Apple TV 4K (4th Gen) review
The Apple TV 4K (2026) has been a strange product to review. I’ve been an Apple TV user since the Apple TV 3rd Gen, released in 2012 — in over a decade of sticking with it, I upgraded to the first 4K version, and the 2021 4K version with the better remote. I skipped the Apple TV 4K 2022 version, since the upgrades were minimal. Despite this, I still recommended that version wholeheartedly to people buying for the first time, for the same reason that home theater enthusiasts online have recommended it. Its picture quality is best-in-class, its format support is excellent, and it offers more privacy protection (and an ad-free home screen) than its rivals from the likes of Roku, Amazon and Google — even though it’s more expensive than those models. The premium was worth paying. But the premium has changed. The 2022 model launched at $129 / £149 / AU$219 as the starting price. In the middle of 2026, the price rose to $199 / £249 / AU$399. Now the new model is $299 / £299 / AU$449. This is compared to $84. 99 / £99. 99 / AU$149 for the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max, which has also had a price rise this year. The two products have basically the same format support, too. I should mention here that the Nvidia Shield Pro is also now $299, but has much older tech in it than that this new Apple TV 4K. So the new model isn’t bad value compared to the most direct competitor, the question is whether anyone really wants to pay this much for what’s on offer from either of these compared to the cheaper equivalents. Let’s address it bluntly. Is the Apple TV 4K worth its higher price for upgraders from previous 4K models? Short answer: no. Is it worth its higher price if you’re new to Apple TV boxes? Only if you care a lot about image quality and privacy. (Image credit: Future) Let’s start with the basics. The box runs tvOS, which is software specific to these devices, and is a spin-off from the iOS software used on iPhones. As a result, the Apple TV 4K is more versatile than most other streaming boxes. Yes, you have all the big streaming apps, but you also have practical apps that might be useful for some people — though obviously 99% of people will be focused on streaming. The Apple TV 4K (2026) also supports games, in the sense that it works like a mini console, and you can connect games controllers to it (including the official PlayStation and Xbox controllers). This all works well enough, and there are some pretty decent games on there… though there are no game streaming services, due to restrictions in Apple’s policies, and I think this is a huge miss here in 2026. We didn’t mind this too much when Apple released the last version, but cloud gaming has only grown in that time — and with the price of consoles and PCs spiking too, it’s becoming an increasingly tempting option. It’s one of the slicker bits of streaming software in terms of performance, opening apps super-quickly and generally feeling perfectly smooth to move around. It does have its foibles — rearranging apps is theoretically an intuitive process, and yet suddenly this is where performance became less predictable. But I would say it’s generally the least annoying of the streaming systems. That’s partly because it doesn’t have the same aggressive advertising right on the home screen that all the other platforms do. When you highlight a particular app, it might show recommendations from the app at the top of the screen, but you never have shows pushed on the home screen unless you’re already hovering over the app. Apple also has, predictably, included some excellent integrations with its own products. The most useful is easily the ability to share passwords saved on your iPhone’s Passwords app instantly with the Apple TV when you try to log into a service or app, though the ability to your iPhone’s on-screen keyboard to search or type information in is also excellent. There are lots of other integrations as well, some of which will be more useful than others to individuals. You can see your iCloud photos and use them as a screensaver (though the Apple TV’s beautiful built-in screensavers are one of its highlights). You can use your iPhone for FaceTime calls, where you see other people on the big screen, and your iPhone camera beams your image over to the TV and then to the person you’re calling. You can beam audio or video over to the box from your phone using AirPlay. Here is the new remote (right) compared my previous remote (left). At least, I think they’re that way around… (Image credit: Future) The remote that comes with the latest Apple TV is relatively easy to use. You don’t have lots of buttons for directly launching streaming services, for better or worse — this is, let’s be clear, a form of advertising of its own, but it’s one that can be pretty useful. That said, there is a button that looks like a TV, and pressing this once launches the Apple TV app, which includes the Apple TV streaming service’s wares — but it’s also a hub for things you’ve been watching in other services, so it’s not purely a play to get you to watch Apple’s own stuff. Unfortunately, the Apple TV hub doesn’t work with every major streaming app, with Netflix being the most egregious omission. Netflix also doesn’t work with Siri’s ability to play movies or the universal search function. So it’s possible to ask Siri to find a particular movie, the system will tell you which of your apps have it so you can watch it right away… except you have to check Netflix separately. There’s a button on the side of the remote to invoke Siri if you want to use your voice to find and control things, but Apple has now also added microphones to the Apple TV box itself, so you can — in theory — use the device hands-free. Just say ‘Siri’ and ask what you want to ask. (Image credit: Future) And the reason Apple has included these new mics is because Siri has now been upgraded to Siri AI, and the company is surely hoping you’ll want to use Siri way more now that it’s smart. The problem is that while Siri itself may have become smart, its implementation often still isn’t. The most obvious gripe for me was the information presentation, and the density of that information. Sometimes it’s too crowded, packing paragraphs of information with no formatting to aid readability into a small window on the side of the screen. At other times, it’s too simple, taking over the full screen yet displaying text so large that only a few words fit in before the cut off (and if you click the remote hoping it will open the rest of the text, it doesn’t — a different part of the screen is selected by default). It’s always too much or not enough, and it’s somehow never just right. There’s text I can’t see, yet at least 50% of the screen is empty… (Image credit: Future) How smart Siri is at recognizing things within a movie/show is really variable. This might be tied to whether the default tvOS player is used by the app, because in some of them I’d ask Siri a question about what I’m looking at, and it would claim there’s a blank screen. Watching Netflix, it told me it couldn’t see what I was viewing, and asked me to just tell it the name of the movie — but if I paused it, causing the name to appear on screen, and asked the same question, it was now able to see the title. A system that responds so differently per-app is not really a reliable system. I asked it to identify the music playing in the background of a scene of Tony on Prime Video, and it claimed the song was… the movie Tony on Prime Video. I asked it who the guy on the screen was, and it recognized Dominic Sessa, bringing up info about his work. Then I asked the same question when Stavros Halkia was on screen, and it brought up info about Dominic Sessa again. It worked better when I watched a documentary about chefs, and the system was able to identify Marco Pierre White instantly when I asked — but that was on a service that used the native player, so I don’t know if that helps Siri have better visibility of what’s on-screen. Later, I asked the system to show me some good Jason Statham movies available on the streaming services I have. It was able to suggest some movies on the services I have, but there was no visible info on how they were rated, even though the results took up the whole screen. So I asked a follow up question about whether any of them were actually worth watching, and then it showed movies it considered to be good, but not whether they’re available on my services. So I asked a third time if any of these good movies were available on my services, and it finally narrowed down to a list of what I originally asked… except the first movie on the list wasn’t accessible on any of my streaming apps. AI chatbots vary a lot in how they present information in a digestible way — for example, bullet points or emoji to emphasize points. Siri AI seems to just be happy with paragraphs of text (Image credit: Future) I browsed to The Pelican Brief ’s page on Netflix, and I asked if I would like this movie. I thought maybe it would use the fact that I own a lot of ’90s thrillers — including Grisham thrillers The Firm and The Rainmaker — in my Apple TV Store library to make a recommendation…