Box cleverer

Apple has finally found its crumpled invite to the 4K party, but with so many rivals around is its streaming box now redundant? watches lots and lots of telly to find out

from £179 / stuff.tv/appletv4k a lot to contend with, then, but with 4K powers and a new A10X Fusion chip, it might still be worth making a space for.

Like its predecessors, the fifth-generation Apple TV is designed to vanish. It’s a box – a very black box with rounded edges, and a little white light on the front. Atop the box there’s an almost-black Apple logo, while around the back you’ll find sockets – one for power, one to take an HDMI cable, and one for your Ethernet cable (just in case your wireless signal isn’t strong enough for the built-in Wi-fi). Although the case’s depth will catch your eye more than Amazon’s almost-flat Fire TV box, this device will still fade into most environments.

By using my iphone, I’ve got the Apple TV 4K up and running in just a few minutes. The setup walk-through is self-explanatory, and at the point where you need to log in to your icloud account it prompts you to hold your iphone next to the box (needless to say, the two must be connected to the same Wi-fi network). Input a PIN code, and that’s it – within seconds I’m greeted by the Apple TV homescreen. If you don’t own an iphone it’s a bit more of a faff, but you’ll still be sorted in about 10 minutes max.

If you’ve owned or played with Apple TV before, you’ll be familiar enough with how the Siri Remote works. There are buttons to control the volume, to invoke Siri and to move you in and out of the interface, along with a smooth trackpad that takes up the top third of the stick. It can be charged via the same Lightning cable you use for your iphone.