Sky Now TV Smart Stick review – in pictures
Streaming doesn't get much cheaper than this
Sky Now TV Smart Stick review – in pictures
Not fussed about 4K, but have a sports itch that free-to-air telly just won’t scratch? The Now TV Smart Stick promises to reach the places Freeview can’t. Offering access to some Sky-exclusive cinema, shows and sport, is this diminutive £15 dongle a genuine alternative to a satellite dish?
Design
The Smart Stick itself is no bigger than a USB flash drive, so you should have no trouble squeezing it into an HDMI port. Your TV provides the power via a microUSB port on the end, or you can use the bundled adaptor to plug it into the wall. The streamlined remote control is a step up from the basic one bundled with the Now TV Smart Box – it gains volume controls and a power button that can control your TV, as well as the stick itself.
Setup
Once you’re plugged in, setup is as easy as turning on your TV, tapping in your Wi-Fi password, and logging in to a NowTV account. It takes two minutes, and then you’re good to start binge-watching. The remote now comes with a few extra shortcuts that let you jump directly to the live TV guide and Kids sections, as well as the returning My TV and Sky Store keys. You’ll still need to keep some batteries in a drawer, though, as USB recharging is asking just a bit too much from a £15 device.
What’s on?
What you can watch depends entirely on which Now TV passes you pay for. The entertainment pass will set you back £7.99 a month, the Cinema pass £9.99, and kids pass £2.99. Sports is a little more complicated, with one day access for £6.99, a week for £10.99 or a whole month for £33.99. You didn’t think the £15 entry fee was going to let you ride the rollercoaster all day, did you? You can then watch any of the live TV channels you’ve paid to access, or take your pick from the relevant on-demand catalogues. Unlike the Now TV Smart Box there’s no aerial hookup for free-to-air channels.
Voice search
Voice search makes it easy to find what you want to watch: just hold a button down on the remote, speak into it, and have your results instantly revealed on screen. It’s a whole lot more convenient than tapping in searches with an onscreen keyboard. The detection seems spot on, and you can search by actor, director, genre, and year of release as well as title. It can’t work out what’s currently on live TV, though, so you’ll have to stick to using old-fashioned buttons for that.
Interface
Easy-to-follow menus let you jump between a regular live TV EPG, catch-up, apps and a new Home screen that pulls highlights, things you might have missed, and shows you only got half-way through into one easy-to-find location. Adding Search to the homescreen makes things much easier to find now, if you’d rather not bark orders at a remote control. The whole thing feels that much more responsive than the old Smart Box, with barely any waiting between opening apps or streaming a particular show. You can even pause and rewind live TV.
Picture quality
With over 300 TV shows and more than 1000 movies you won’t be short of stuff to watch, the only downside is that Sky restricts streaming quality to a positively old-fashioned 720p (1080p isn’t coming until the end of the year). It doesn’t look amazing on a Full HD TV, so anyone with a 4K telly is going to really notice the drop in quality. The good news is that 1080p streaming is on the way – it just won’t be here before the tail end of the year.
On-demand and apps
It’s not just Sky content on offer, either. There are around 50 downloadable apps, curated down from Roku’s frankly unmanageable 4000+. Big hitters like YouTube and Vevo are there, along with BBC Sport, but there’s no Netflix or Amazon. Then again, there’s plenty of alternatives, with catch-up from BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, All 4 and My5. Only BBC lets you watch live, though – the rest are strictly on-demand only. But on the plus side, any 1080p content will actually be streamed at that resolution – unlike Sky’s selection.
Kids
Whether you’ll get much use out of the dedicated kids section depends entirely on whether you have sprogs to keep entertained or not. If you do, though, it’s well worth the £3 a month. With all the hoo-ha about YouTube’s decidedly kid-unfriendly content recently, Sky’s curated kids channels are a lot safer to pop your tots down in front of. There’s a huge selection, and you can dial it down to specific shows if your kids love Peppa Pig, but are done with Dora the Explorer.
Now TV Smart Stick Verdict
By ditching free-to-air TV for online streaming, Sky has managed to strip its Now TV hardware down to the bare essentials – and the price along with it. There’s no Netflix or Amazon but if you’ve bought a TV in the past few years they’re probably built-in anyway. Now TV, however, is harder to find so it’s well worth the £15 to add it. Even when you factor in the monthly cost of your chosen passes, it’s still something of a bargain, and only stands to get better once 1080p streaming arrives later in the year.
