I think the other replies left this part out. You NEED an iPhone 17 or Later to use percision Find My with the new remote.
That might also mean that backwards compatibility with the 3rd gen or 2nd gen Apple TV may be affected too even though its supposed to be bluetooth. Just keep that in mind!
I kept wondering why people were so excited for a new version. There was really nothing to add. Glad I didn’t wait and got the 3rd generation last year before that one had a price bump.
There were plenty of good things they could have added, they chose to add AI and 24/7 surveillance and raised the price to a level that just doesn’t make sense.
Right? The only thing that really sticks out as useful to me is that the remote has precision finding with the ability to play a sound to find out which couch cushion it got stuck under this time.
I don’t get why the precision finding requires an iPhone 17 or newer. Does it require a new chip or lever piece of hardware? I can precision find my wife’s phone with my 15Pro Max.
We have been asking for pass through for over a decade. It has nothing to do with the hardware. I don’t know why people keep getting excited about it possibly coming with new hardware.
I remember seeing a comment somewhere else about this. Basically it’s a user experience thing and having pass through messes with notification sounds or something like that. I skimmed it and it made sense enough and Apple is known for not implementing features because they want a very specific experience
Edit: a comment lower noted it was something about Siri/system sounds
People don't remember but there was a very short time that you could do bitstreamed audio through undocumented APIs. Infuse had it. Apple patched it out nearly immediately (in tvOS 11.3). They go out of their way to make sure it doesn't work.
And yes it's absolutely a software issue, I don't know why everyone thinks they need a new Apple TV for it.
I was really just waiting for a chip refresh for longevity. I wasn’t going to buy a 4 year old device, especially after a price hike. I never thought they would jack the price up even higher. 130% increase is crazy.
Same, I was going to buy but not at these inflated prices. My first gen 4K is fine and I’m fine looking at other options, their price increase is unreal. The prior 250 cost wasn’t justified.
It’s ridiculous tbh. I guess there are no more big features, so now we get the slow drip of the last few things that are meaningful upgrades (and “meaningful” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the statement.)
I have had my 1st gen 4K since the very beginning of 2020. It’s still going strong and not once have I used Siri via the remote. Not once.
Give me a new Apple TV without Siri AI for $159 or so and I’m good.
I’ve got a 1st gen, 2nd gen and 3rd gen on our three TVs. I replaced the remote on the 1st gen with the silver remote and the experience is more or less the same on all of them.
I wonder why they decided to force 128gb on everyone, def inflates the price and I don't game on it, so not sure why I need so much space for my 10 apps that's stream video. I bet my 64GB isn't even half used
I think the main reason comes down to local AI processing. My new 128 GB iPad already uses a significant amount of system storage for AI features on iOS 27. It makes sense that the Apple TV would also need that extra space to handle similar AI tasks.
I would get a 3rd gen but they sold out, so I'm stuck with the new one.... I was waiting for this. Used market don't seem to see many in Canada and they all go for quite a bit.
I don’t see a reason to upgrade. I use a Ethernet connection with gigabit service and have not seen a use case for AI. In 2-5 years when AI matures and I can say “play program name” and it opens the right app and plays the current episode, maybe then.
My current AppleTV does that. From the Home Screen, I hold the button on the remote say “Only Murders in the Building”. It opens Hulu to the show and last episode watched.
The sales need to flop so they can truly see how bad they dropped the ball with this one. The pricing is absurd, but would’ve been justifiable if it was actually an impressive leap in technology
The older model does have a mic, it’s on the remote, and the nice thing is it doesn’t listen unless you press the button, and supposedly the older model will get an Apple Intelligence update as well.
Once old people get used to something, no matter how complicated, anything else becomes near impossible to use. At least that’s the case with my parents lol
Same. I bought $500 of new internet gear for her and she went ahead and renewed fucking DSL because “figuring this out is too much” even when I said I’d literally do everything and pay for it. It’s a mix of wanting to be self sufficient but having no clue how to do things. They’d rather be wrong and independent despite asking my advice and never taking it
Microphones added to yet another device in my home? I’ll pass.
I’ve been using Apple products for a long time and they’ve gone downhill so quickly in recent times.
Apple have never been known for listening to feedback and providing features people ask for, but they used to consistently provide features people actually wanted. I can’t think of anyone I know who would see adding microphones and the ability to connect more HomePods as ‘features’ 😵💫
Hey, here's nothing, definitely nothing you wanted or asked for, and that will be $100 more!!
Apple has been out of touch before, and I know this product was started before John's term as CEO, but he has been in hardware, so a true embarrassment. Apple is truly very deep in its own bubble (like really really deep and out of touch).
Honestly if it wasn’t for the price insulting my intelligence this would’ve been a decent upgrade. Would’ve been a day 1er for me. But tree hunned????? Fuck outta heeerrrrreeeeee.
$299 is idiotic. It was already a premium price over other streaming devices at $199. I truly don’t think they’re going to sell a lot of these. And I say this as a huge fan of my 3rd gen Ethernet version. It felt worth the upgrade to have no ads in the interface and a smooth experience. But $299 is just grossly overpriced.
My Apple TV 4K is already overpowered for what it does, and certainly doesn't need more CPU/GFX! This is just another excuse to shove AI in our face when we really don't want or need it. I hope it flops and teaches them to make meaninful upgrades, but being Apple, the sheep will still upgrade and throw away their well earned cash.
It’s the RAM crisis. Although I wonder if they did that in part to make the $300 not seem too bad, since it’s only a 50% price increase now instead of a 100% price increase
Nothing compelling here. Happy with 3rd Gen. My only wish was an HDMI pass through for my soundbar and let the ATV do all of the processing. (My Samsung soundbar has a pass through, but it’s so wonky and never seems to work so I have to do BT through the TV.)
I wish they sold the new remote separately or do sell it eventually. I would really love to have precision finding and speaker on the remote for when it gets lost in the couch.
Not a big fan of built-in always-on microphones after seeing the LG TV spying allegations.
I’ve got a 2015 HD model (the one with the awful touchpad remote), so it’s a decent upgrade for me. But if you can’t disable the mics, this is a hard no.
50% faster CPU and GPU.. for what?? its a bloody TV streaming device the only improvement is the surround with 4 speakers if you are into apple speakers for that (amateur sure but serious setup you gotta go external or spend a lot on the big pods min) and the hardware decoding...the rest is gimick
Noiyce! Thx for taking the time to whip that up! It’s mostly silly stuff that only the geeks will appreciate, for 90% of people they don’t need this newer one
For me personally the only intriguing thing is the AV1 support but most if not all streaming services have hevc fallbacks for Apple devices so would you even notice or be able to tell the difference outside of maybe overall bandwidth usage?
I feel like they dropped the ball. They were dead set on pushing Siri AI which if anything most people would use on their phones over an Apple TV.
It basically takes the compressed file hosted by a streaming service (as it’s cheaper for the streamer to host smaller files) and decompresses it on your end. The benefit in theory of AV1 is that it looks similar to the existing hevc but at lower bitrates/bandwidth usage. In practice it looks worse for the end user in the majority of scenes due to the higher level of compression and lower bitrates used by the streaming services in order to save a buck.
If they didn’t lower the bitrates so much, an AV1 file could look drastically better than a HEVC file at the same bitrate. Lowering it just a bit with AV1 could still have it look better than hevc while still also saving on bandwidth.
Absolutely zero reason to upgrade, I don’t use HomeKit, hate voice assistants with a burning passion, and AV1 is irrelevant, and what idiot would buy 4 inferior terrible sounding HomePods when you can get a full Klipsch 7.2 speaker set for the same price?
No reason to seek out a third gen used if I want more than the three I have, but also no reason to upgrade them.
I was also really looking forward to the next-generation Apple TV. After all those hyped-up announcements about gaming support, controllers, and everything else we heard along the way, we just got the exact same box for twice the price, packed with the current components that are just standard for Apple. It is honestly embarrassing.
A lot of YouTubers are already speaking out very negatively about this product, saying straight up that it has the guts of a Bugatti but the capabilities of a '69 Peugeot. 🤣
On top of that, there is a lack of support for the latest standards, no audio pass-through, and so on.
And trying to build what is supposedly a home theater using four speakers the size of a large orange is just an embarrassment to anyone who knows the first thing about audio and spatial sound.
Of course, as it was already said, it will all sell like hotcakes because the logo does the heavy lifting, but the actual usability of everything Apple has been putting out lately is just completely hopeless.
Apple used to set the trends; they made things that everyone else had to catch up to, and now?
I own mostly Apple gear myself, and I am genuinely wondering if I should just let my current devices live out their final days and never replace them with another Apple product, because what is even the point anymore?
Having been waiting to see what the next gen would bring I’ve just ordered a 3rd gen to complete the set and take all 3 of our LG tv’s offline. I have one 3rd gen already and it’s more than enough for our use. Siri AI + speakers are a nice feature, but not enough to tempt me for the extra price
Yyyeeaahh I'm so glad I got my third gen on sale for $99 a few months ago. Cause it seems like this is not an upgrade in the slightest. Yeah a CPU bump is cool but unless you're playing games on your Apple TV, that's not gonna help much with streaming normal content. And even if you want it for Siri AI (for...some reason lol), the older one is getting it in beta eventually I heard.
I know I’m going to get downvoted, but in a 2026 world how is the price so shocking? Go try to buy computer parts; specifically ram affordably. A PlayStation 5pro costs $900… all this shit sucks.
We’re living in a post Covid +Tariff world where everything is so expensive and we can choose not buy shit. But the masses buy and I’m part of the problem.
That’s something they should have figured out because the competition isn’t selling $300 streaming boxes. They are okay with ppl not upgrading I assume.
There is nothing on that list that would cause me to drop $300 on the new one. And Apple marketing is playing fast and loose with facts - for me example, to get the surround sound on the new unit you need four of the NEW gen of HomePod or HomePod Mini. So the 4 pairs of HomePod Mini’s I already have are worthless in that regard.
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u/markbraggs 16h ago
Its even worse when you consider 3rd generation came out at $129/149.