Taking a bird's-eye view, media streamers are a lot less critical than they used to be. Back in the early 2010s, they were a revelation, since the apps on TVs were often badly designed and powered by weak chips. If you even had a smart TV — many people were still using “dumb” TVs, and lucky to have something with an HDMI port.
As of 2026, apps and platforms have standardized, and most TVs are reasonably well-equipped for tasks like 4K HDR and spatial audio. You can buy a set with Google TV or Roku OS and never think twice about adding a streamer later. But if you want a deluxe experience, you should still invest in an Apple TV 4K — even if you never buy any other Apple devices. A lot of its qualities are byproducts of the company's overall business strategy.
What makes the Apple TV 4K so special?
Cutting through the nonsense
On paper, many of the 2022 model's specs are so common as to be pedestrian. It supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+ among its HDR formats, and various flavors of Dolby surround sound, up through Atmos. The most expensive model supports gigabit Ethernet, and acts as a Thread border router for smart homes. Yet even those features aren't that rare. It's actually a little outdated in some respects — it's still using Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 6, despite those standards first arriving in 2016 and 2019, respectively.
Where Apple decimates the competition is…