9 Compelling Reasons to Get an Apple TV 4K — Even If You Already Have a Smart TV
Credit: Omar Rodriguez / Unsplash
When Apple unveiled its first Apple TV fourteen years ago, the world was a very different place. Streaming video services were basically non-existent — “Netflix” was synonymous with renting DVDs by mail — and Apple had only begun selling a handful of movies and TV shows on the iTunes Store a few months earlier.
In fact, the original Apple TV made its debut at Macworld 2007, alongside the very first iPhone, a week before Netflix announced its entry into the streaming business. After that, it would be another full year before Hulu came onto the scene, and Roku released its very first media player.
So, as hard as it may be to believe now that we live in an era where streaming services have eclipsed even traditional cable, Apple was actually way ahead of the curve with its little Apple TV “hobby” project. In the years that followed, rumours would continue to circulate that Steve Jobs had far bigger visions for television, but sadly for reasons that may never be entirely clear, the plan seemed to die along with Apple’s late co-founder. In fact, it’s far from the only ball that Apple dropped over the years and never really picked up again.
The result is that whatever lead the Apple TV had was completely squandered as Roku handily sprinted past it to the goalposts and more smart TV manufacturers began getting into the game as well.
While Apple released a re-envisioned version of its set-top box in 2015, sporting tvOS and the ability to run third-party apps, it remained unclear whether it had truly graduated from “hobby” status, and the uptake for the device from both users and developers remained remarkably low. Even today, the activity on the tvOS App Store pales in comparison to the iPhone and iPad; 9to5Mac reported a snapshot last month that showed that during a one-week period in 2019, 58,875 iPhone apps were submitted to Apple, of which 15,069 were new apps, while the tvOS App Store saw only 142 submissions in the same time frame — 27 of which were new.
It’s pretty clear Apple realizes how much of a niche product the Apple TV has become, as it’s opened up its walled garden in unprecedented ways to embrace and extend services like Apple TV+ and Apple Music onto smart TVs, game consoles like the PS5/PS4 and Xbox, and even directly competing Roku boxes.
So, in a world where you can get every streaming app you could possibly want — including Apple’s — on just about any home entertainment device, this begs the question whether the Apple TV 4K is still relevant at all. While the position of the device has certainly changed over the years, Apple’s decision to release a new model shows that they clearly think it is, and we’d tend to agree. Read on for 9 great reasons why an Apple TV is still a great set-top box — even if you already have a smart TV.
Apple Fitness+
If you’re a workout enthusiast who likes what Apple’s Fitness+ service has to offer, you owe it to yourself to get an Apple TV, as it’s by far the easiest and best way to enjoy your workouts at home.
Although Apple Fitness+ can be used on an iPhone or iPad, it’s nowhere near the same as following a workout on a larger screen. You can plug your iPhone or iPad into a screen using a cable, or even stream your workout using AirPlay 2, but you won’t get any workout metrics at all doing it this way.
Only the Apple TV will let you follow your progress without taking your eyes off the big screen by showing your Activity rings, calories burned, workout time remaining, and burn bars right where you can see them.
Apple Arcade
Your smart TV or Roku box may be able to stream content from Apple TV+, Apple Music, and all of your other favourite streaming apps, but there’s one thing that an actual Apple TV 4K can do that nothing else can, and that’s get access to the great library of games available through the Apple Arcade subscription gaming service.
For $5 a month — or less if you have it as part of an Apple One bundle — you get to play a library of almost 200 games across a wide variety of genres, all entirely free of annoying ads and in-game purchases. While precious few titles are up to the level of what you’ll get on a PS5 or Xbox, there are some incredible gems in the mix, like Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s absolutely stunning Fantasian, which was bankrolled by Apple and developed exclusively for Apple Arcade.
Apple is also pouring incredible amounts of money into getting quality titles onto the service, and great new ones are appearing all the time.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that if you have an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you’ll be able to play these games not only on the big screen, but also take them with you on the go on your iPhone, or sneak a few turns in during a coffee break on your Mac.
Obviously, an Apple TV doesn’t even hold a candle to a PS5 or Xbox when it comes to being a gaming platform, but Apple’s set-top box is considerably cheaper, and there are definitely some really fun titles for the more casual gamer who just can’t justify investing in a dedicated console.
Home Theatre Audio
If you already own one or two full-sized HomePods — or are willing to invest in a pair before they’re gone — the new 2021 Apple TV 4K can use those to replace your AV receiver or soundbar entirely, giving you full Dolby Atmos surround sound audio from your entire home theatre system.
While the older 2017 Apple TV 4K gained Home Theatre Audio support in tvOS 14.2 last fall for all content played directly from the set-top box, the new 2021 Apple TV 4K takes it a giant step further with support for eARC.
This means you can plug your Apple TV 4K into any TV with an ARC or eARC port and use your HomePods as the destination for all the audio that travels through your TV, whether that’s from the smart TV itself, a Blu-ray player, or PS5.
Of course, the price of entry is pretty steep if you’re not already a HomePod owner — to get the best sound you’ll need a pair of $299 HomePods plus the $179 Apple TV 4K, which works out to almost $800. However, if you shop around you can probably find some good deals on the now-discontinued smart speaker, and a pair of HomePods will definitely give you better quality than all but the most expensive soundbars.
Privacy
You may not have given this much thought, but most smart TV manufacturers aren’t nearly as big on privacy as Apple is. This means that there’s a good chance that your smart TV is spying on you, reporting all of your viewing habits back to the manufacturer’s mothership.
While some smart TVs allow you to turn this off, it’s almost always enabled by default, and the options to disable it aren’t always obvious. In fact, many of these TV makers are quite cheeky in their approach, requiring users to explicitly switch OFF settings like “Don’t Share My Personal Information,” and this makes it pretty hard to trust whether disabling these settings is truly enough to keep your viewing habits private.
While there’s obviously nothing you can do about sharing your viewing habits with the streaming services themselves — Disney+, Netflix, and even Apple TV+ are almost certainly keeping track of what you’re watching on each of their individual services — there’s absolutely no reason that a TV maker needs this information — other than selling it to marketing companies and advertisers, of course.
With Apple’s strong focus on privacy, you’re pretty much guaranteed that your Apple TV isn’t reporting anything at all outside of each individual app. After all, Netflix doesn’t need to know that you decided to stop in the middle of Outlander to go indulge in an old episode of Dawson’s Creek on Hulu.
In fact, since Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency feature works on tvOS 14.5 and later just like it does on your iPhone and iPad, you can feel even more confident that what you do on Netflix stays on Netflix.
Siri Is More Powerful on the Apple TV
Even though Apple has been quick to add AirPlay 2, HomeKit, and Apple TV+ to just about every other smart TV and streaming box on the market, one feature that remains absolutely exclusive to Apple’s own devices is Siri.
Most modern smart TVs can do Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, of course, but if you’re a Siri user, you’re going to want your set-top box to live in the same ecosystem and understand the language you’ve already learned. After all, we’re nowhere near the intuitive voice recognition capabilities of Star Trek, so every voice assistant has its quirks and syntax that you have to learn to deal with.
It’s also worth mentioning that Siri is hugely underrated on the Apple TV. It actually works so well on the set-top box you’ll often wonder why it often seems to be so much less capable everywhere else. In fact, it’s such a great TV voice assistant that it actually won an Emmy Award.
For example, you can call up any show on just about any streaming service with a simple Siri command like “Play Frasier, Season 11, episode 3.” Or “play the episode of Big Bang Theory with Steve Wozniak.”
This also works if you’re not quite sure what you want to watch. Commands like “Show me action films from the 90s” or “Give me a list of thrillers” or “Show me new movies on Netflix” all work great.
Further, thanks to Apple’s universal indexing across multiple streaming apps, you don’t even need to specify which app you want to use unless a show is available on more than one. For example, asking Siri simply to “play The Mandalorian” will go straight to Disney+.
You can also use Siri to jump to a specific spot in any given show using commands like “Skip forward five minutes” or “Go to the one-hour mark,” and the classic “What did she just say?” will skip back a few seconds and temporarily enable closed captioning, so you can read it for yourself.
The Siri Remote
Okay, we know the original Siri Remote was, shall we say, “controversial?” Some folks actually liked it, and a few tolerated it, but most Apple TV users generally hated it with the passion of a thousand burning suns.
Still, we think Apple had the right idea with the original Siri Remote — it just went way too far in the execution of it. In an era when most TV remotes are over-engineered eyesores, there was a minimalist elegance to Apple’s remote that was a nice breath of fresh air.
Now, the second-generation Siri Remote has corrected all the mistakes of its predecessor while maintaining the design ethos that was its one piece of potential greatness.
The new Siri Remote feels solid in the hand, with just the right number of buttons and controls to provide for an intuitive user experience. With not even a single unnecessary button present, the result is an uncluttered experience that most other remote makers should really take a lesson from. The various gestures available on the clickpad are handy and accessible without getting in the way, and there are distinct power and mute buttons available too.
Of course, some people like more complicated remotes, and the Siri Remote won’t do you much good if you also need to regularly control other devices like your TV or game console, but the good news is that you don’t have to use the Siri Remote with the Apple TV if you don’t want to.
At least some of the newest smart TVs will pass their remote commands over to the Apple TV via HDMI-CEC, so you may be surprised to discover that your TV remote just works with the Apple TV when it’s the active input. However, even if you can’t do that, tvOS still lets you explicitly pair up any infrared remote you may have lying around to use it to control your Apple TV.
Universal Apps
Although your smart TV may have every streaming app that you could possibly need, that won’t necessarily be the case for most of your other favourite iPhone and iPad apps.
Since it runs a derivative of iOS, however, you’ll have a much better chance of getting a unified app experience when using an Apple TV. For instance, if you have a favourite weather app on your iPhone or iPad, you may also be able to find a tvOS version of that app to use on the big screen, and of course, all your preferences and settings will sync seamlessly through iCloud.
This also applies to many games — not just Apple Arcade games, but even other iPhone games often have an Apple TV counterpart, allowing you to pick up where you left off in a game between your Apple TV and your iPhone.
iCloud Photo Screensavers
Lots of smart TVs offer photo screensavers, but only the Apple TV will let you use the photos that are already in your iCloud Photo Library to power your screensaver.
Although the Apple TV now includes a gorgeous screensaver made up of stunning aerial images, it actually began years ago with screensavers based on your own photos, and these are still available. There’s even one that can use album artwork from your music library too.
One of our favourite tricks is to use a Shared Photo Album from iCloud as your Apple TV screensaver. As you and your other family members add photos to the shared album, they’ll automatically show up on your screensaver too, as it remains in sync with your iCloud Photo Library.
HomeKit Secure Video
The Apple TV may be one of the best things about using security cameras with HomeKit, since you’ll be able to view all of your camera feeds right from control centre.
HomeKit Secure Video allows you to configure up to five compatible security cameras to stream video through HomeKit and securely record it to your iCloud account, and while the Apple TV doesn’t include an explicit Home app like you’ll find on your iPhone and iPad, you can pull up all of your HomeKit controls — including your camera feeds — by holding down the Home button on the Siri Remote to access the tvOS Control Centre.
Or you can just call up a specific camera by pulling up Siri and making a request like “Show me the front porch,” and the best part is that you can do this without interrupting whatever you’re watching, as it overlays the camera view in picture-in-picture mode. This can be great when waiting for your pizza to show up, monitoring the baby’s room, or even just keeping an eye on what’s going on around your home.
Further, if you have a HomeKit-compatible doorbell camera, you'll get a notification when somebody is at your front door, showing a PiP preview of the camera over what you're already watching, and even supplying their name if a picture of them happens to be in your iCloud Photo Library.