Apple TV

Eight years after the Apple TV came into our homes, it has finally been given an App Store. We can hardly recall a time when our iOS devices didn’t have one, so it’s good to see the humble black box getting a way to add content beyond TV, film and music. You can at last install apps that turn your TV into a place to catch up on news, sports results and even do some shopping. If it’s games you’re into, Apple TV is also a games console with a clever remote that gives you motion control via a gyroscope and an accelerometer, just like your iPhone. The top area of the remote is dedicated to touch, meaning you can control your Apple TV like never before. So it’s all gesturebased; tap and swipe your way through menus and use it as a scrubber for speeding through video. The new Apple TV includes Siri too, which looks very clever at responding to natural language queries, so you can ask it to show you the latest action films, say.

The new model is the same width and depth as the previous two generations, but it’s a little taller – by 12mm. You’ll still need to supply your own HDMI cable as well.