Wow, $299. That’s a very surprising price. For HomeView, Apple’s all-new smart display, $299 feels surprisingly affordable. For Apple TV 4K, $299 feels surprisingly painful.
HomeView for $299 feels like an invitation to try a new product category
HomeView looks like a hit. Without actually seeing or hearing it, the verdict is still out. What we can judge now is the pitch.
In classic Apple fashion, the company is hardly the first to deliver a smart display. Yet HomeView appears to have the polish and consideration that an iPhone user would expect.
At $299, it seems Apple is pricing HomeView more as an invitation to try a new category of product. I’m intrigued.
Apple TV 4K for $299 feels like Apple already knows the customer
Then there’s the Apple TV 4K. At $299, it feels priced more like specialized hardware. Unlike HomeView, Apple TV 4K has a price history.
In 2021, Apple sold two Apple TV boxes: Apple TV HD for $149, and Apple TV 4K (2nd generation) for $179.
Both boxes ran tvOS with an App Store, but customers didn’t love that 4K support costed nearly $200.
By the end of the following year, Apple TV 4K (3rd generation) arrived in two flavors: 64GB with no Thread or Ethernet for $129, or 128GB with Thread and Ethernet for $149.
This was viewed as a great cost correction compared to the previous generation. Better hardware and a better price? That sounds too good to be true.
But it was true for a while. Then Apple raised prices on a number of existing products in June. You may recall Apple TV 4K being one of the more painful price jumps, both due to the percent increase and the age of the hardware.
The $129 model jumped to $199, and the $149 model jumped to $249.
Today’s Apple TV 4K replaces the $249 model with an even higher $299 price.
We’re now back to the original Apple TV starting price from 2007. Boy, what a relief when Apple switched from local storage to streaming with the vastly different Apple TV (2nd generation) puck for $99.
Apple TV 4K the best experience, but it’s for fewer people now
Anyway, things are different in 2026. You can literally buy a 65-inch 4K LED TV with the Apple TV app (and all the other streaming apps) built-in for $299.
Where does that leave the Apple TV 4K? It’s increasingly positioned not as a way to add streaming apps to your TV, but as a very particular way to bring the full Apple experience to your TV.
But did Apple get the feature set for the price right?
Adding mics to the box itself is a nice touch, especially since other set-top boxes already do this. There’s also the chip upgrade.
Another big new feature is support for creating a home theater experience beyond stereo speaker output with a pair of big HomePod speakers and a pair of new HomePod mini 2 speakers. That’s a $1300 experience between the set-top box and four speakers.
Personally, I’ve stayed on the Apple TV 4K (2nd-gen) from 2021 without any complaints. I don’t know how much I’ll use Siri AI from my TV, but having it come to the box I already own is a nice surprise.
A specialized home theater experience isn’t a priority in the budget right now, so I’m plenty happy with my 55-inch 4K LED that costed me $168 on sale from Hisense. It’s not the absolute best TV I’ve ever owned, but it’s plenty enough for me. Attaching a $299 Apple TV 4K to it would almost feel wrong.
But if a premium home theater experience is at the top of your priorities and cost isn’t a concern, Apple TV 4K at $299 is a sure upgrade over built-in TV experiences for Apple users.
For now, I’m just grateful that I’m getting most of that experience from a purchase made years ago.
Hopefully there’s an Apple TV option in the future that feels less overpowered and overpriced needs and budgets like mine in the future. At this point, even a version without the $59 Siri Remote in the box would feel more palatable.
Share your thoughts in the comments.
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