(upbeat music)
- Hey, reviews.org fam I'm Tshaka Armstrong
and this is Apple TV 4K, Gen two, lots to unpack,
so let's get right into it.
(energetic music)
So you may be asking yourself,
what is the difference between Gen one and Gen two?
Well, we're gonna dive into what the differences are,
what you're gonna get with Gen two of Apple TV 4K.
This is not gonna be a full review
but more a early review of specs
and some of my early experiences gaming, setting up
and using the Gen two Apple TV 4K.
I think the most immediate difference
that most consumers are going to notice,
and especially those who picked up
the first Gen Apple TV 4K, is the new remote.
With the new remote, the Siri button has been moved
from the top to the right side of the remote.
Play Eric B. and Rakim in Apple music.
And you get a jog wheel.
This new remote is also Bluetooth 5.0
as opposed to Bluetooth 4.0 in the first Gen remote
which means the battery is gonna last you longer.
There's some really cool things that you can do
with the Gen two remote.
For one, it actually has a power button now
so you can power on and off your TV and your Apple TV
at the same time.
It has an IR blaster on it as well.
In addition, like I said,
the jog wheel functionality is really cool
because now when you're scrolling through a program,
when you're scrolling through a show,
you can actually scroll the jog wheel
and you get all kinds of nostalgic shades
of early iPod usage.
And even though it isn't a mechanical jog,
meaning it rotates, it is mechanical
and that the wheel is clickable.
The jog portion is touch sensitive.
That works well in my testing as you can see here.
Also on the new remote, compared to the first Gen remote
you actually get a back button
instead of a menu button or what was called the home button
which actually didn't take you home, it took you back.
So you get the back button for that.
You get the Apple TV button
which takes you to the Apple TV menu screen.
You now have a mute button dedicated on the remote
which you didn't have before
and you have a play and pause button.
You also have dedicated volume up and down buttons.
One of the things that is really cool
about this remote again, is the Siri integration.
In order to use that,
you're going to press and hold the Siri button
then you can speak any command to it.
I want to watch Ted Lasso.
(TV characters talking)
So one of the cool things about
watching with this, you can use the jog wheel when you pause
to scroll through programming.
I find fast forwarding and rewinding through content
can be a pain with some of the other remotes,
but with this, it actually is really simple to use.
And one of the other cool functions
that you can use with this is,
is if you didn't hear what he said
let's say somebody was talking to you
you can go, what did he say?
- Hi how are y'all doing?
- I'll introduce you to the boss.
- (door knocks)
- Hello.
- And it'll jump back 15 seconds and with captions
tell you everything that was said on screen.
Let's check that out again.
What did he say?
- I love this kid. Love him.
- I'll introduce you to the boss.
- There you go , jumps back 15 seconds,
gives you captions, shows you what was said.
I think that is actually really cool
especially if you have kids.
This is a function that a lot of people are gonna love
if you have children.
- Hi. How are y'all doing?
- So coming back to the actual box itself,
Apple TV 4K Gen two,
you get HDMI 2.1, which supports more data throughput.
So technically you could actually push more video,
more picture information through that pipeline.
It does not do 8K resolution
so there's that currently at least, but that is there
but that leaves room for all kinds of
potential possibilities here.
The other thing you're gonna get with this
and probably the biggest upgrade internally,
is this now comes with Apple's A12 bionic processor
as opposed to the A10.
So now you're gonna have the ability to have 4K 60
which is high frame rate HDR
which not a lot of TV, movies actually broadcast in that
but what does broadcast in that, is sports programming
like you see on the Red Bull channel.
So you actually will get a higher frame rate
which means better motion, smoother motion,
more lifelike and more realistic motion
for those of you who are big game fans.
I don't really watch a lot of sports ball,
but I know some of my pals, some of my friends do
so this'll be a really cool addition
for those of you that are into that.
Now for those of you who've not used Apple TV
or Apple TV 4K before,
this is maybe your first time looking into it
or diving into it, one of the things that really
makes Apple stand out is the ecosystem.
Everything just works together.
As a matter fact, if you're an iPhone user
when you're setting this up,
all you need to do is plug this puppy up, walk up to it,
get close to it with your phone
make sure Bluetooth is turned on, it'll connect
and then you can set up the Apple TV 4K
basically using your iPhone, putting in your passwords
doing all that kinds of stuff.
If you are somebody who's using the previous Gen Apple TV 4K
and you're upgrading to the second Gen,
you want to make sure before you do that
you want to make sure you turn on
Apple's home screen setting so that all your settings,
all your Apple TV, all that transfers between
all your Apple TV devices.
So even if you're maybe buying this for another room
and keeping the old one, you can keep everything in sync
between all your devices and mirror and looking at the same.
So you're not moving to different setups
on different devices.
But if you do actually want different setups,
hold down the TV button
and you see you can now switch between users.
There's only me on this one, but as you can see
if there were other users on this,
their names would show up here as well
and I'd be able to switch between those users
between those user profiles
and you'd be able to access their suggestions,
all those different kinds of things.
And again, one of the things that I really like
when we're talking ecosystem,
is the ease of use, the ability to access very easily,
your devices all over the network.
So if I want to, let's say mirror my phone
and show somebody something funny,
I can just go to my iPhone, pull down the control center,
go into screen mirroring and there you have it.
I am now mirroring my phone
directly on to my living room TV.
Really simple, really easy to do.
So it really is about the ecosystem
as you probably already know
if you're an Apple user or Apple fan.
Now with the A12 bionic
comes a better ability to play games.
I even had my sons play some of the games on here.
We're playing this game right here, "World of Demons."
(adventurous music playing on TV)
So we'd already connected the controller,
so we're gonna go ahead and get back into it.
You can see all the screens load really fast.
That's that A12 bionic,
throwing down and again, on this 1080p TV,
this game actually just looks beautiful.
(computer game gunshots)
And you see the screens, you move to them really fast.
(flute playing)
I'm gonna go ahead and skip this and get into this battle.
(gaming character groaning)
So this kind of reminds me of Samurai Showdown,
one of my old favorite games,
but you can see the cell shading
on his game is just beautiful.
Absolutely gorgeous even on my 1080p only TV.
So,
you're really gonna get a really good
high class experience out of Apple Arcade on here.
Let's jump out of this
and actually jump back into some of the other features.
You can use your PlayStation controllers,
your X-Box controllers, as long as it's Bluetooth,
you can connect that controller to the Apple TV 4K.
And like I said the gaming experience is really fluid,
really good-looking and as a matter of fact, my son said,
and I just had them test this out
and tell me what he thought as well,
and he said he actually ended up
staying a little longer than he meant to,
you know he wanted to get back to one of his consoles,
but he actually ended up
staying a little longer than he meant to,
playing this game because it was so engaging for him
and that's actually saying quite a bit.
The other great integration with the Apple TV 4K
and this was on the previous Gen
but this is just speaking to the whole system
if you are new, is of course you have Apple Fitness Plus
so you can connect your Apple watch to Apple TV 4K
and you can now get your fitness on, get that health,
get those health metrics, those health stats up
from the comfort of your living room
and from the comfort of looking at a larger,
much larger monitor than your iPad or your iPhone,
which you can do Apple Fitness plus
on either of those devices.
One of the things that people take for granted is
the ability to actually have natural looking colors on a TV.
I think sometimes we just get used to
what we're seeing on our TVs.
Our TVs are not generally professionally calibrated,
so you kind of just get used to what you're looking at
but Apple TV, along with your iPhone
a new iPhone that allows you to do face ID
in this particular case of the iPhone 12,
you can hold your phone up to the TV
and actually use it to color balance the Apple TV 4K
so that it compensates for whatever color
your TV is currently showing,
and gives you true or more lifelike colors.
It essentially is your professional calibrator,
which can be very expensive to call out, you know,
some a third party or geek squad or something like that
to come and calibrate your TV.
It can be pricey compared to free
because you already own an iPhone.
So that is another great function of Apple TV 4K.
And again, overall the whole ecosystem working together.
And then there's private listening.
If you have two pairs of AirPods,
you can actually use both pairs to be listening
to whatever you're watching
on your Apple TV 4K at the same time.
Now this air pod thing is also really intriguing to me
because as you may know, Apple just announced
that they'll be bringing spatial audio to Apple music.
So if you have a great soundbar, really nice soundbar
or surround system connected to your Apple TV,
I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple TV
offer that spatial audio through Apple TV 4K,
when you're listening to Apple music.
Because again, that is an app that you can bring up
on Apple TV 4K, along with all kinds of other apps.
So spatial audio Dolby Atmos on Apple TV,
through Apple music,
I think is gonna be a compelling future option potentially
as you look at all the use you can get out of Apple TV 4K.
So that's Apple TV 4K a first look.
I haven't had it that long yet
so I'm gonna be putting it through its spaces,
using it some more and getting back to you with my review,
my observations, in depth on the use of Apple TV 4K
in my home, but that is kind of my early preview.
So yes, gaming is awesome.
Apple Fitness plus works really well.
The integration, a home kit
all these things definitely worth it
if you're in the Apple ecosystem,
plus you get local storage with this so,
really is a whole solution in a tiny box.
And as much as I do love smart TVs,
I do often recommend people get standalone boxes
or the dongles for the TV
because it's like those old TV VCR combos.
If the VCR goes bad, now you have a kind of TV paperweight
but in this instance, if you have a standalone box,
when you want to upgrade
to the latest and greatest technology,
but let's say your TV still works just fine,
you can just pay a whole lot less
for the standalone box than you would to upgrade a whole TV.
So I'm a big believer in the standalone boxes
for whatever streaming box you use.
But in this particular case,
we're talking Apple TV 4K second Gen.
So I don't take it lightly that you've watched.
If you have any questions,
anything you'd like me to check out
as I go through the review process,
go ahead leave that in the comments below I'll get to it.
We don't take it lightly that you've watched with us.
I'm Tshaka Armstrong.
This is reviews.org.
I'll catch you on the next video.