What you’re looking at is the third-generation Apple TV 4K. Apple launched it back in 2022, and it’s still going strong. Unlike the real apples we sometimes bring home from the store — which seem to spoil somewhere between the checkout line and my kitchen counter — this one has impressive staying power. Three and a half years on the market, and the Apple TV 4K (3rd gen) shows no signs of going bad.
In fact it’s nearly as fresh as the day it fell off the Apple tree. The Apple TV 4K is still the fastest streaming device on the market, bar none.
The Apple TV 4K is blisteringly fast. Of all the streaming devices I’ve ever used, it’s the fastest. It’s downright telepathic. Actions on screen seem to happen at the very instant I’d press a button on the Apple TV 4K’s beautifully sculpted bare aluminum remote. And it’s a slickly designed interface, if a bit clinically soulless and more obtuse to navigate than Roku’s…
It may be easy to dismiss the speed of menu navigation on a streaming device as beside the point, a sideshow from what really matters: speed while streaming. But you’ll spend a lot of time navigating through menus. Every time you fire up your TV, in fact. Even just a slight delay saved each time you press a button or scroll through a home screen adds up to a major savings in annoyance and time when you multiply it by tens of thousands of times over the lifetime of the device…
The Apple TV 4K is for speed demons, people who love Apple’s stripped-down and clean aesthetic in both hardware design and software UI.
MacDailyNews Take: The Apple TV 4K (3rd generation) was released on November 4, 2022. More than three years later, Apple TV 4K is still far and way the best streaming device on the market, period.
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But the remote and the interface need work.
In 10 years once Apple hires some AI people we may get a new one. But we will all be using another device (google/amazon) by then.
I got another TV, was waiting for the new one to come out, got tired of waiting, and bought another one of these.
the new one will be tweaked to take advantage of next-generation Siri, but as is, with the current tech, it’s a perfect product.
it does what it does, is better than its competitors, gets out of the way, and integrates seamlessly into the ecosystem.
And my Apple TV “HD” with A8 works fine with my old Panasonic HDTV, still supported by tvOS 26. Definitely the oldest A-chip (the one from iPhone 6) supported by latest version of an Apple OS.
To Apple,
I want Apple TV 8K,
How.
Put a USBC port speedy enough to Run 8K. Just below RJ45 or HDMI ports.
So I can put my fast USBC dongle and watch 8K. Even my Wi-Fi 7 would handle 8K.
So I have two options. Streams coming with Wi-Fi 7 or run my program from fast USBC dongle.
Why should you call the device Apple TV 4K, call it Apple TV 8K.