade

Apple TV 4K

THE Biggest Upgrade to Apple’s Set-Top Box Might not be its Jump to 4K Resolution But What it Does to Solve Streaming TV Chaos for Confused Viewers.

It’s been nearly two years since the last version of Apple TV launched, and the tech world has changed a lot. We’ve seen booming sales of 4K TVs as consumers keenly guzzle Ultra HD content from the likes of Netflix and Amazon Video. The old Apple TV was starting to look a little fuddy-duddy.

But now the Apple TV 4K has been announced and it is set for a 2017 launch.

The fourth-generation Apple TV was a competent, if unexciting streaming box, buoyed by strong Siri navigation and hamstrung by navigational oddities and a high price tag. Now that Apple has had two years to improve, the company has debuted the Apple TV 4K ($179 to $199). This set is everything we loved (and hated) about Apple's streaming box, but now with 4K and HDR capabilities.

You'll still find an attractive and customizable interface, strong Apple ecosystem integration, and powerful voice search via Siri. You'll also still find unintuitive navigation options, a remote with a learning curve and an asking price that borders on prohibitive. If you live, breathe and dream Apple and need a way to watch iTunes content in 4K, the Apple TV 4K may be worth a look. Otherwise, this set doesn't offer many advantages over its cheaper competitors.

Apple TV 4K Design

You’d be forgiven for not being able to tell the difference between the Apple TV 4K and its predecessor. Little has changed, aesthetically speaking.

The Apple TV 4K box still measures a compact 98 x 98 x 35mm and is almost identical in look, feel and weight compared to the 4th generation model. The main difference is the lack of a USB Type-C port on the rear with now only three ports on the back of the Apple TV: the figure of eight mains port, a single HDMI 2.0a output and Gigabit Ethernet. Of course, the TV 4K also has 802.11ac Wi-Fi, which most will use to connect to their home network.

Similarly, little separates the latest Siri remote from its predecessor. It’s slim and simply designed, with a touch surface at the top that makes light work of scrolling and swiping through menus, while a small selection of carefully chosen button makes accessing all the TV’s key functions a breeze.

Apple TV 4K Interface

The Apple TV 4K's interface is something of a paradox. Visually, it's one of the cleanest, most attractive, most customizable menu systems around. Navigationally, it could still use a lot of work, particularly for those times when you're trying to switch among multiple services.

First and foremost, Apple TV's home screen and menus are simply gorgeous. Unlike the tedious Amazon Fire TV or the jumbled Nvidia Shield TV, the Apple TV makes use of large, clean, movable icons for each of your apps. There is absolutely no guesswork in figuring out where to go for your favorite content. Every app you have is available right from the home screen, and you can drag and drop their icons into whichever order is most convenient for you, or even make folders to cluster similar apps together. The addition of folders, in fact, puts the Apple TV slightly ahead of the Roku, long the gold standard in streaming-box organization.

Away from the home screen, however, things are a little less straightforward. Apple has always favored surface-level aesthetics over deep-cut functionality in the Apple TV, but after two years, barely anything has changed. Unless what you're looking for is on the front page, the App Store is a mess (more on that later). Apple's own iTunes apps are difficult to parse, separating movies, TV shows and music into three different stores for — well, no real reason, as far as we can tell.

Arguably, the biggest navigational problem is the TV app, which concatenates streaming content from a wide variety of sources. Although the app debuted last year, it still feels half-baked. In theory, the TV app is kind of a one-stop shop for everything you're watching, drawing in content from apps like HBO Go, Hulu and ABC and even keeping track of which episodes you're watching on which service. Because the TV app makes use of only those apps to which you're already subscribed, it can theoretically show you a lot of cool content that won't cost you any additional money.

In practice, though, it's still not any easier than just loading up an app directly, unless you are watching so much stuff that you can't remember where you are in any given series. The recommendations are not tailored for individual users, instead just showing what's popular in any given service. While it's good to know what you can watch without paying extra (aside from a small row of new releases available for a charge through iTunes, which we'll let slide), it's not worth giving up the algorithms that tailor recommendations to your taste within individual apps.

Apple TV 4K Hardware

The Apple TV 4K is available in 32GB and 64GB models (for a premium, of course); HDMI is up from 1.4 to 2.0a on the Apple TV 4K, enabling the extra colours that HDR10 and Dolby Vision bring; Bluetooth is now 5.0, up from 4.0, giving Apple TV 4K more than three times the range when pairing a phone, controller or keyboard.

The fifth-generation 4K model runs on the “more powerful and efficient” A10X Fusion chip, which Apple says is twice as fast as the A8 in the fourth-generation Apple TV. It doesn’t have the latest A11 Bionic chip, which is odd because driving the 3,840 x 2,160 4K TV screen is tougher than driving the 1080p display of an iPhone 8 Plus.

Still, there’s clearly enough power here to drive the interface and display 4K movies. I rarely saw lag when using the previous fourth-generation Apple TV and this Apple TV is no different.

Apple TV 4K  Siri Remote

The Siri Remote — still called Apple Remote in all countries beyond the 12 currently offering Siri support on Apple TV — has received a minor hardware update: The menu button now has a white, raised ring around it.

Siri Remote has an incredibly tough job. It has to provide control for not only the video functions of Apple TV, but apps and games as well. Adding the touch area solved a lot of problems and introduced some familiarity and consistency with iOS multitouch controls. It also avoided the problem that plagues every other multipurpose controller on the market: death by a bazillion buttons.

But it still feels like Apple's industrial design team could do more with the shape and feel so that a raised white ring wouldn't be necessary.

Luckily, if you have an iPhone, you can use that to control Apple TV, and more easily than ever: Simply swipe up (or down on iPhone X) to invoke control center, then 3D Touch to pop up the new, built-in Apple TV remote interface.

You have to add the button to Control Center in Settings but, once you do, it's incredibly convenient. Even when you haven't necessarily lost your Siri Remote in the sofa cushions.

Apple TV 4K More Pixel on the Screen

If your television is both big and modern, there's a good chance it features a 4K or Ultra High-Definition panel. These screens have been sold for the past five years and offer four times the resolution of full high-definition. But owning a 4K TV can be frustrating because content to use its full potential is so hard to find.

As its name suggests, this Apple TV is designed to address the issue. It automatically assesses your television’s capabilities during the set-up process and, if your internet connection and purchasing decisions allow it, delivers 4K content to the big screen.

Apple recommends an internet connection reliably offering 25 megabit per second downloads for 4K content. It also supports different 4K formats, including Dolby Vision and HDR10. To find 4K content in Apple’s iTunes store, you can look for the tiny 4K logo beside a title, or you can ask Siri to “Show me movies in 4K” by speaking into your remote control.

There’s a limited selection at present, though it includes recent releases such as Wonder Woman, The Lego Batman Movie, and Star Trek Beyond. Some of these titles also offer High Dynamic Range or HDR, which means a bigger contrast and colour range, more detail in shadows, and an overall better picture.

It’s not the kind of addition that will make you throw out your old DVDs in disgust, but it’s certainly a noticeable update.

It’s also worth noting that Apple has promised to upgrade HD movie purchases to 4K HDR when movie studios make them available — a generous move considering how much 4K Blu-ray Discs cost.

Apple TV 4K Performance

The biggest thing that sets apart the Apple TV 4K from its predecessor is the new device's ability to display videos in 4K and HDR, and this box's A10X Fusion chip is more than up to the task. The 4K resolution is self-explanatory; the HDR comes in both Dolby Vision and HDR 10 flavors, ensuring that you'll get a vibrant color palette, no matter which studio your movie or TV show comes from.

You'll need a pretty powerful Internet connection to stream 4K HDR content (you need at least 25 Mbps down, which is more than what we got on a standard home Wi-Fi network), but content loads quickly and smoothly. Streams usually took just a few seconds to buffer before reaching full 1080p HD, and perhaps an additional 5 seconds before 4K HDR kicked in. This will vary depending on the strength of your internet connection, but if you have the requisite speed, the Apple TV 4K will leverage it.

Unsurprisingly, movies and TV look gorgeous in 4K HDR as well. In The Lego Batman Movie, the reds and oranges of explosions played off the shiny, black Batmobile, while the eerie blue-green sky ensured that the vibrant heroes and villains looked as real as the toys that inspired them.

Apple has also indulged in a bit of generosity by offering viewers 4K movies at the same price as their full-HD counterparts, with free upgrades on movies customers have already purchased. Although studios ultimately set the price of their movies, this offer applies to every piece of content in the iTunes library.

The only disappointing part of the visuals is that the upscaling doesn't do much for older content. Rather than switching back and forth between different screen resolutions (this can be annoying, but it at least gives you the proper picture), the Apple TV simply upscales SD and HD shows to mimic a higher resolution. The scaling worked better on some shows than others. The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu looked great, but Penn & Teller: Fool Us on iTunes appeared grainy and oversaturated. If you go for older shows on Netflix and Hulu, the jump from SD could be even more jarring.

Otherwise, navigation through the menus feels snappy and immediate, and the 4K menus are a nice touch. Most of Apple's competitors still use 1080p menus, even if they're capable of displaying 4K movies and shows.

Apple TV 4K Apps and Games

At the heart of the new Apple TV 4K is the Apple A10X Fusion system-on-a-chip. It's the same chip that's found inside the current-generation iPads Pro, and a graphically more powerful version of the chip inside iPhone 7.

In other words, it's a monster. Whatever other comparisons you want to make with competing set-top boxes, none of them come close to Apple's silicon. None are even in the same multiverse.

A10X is what gives Apple hardware support for 10-bit HEVC (H.265), which is the industry standard format for 4K HDR. But it's also what makes apps so responsive and will enable a new generation of gaming experiences on the box.

Apple dropped the ball, badly, by requiring Siri Remote support for all games on the original Apple TV and tvOS platform. It caused a lot of big studios and big games to take a wait-and-see attitude that persisted long after Apple, smartly, changed the policy.

Getting those studios to stop waiting and start shipping remains a challenge. Hopefully giving them the power of A10X combined with the ease of iOS to tvOS development will help tap the huge potential of Apple TV 4K.

(We're not sure how many developers will take advantage of 4K HDR gaming and, frankly, how many need to given how good 1080p gaming already looks, but I'm super eager to find out!)

Apple TV 4K Setup and Use

Installing and using this set-top box is almost as simple as its box-like design. If you’re already inside the Apple ecosystem, setting up the Apple TV 4K is a dream. Even typing in long email addresses and passwords for your Apple ID is easy as you can dictate them to Siri via the remote. From getting it out of the box to browsing content took me less than five minutes.

During setup, the Apple TV 4K box will check the highest possible format your TV is capable of. If you choose to enable HDR, which we recommend you do, Apple TV 4K will check you have a compatible set. If you don’t, it will present you with the highest-quality format your TV can handle; no fiddling around with complicated settings required, although you can set things up manually if you want, and can toggle HDR on and off if you need to. That’s important as some sets don’t deal with all HDR content equally well.

An accompanying Apple TV Remote app will also let you control the device over the same wi-fi network, and provides an excellent solution when you need to enter an email address or password, or when you can’t find that stylish but slippery remote control.

The stick-shaped control has also changed very little since the previous iteration, and uses a touch-sensitive pad up top, motion sensitivity to make selections, and a rechargeable battery.

Apple TV 4K Price

In terms of price, this isn’t the cheapest streaming box on the market, but that’s largely to be expected with Apple products, mostly due to the polish and extras on offer. The new box comes in two storage options: 32GB and 64GB, and it’s hard to see why you’d go for the latter unless you’re a little paranoid about filling it with too many apps. 

Here is how much the device will set you back in the UK and US Apple TV 4K (32GB): £179 / $179, Apple TV (64GB): £199 / $199

The existing 1080p, 32GB Apple TV continues to be sold at £149/$149.

Verdict

Apple’s new television device isn’t a reinvention like the iPhone X.

It doesn’t add new connections, come with a screen, or even look any different to its predecessor. If you have or will soon be getting a 4K or 4K HDR television, you owe it to your eyes and experience to get Apple TV 4K. The picture quality is so much better you won't ever want to go back. Everything else is nice. But the 4K HDR picture is transformative.

if you just want to make sure you’re future-proofed, the cost of the 4K version of the box isn’t that much more than the older model, and you’ll know you’ve got more grunt if you want to start using it as a micro-console.

It’s not perfect, but the Apple TV 4K is now clearly far more than a hobby – it’s a real competitor, and a nice choice for the Apple fan with a fancy TV.