2021 Apple TV 4K with 64GB Storage (2nd Generation)

It is hard to give this even two stars. I do use this Apple TV 4K every single day and own several different variants of the TvOS based Apple TVs. I even have an Apple TV 4k living permanently in my travel bag, just so I don’t forget to bring one when I’m away on business or vacation. The main features are buggy or flat out do not work… but I’m well entrenched in the IOS ecosystem and the chance that Apple will fix some issues one day keeps me coming back. For basic functionality, this is likely the best streaming service system available.

Apple TV still has the best media streamer interface for online services, probably because it hasn’t changed since the Jobs era, when Apple Devices “just worked”. It’s hardly a hot take that Apple devices have started working against their owners in the years since. Neither is it news that Apple support has gone from the pride of the customer service world to an organization that forces their customers to make an appointment to use a somewhat mandatory paid customer service network, and sends press-release-ready resolutions to problems which sound good, but that they know won’t work. In short, Apple is too big to admit when they are wrong and too proud to admit when they don’t know how to fix something. It’s so much easier to blame the customer, or infer they are stupid, or blame other devices the customer owns. If you have a microwave somewhere in your home, your Apple device problem isn’t Apple’s fault or responsibility…. that’s the nicest excuse you’ll get from Apple’s customer service.

The Apple TV should be the crown jewel of the Mac OS and IOS ecosystem. The Apple TV should the center of a modern iOS version of Apple’s hugely successful Mac OS digital hub strategy. The Apple TV should be a necessity for iOS uses, and it’s advertised feature set approaches that. This concept is on someone’s radar… this Apple TV has Thread support! Even the small subset of niche Zigbee and Z Wave device hobbyists that are excited, or have even heard about Thread don’t care if the Apple TV has an implementation for it. There are the beginnings of much more useful integrations.

Unfortunately most features don’t work, which reduces Apple TV to a slightly plussed version of the standard Roku. There really needs to be… maybe a lesser version of the “What does MobileME do?” conversation about the Apple TV.

Let’s go down the rabbit hole of features vs reality.

New remote:

This remote slightly works, vs the old Siri remote which doesn’t work. It loses the accelerometer that games were supposed to use, which no other apps had a use for. This is likely because the games strategy was largely abandoned… probably because games were forced to be usable with the Siri remote, which itself didn’t work. Translation: No loss to user experiences, but also no drop in price to compensate the cheaper hardware. Compare that to what Apple were attempting to copy with TvOS: The Nintendo Wii. Wiis were a popular addition to rehab and entertainment programs in elderly communities. Many non-tech-savvy residents immediately started bowling and golfing on screen right out of the box. Many extremely tech savvy Apple TV owners noticed that clicking the right or left side of a Siri remote never worked, and the track pad on the original Siri remote was a poor substitute for an input device… let alone an Apple input device.

Count Apple in that second category. The prime selling features of the original Siri remote were all abandoned in this redesign. It is larger, and less easy to lose. It has a power button. The tracking interface works well. There are arrow buttons, presumably because sensing left or right clicks on a track wheel is more difficult to accomplish now that it was in 2010, when the iPod 4 came out… but this new remote is at least functional.

It’s hardly 6 years of R&D though.

Opposite the old tech of the iPod 4, the buttons on the newer Siri Remote are the trackpad rather than the trackpad being the buttons. We have come a long way. Like the iPod 4, the tracking circle can be used as a jog wheel. Jogging a video in this method is a dream come true for one or two apps. There is apparently no conforming standard for HID on the Apple TV, so most apps don’t work well with the Apple TV remote. It’s hard to justify a walled garden approach when something as simple as human input isn’t standardized… even when all users are using the same two input devices, or a very small subset of MFI devices.

Even voice input is difficult to use. Using Siri inside of an App searches universally across all apps, where as using Siri while in the search field of an App gives results from that App. Unless you’re on the home screen, you probably want to search in the App you’re using.

Pro tip: if you would like to use the home screen, set your remote preferences for the home button to point to the home screen. The default behavior for the home button is now to launch the Apple TV + app -a paid apple subscription service. Anyone remember those old cell phones with a giant internet button in the middle…. remember getting charged if you accidentally hit that button. This is similar to that… brought to you by the very company that did away with poor UI on phones. This behavior is even more disgraceful as it initially seems, as the menu button was brainstormed as a way to get back to the main menu when inside of apps that might use the back button for a different purpose. That is, there are two buttons that do a similar thing, and it was already a learning curve to differentiate between those two buttons.

4K Video:

This is the second generation of Apple’s 4K TV box. One of the very few changes since the release of the Apple TV 4 is video quality. This is well represented on the second generation Apple TV 4k, but it may be that HDMI cables are readily available that surpass Apple’s standards. On the previous 4K model, my Apple TV would switch constantly in and out of HDR mode using several cables rated for this standard. Only one brand and one cable worked, and this problem didn’t extend to any of the other 4K UHD devices I have owned. On this new Apple TV 4k, I do not have this problem with generic high quality cables, even with the TV plugged into a wall plate wired to a second wall plate which uses a third HDMI cable to connect to the Apple TV. Again, this may be due to the advancement of bandwidth of HDMI cables. Apple still puts your cables through a bandwidth test, but at least most cables will pass now. The output looks great, and this is amongst a small set of improvements.

Faster refresh rate in the home menu:

I guess so. Does literally anyone care? We can group a potential 120K output pending a software update some day if the rumors are true in the who cares category. Movies should be viewed in 24 frames, video at 30… maybe sports at 60. Stop pretending faster frame rates look better. If everything starts looking like clear motion all day every day with no way to stop it, I’m not the only one who will just stop watching tv.

Updated processor and performance:

Here’s the main reason I upgraded from the Apple TV 4K to the Apple TV 4K. I know that sounds confusing… but that’s Apple’s marketing. We can call this newer version the 4K2, which is easier than what this really is: The Apple TV 4 HD 4K 2. The reason I wanted a newer processor is that the original Apple TV 4K couldn’t handle Airplay, and couldn’t display a photo slide show. After spending years reconfiguring my network from bottom of the barrel, to high end, to best consumer grade, and finally to multi gig fiber backed big iron, I have come to the conclusion that Apple’s support is lying when they blame this issue on network performance. Since this shouldn’t use a router for this feature (Airplay is local) a standard bottom of the barrel 1 Gbe connection should solve any network performance issues in the event that home wifi isn’t up to snuff. I mean, I upgraded my network anyway, but I always assumed the processor was to blame. I might be… but was it resolved?

Enter Apple’s A12 to save the day. This is the Apple Silicon processor released a year before the first Apple TV 4k… 3 years prior to this model Apple TV. Still it’s better than the old Apple TV’s A10X, right? Well, not significantly. Processing is slightly faster in the A12, but the A12 is a lower end series of processor while the A10X was a premium, performance oriented processor. Given Apple Silicon’s legendary generational gains, you might assume the A12 is more than a paltry 10-15% faster than an A10X, but that’s the best-case reality. The appropriate upgrade path was an A12X, and it’s a shame that’s not what we got (especially if that’s what an Apple TV needs).

All that means nothing if Airplay now works. Well, Airplay won’t overtake Youtube, probably because the TvOS platform apparently doesn’t have any UX or UI mandates. What happens is your iphone will connect, attempt to pause Youtube, your screen will flash with your mirrored iPhone screen and, usually, switch itself back to local content while your iPhone continues to believe it’s Airplaying. Let’s blame that on Google and exit out of YouTube. Airplay works on it’s own now, but all you can really do is swipe around your screen and see it on the TV. This starts to glitch once higher frequency content is displayed in mirror mode.

The real test for Airplay 2 is if an App on your phone can screen forward to your TV. This will allow your Apple TV box to process the video output while your phone processes whatever data is necessary. Using my iPhone 13 Pro to process an app and using my Apple 4K 2 to output to my TV should give me flawless streaming in apps that support this connection. Would you think Photos, an Apple app, would work in this setup? The functionality is there, and it can’t be made for better iOS products, as currently these is not a better phone nor a better Apple TV.

Anyone who has tried viewing a Photos Memory from their phone on an Apple TV knows it won’t end well. Sometimes you get a few frames in and the audio starts cutting out… like the stock slideshow song is too much for an iPhone 13 pro or an Apple TV 4k 2 to handle. Other times a whole slideshow will play through and glitch on the transitions. Sometimes a single photo will stop the whole production. Usually it will all work fine until a video plays in the slide show and the glitches start. My family has regular gatherings with those we go on vacation with. It is such a pleasure to have one person share a memories slide show and a second person to pick it up after with their slideshow, showing a different perspective of the same event. This hasn’t been possible without aggravation since the Apple TV 3. I kept one lying around for this reason, since it works when none of the TvOS based systems can do this.

I have not had a day devoted to chatting with Apple about something they won’t admit is wrong. Scouring the internet Apple has suggested one it’s forums network speed is to blame, all my Apple TVs are hardwired. This 4k 2 can achieve 960 Mb/s to an external server, meaning it’s nearly saturating it’s 1 gig link. That’s probably the fastest single gig link in my house, so that is impressive. Even though my top of the line iPhone doesn’t support Wifi 6e, I normally connect close to 800 Mb/s, usually from 720-780. Is this not fast enough to download iPhoto photos while streaming? The obvious answer doesn’t matter; if my photos are locally stored the problem persists. They have also suggested router settings… I don’t know why they would even suggest that. Airplay 2 is a local service, though I might be downloading photos to my iPhone from iCloud while streaming, the actual connection between my phone and Apple TV are local. While this is logically true for everyone, in my scenario this is physically true. My Modem, router, switches, and access points are all individual pieces of hardware. The analog version of this suggestion would be someone claiming they are late to an event because of traffic when everyone knows they don’t drive. Just in case this is an environmental issue, this problem persists in two different homes, my friends’ and families’ homes, and while traveling and staying in hotels. Also this issue is well documented online, unless you ask Apple. Maybe we all just need a restart or some other busywork.

I’ve spent the 7 years since the Apple TV 4 trying to stream photo slideshows to an Apple Box using Airplay. The Apple TV 4, is the very last Apple TV that would actually do this, but it was buggy. often required 2 or 3 attempts to overtake the Apple TV screen. Again, though the resolution is lower, the Apple TV 3 can do this fine, but it’s too outdated now to do anything else really.

Networking Capabilities:

Wifi 6 and gigE. That’s to be expected, but 6e and 2.5gbe should be implemented, particularly considering the higher frame rates and resolutions along with the widespread availability of multi gig internet. These technologies, especially multi gig capable equipment (don’t get me started on all in one router/switch/access point boxes that have one single 2.5gbe port, wholly negating any advantages of this speed increase), seemed to stall during the pandemic, so these specs are somewhat expected. Know this isn’t future proof technology… or even state of the art. This is all old tech.

Evolving claim of running a version of Mac OS X, Mac OS, or IOS:

I’m sure the NeXT OS kernel is down there somewhere. Everything for decades coming from Apple used some version of this. That’s not what an OS means to the general public… the general public doesn’t care about memory management, disk io, or symmetric multiprocessing even if these technologies make their devices better. The general public cares about functionality… and the large differential between what an OS technically is and what a default install package is isn’t described in these claims. Most people would think that things that are advertised features in IOS or Mac OS are what this claim is referencing. Immediately obvious is no messaging, email, file explorer, remote viewing, Face Time, or web browser. Some come with privacy concerns, sure, but a web browser and Face Time are the huge missing features.

Why not sell a TV webcam that can be used for remote gatherings… if this was an oversight before the pandemic, I don’t know how this isn’t obvious now. When you have multiple people on both ends of a FaceTime call, there is always one iPhone or iPad designated driver on each end. Wouldn’t a room of people seen on a TV be better than everyone fighting to see or be seen on an iPhone-based family call? It would certainly make the tech more relaxing and comfortable. Being able to use a TV would probably lead to higher adoption of Face Time. Obviously with all the medical and business meetings being conducted online since the pandemic, many would benefit from a centralized hub in their home for video chat. Retro BT-based iSight is such an obvious integration… is no one thinking over at Apple anymore?

Lack of Safari has been an annoyance, especially for everyone who travels with their Apple TV. This is an advanced life hack, and it involves knowing how to use hotel TV’s and carrying your own universal remote and cabling. The last piece of this puzzle is the dreaded and ubiquitous captive portal. There is a way to spoof, using a laptop and not a phone, an ip and register that with a hotel’s wifi. There are also travel routers, which condense your in room traffic to one single mac address, allowing you to clear the router with the hotel’s captive portal and use whatever else you like. TvOS has actually come up with a new iPhone integration, which actually does the same mac address spoofing automatically (you just don’t know it). How is this easier than including a lite version of Safari? I know Apple doesn’t want you to think the experience of web browsing on TV will ever work – they don’t want you to try it – but WatchOS has a hidden Safari app for this reason. Besides a minor gripe for few users, showing something on TV that is generated by a service that doesn’t have a TvOS app can’t be done without Airplay… and Airplay doesn’t always work. What if I’m online shopping and see something I think my family will like… why can’t I Airdrop the link to my Apple TV to bring that website up on the big screen? This would have been VERY useful when my family was shopping for a house… something a lot of families are doing right now.

Although it is disappointing that this isn’t being treated as a digital hub, its failure to perform the tasks Apple claims as features makes my buying recommendation a solid maybe. I mean, sleep on it. It won’t be everything you are sold. If this will mostly be used as an online streaming portal… and your streaming services of choice decided to program their Apple TV apps to use the Siri Remote 2, then this is a fine product. If you were sold on something Apple said this would do beyond this, maybe take a step back.

Apple’s lack of bug fixes and poor developer standards for UX/UI have made this a 1 or two star product rather than a no questions asked 5 star necessity. I’ll probably be waiting another 7 years for Apple to fix what they broke, but if they do, I’ll gladly update this review.