Remember when getting Sky at home meant you had to have a dish attached to the house? That left plenty of people in apartments out in the cold, unless a deal was struck, along with others whose homes simply weren’t suitable for attaching the dish. Thousands of customers had to go elsewhere for their entertainment.
Sky has finally come up with a solution, building its own TV with the technology inside. Sky Glass doesn’t require a set-top box, is simple to set up and offers excellent audio (in our opinion) compared to other flat screen TVs. And it comes in something other than black, which makes a nice change. You can get Sky Glass in pink, green, blue and ceramic white as well as black, and in three different sizes: 43in, 55in and 65in.
The screen is a 4K Quantum Dot display, with support for HDR 10 and Dolby Vision. All in all, it’s a decent package for a decent price.
And it’s a minimalist one too. A single cable is all you need: the power cable. Plug it in, turn it on and you are almost ready to go. You’ll need to connect it to your internet connection of course; no set-top box means that Sky Glass uses the internet to deliver your entertainment.
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It’s not an outlandish concept in today’s streaming era, but you do need a robust connection. Sky says full HD will work on connections of 10mbps or more; for 4K you’ll need at least 25mbps. In an urban area with good coverage, this won’t be a problem. Over the course of this review period, there were no stutters, no buffering and no outages to deal with.
Although the system looks familiar when you turn it on, there is small learning curve when it comes to getting to grips with recordings. There is no physical drive to record to with Sky Glass. Everything is in the cloud and, instead of recordings, you have a playlist you add programmes to through a red-ringed “+” button.
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That playlist will grab all your favourite shows from wherever they are available – Sky, Netflix, RTÉ Player, Prime Video, even Apple TV – so you don’t have to search through all the different services. They’re just there, like a little bit of tech magic, ready to stream.
On the positive side, no physical recordings means you don’t have to remember to clear out your shows regularly or replace your box if the storage drive inside fails. On the other, if something goes off Sky’s on-demand service or one of the other streaming or catch-up services, you won’t be able to watch it.
Sky is confident this won’t be an issue for most people. However, it will depend on the content you are looking for and how long you give yourself to watch it, and also what services you are signed up for. Content on BBC, for example, is particularly problematic.
Sky Glass had a tough act to follow for this reviewer. It came days after the departure of a Samsung OLED TV, which has incredibly deep blacks, and some great colours to show off. Initially, the colour on the Glass looked a bit muted, even on the most lurid kids TV shows. A bit of tweaking with the picture modes and custom settings though and that was mostly solved.
However, very dark content – House of Dragons for example – still looked a bit muddier than you’d expect. That could have been down to the sheer size of the TV, with the 65-inch version reviewed here. By and large though, it is a crisp picture – and with the sheer size of the screen, it’s hard not to be a bit impressed.
Another element worthy of note is the audio. While some people may prefer to work with external speakers, the truth is that it’s not necessary. Unless you are very particular about your audio, the Sky Glass speakers will hit all the right notes.
If you have other TVs around the house, a few Sky Streaming pucks will get them on the same system. Just make sure your wifi stretches or you have a handy ethernet connection.
The good
A lot less cable clutter, Sky where you couldn’t get it before and the flexibility of the streaming pucks make Sky Glass a winner for many people.
The TV itself looks nice on the stand, and the set-up is probably the easiest yet for an entire TV system. Although there are changes – the playlist is a big one – the programme guide is familiar and all the content you want is easy to find.
The not so good
All that technology has to go somewhere, so Sky Glass is a bit on the thicker side of the TV scale and the stand is a bit clunky.
The picture isn’t quite as punchy as we’d like, although you can improve it if you fancy playing around with the settings a bit. The lack of recordings is a deal-breaker for some; if you prefer the certainty of a physical recording, stick with Sky Q.
And you’ll need a good, stable broadband connection or else your viewing will be somewhere on the scale of non-existent to hellish.
The rest
The attention to detail here is impressive. The remote control matches the TV in colour, and speaker covers in the TV colour can also be attached.
If you are a fan of voice controls, Sky Glass has them built in. So you can shout “hey Sky” at the TV and tell it what you want. The voice control button is still on the remote control too, if you prefer that.
There’s no optical out connection for audio, as Sky is confident you won’t need a separate sound bar. And you get three HDMI ports, a USB connection for power and an ethernet port. Bluetooth is for the remote control only though, so there is no chance of hooking up some headphones to it.
The verdict
A good first effort from Sky Glass. It ticks more boxes than it doesn’t and bodes well for the future of the product. Sky.com
