Sky Stream review: Brilliant new Sky TV box spells the end of the satellite dish

When Sky Glass launched last year, customers were able to add a Sky Stream box to their bundle to unlock multi-room viewing around the house. However, this diddy box wasn’t offered as a standalone option for those who didn’t need a new 4K TV.

As you can read in our Sky Glass review, we criticised the satellite firm at the time for not dishing out this set-top box to customers who didn’t want to upgrade to a new telly as well. Thankfully, Sky has taken that criticism onboard and now offers its standalone Sky Stream box to anyone – unlocking satellite dish-free viewing with your current TV.

On top that, Sky has dropped the upfront fee and now includes free next-day delivery with all Sky Stream orders, then simply plug the TV box into any television and start streaming live television without the need for a satellite dish or an engineer visit.

This is what many of us have been waiting for …so, does this standalone box live up to expectations?

Is it time to upgrade from the ageing Sky Q box? Our in-depth Sky Stream TV review has everything you need to know.

Buying and installing Sky Stream is a total breeze. There’s only one size and one colour option available, but you will need to pick the channels included in your package online – or on the phone – when you place that initial order.

Unlike Sky Q, Sky Stream viewers can choose between an 18-month minimum contract or a 31-day rolling contract. The latter is a little pricier but that does mean you can add or drop extras like Sky Cinema and Sky Sports each month or simply switch it off altogether.

Once ordered, Sky Stream will arrive in the post the very next day at no additional cost. Then it’s simply a question of plugging the power cable into the wall, connecting the box to your television – with the included HDMI cable – switching on the box and connecting Sky Stream to your home Wi-Fi network.

From start to finish, the process takes a matter of minutes and this DIY installation is a huge bonus when opting for Stream over Sky Q.

The latter requires an engineer to be booked weeks in advance so the satellite dish can be affixed to your home, with holes drilled to run wires through your walls. It’s undoubtedly a faff waiting in for the day so the Sky team can trudge around the house and clamber over the roof.

For anyone who hates the thought of a dish or simply can’t have one, Stream is the perfect solution as, thanks to that Wi-Fi connection, there’s just one power lead to plug in and you’re good to go (if your wireless connection is a little patchy, it is possible to use an ethernet cable to stream your favourite shows).

If you’re after a hassle-free way of watching exclusive Sky TV channels and on-demand shows, Stream is a seriously tempting proposition.

Without a dish to rely upon, Sky Stream needs a pretty decent broadband connection. Everything you watch, including live television, is beamed via the internet, so you’ll need to check your Wi-Fi can take the strain before you place an order with Sky.

Sky recommends speeds of at least 10/15Mbps for a stutter-free experience, but that minimum requirement increases to around 25Mbps if you want to watch boxsets and blockbuster movies in stunning 4K.

If you’ve only able to get entry-level 38Mbps broadband in your property, you’re going to struggle to get a decent experience with Sky Stream – especially if you live in a busy house with lots of connected devices.

Sky customers can fit up to six Sky Stream boxes in a single home for multi-room viewing, but we’d definitely recommend broadband of at least 100Mbps before considering that option as each device will munch into your total bandwidth and things will soon start to stumble.

If you’re fortunate to live in a property that has been upgraded to the latest full-fibre connections, you won’t have an issue streaming boxsets, pausing and rewinding live television channels, or watching in multiple rooms at the same time.

Sky Stream is a very neat little device that fits in the palm of your hand. Since there’s no hard disk inside for recordings (more on that later) Sky has managed to create a device that’s just 10cm square and 1.5cm tall. In fact, it’s so small you’ll hardly notice it underneath your telly (or squirrelled away in your media unit) and it’s totally silent so you won’t be annoyed by the whirl of a fan or hard drive working away. If you have a telly mounted on the wall, it’s pretty easy to fit the Sky Stream puck to the mount for a minimalist, cable-free set-up.

On the rear of the device, you’ll find an HDMI and Ethernet socket, plus a digital aerial port so you can link up your existing TV aerial. The latter isn’t necessary, but does mean that you’ll still be able to watch Freeview channels even if you suffer a broadband outage.

If you’re looking for a set-top box that won’t clutter up your living room, it’s almost impossible to fault Sky Stream as it offers a truly tiny way of watching some of the best television channels around.

Although, we did say that it was almost impossible …so we do have a few niggles with the design of this new TV box. First up, the power light. In a baffling decision, the designers at Sky decided to place this crucial light on the underside of the case – making it an exercise in neck-straining to check whether the box is on or off.

Along with the neat set-top box, there’s also nice remote control which features a soft touch finish and curved edges making it comfy to hold.

All of the buttons are in the right place and it even features backlit keys so you can see what you’re tapping on even when the lights are low.

The Sky Stream remote doesn’t come in any of the stylish pastel colours that we praised in our Sky Glass review, but it does support voice commands to avoid tedious typing with the alpha-numeric keypad. So, that’s something.

Switch on Sky Stream and you’ll be treated to that striking new user interface, which is packed with information on all the latest shows.

Everywhere you look, you’ll find high-resolution artwork for the latest blockbusters, sports and TV shows. Sky has done a great job making the menus look visually rich and exciting, while also cramming in useful details like programme descriptions and age ratings.

Although Sky Stream still has to launch dedicated apps to load-up content from Disney+, BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Prime Video and more, the broadcaster has clearly tried hard to make the user interface across Stream feel consistent. It’s easily the best way to watch TV shows, movies and documentaries from multiple platforms.

As long as you are happy to pay a bit extra (£6 per month), Stream also offers 4K Ultra HD quality streaming with Dolby Atmos audio support. Although, as we mentioned earlier, you will need to make sure your broadband can cope with this improved quality.

The only slight annoyance is that Sky has now started charging £5 per month if you are watching content via cloud recordings and on-demand apps, such as ITVX or All4, and want to skip through adverts. It’s almost certainly something everyone will want to add to your monthly bill, so it’s a bit of a shame it’s not factored into the base subscription cost.

For those thinking about upgrading from Sky Q, that extra monthly cost probably seems outrageous. After all, fast-forwarding through the commercial breaks has been one of the biggest selling points of Sky hardware since the early 00s.

However, to put the extra charge into perspective, ITV X charges £5.99 per month (£59.99 per year) for its premium subscription tier, which you’ll need to ditch adverts when watching TV shows on-demand. However, this also adds exclusive shows and boxsets from BritBox, which you won’t get access to when paying for Ad Skipping with Sky Stream. In comparison, All4 charges £3.99 per month to skip adverts with its catch-up shows and on-demand boxsets.

If you bought a standalone streaming box, like Fire TV Stick 4K Max, and wanted an advert-free experience from ITV and Channel 4 content, you’d need to stump up £9.98 per month. You’ll only be charged once… no matter how many Sky Stream pucks you have at home to watch in different rooms. As such, Sky Stream remains a pretty good deal.

Since Sky Stream doesn’t have a hard drive inside its tiny frame, there’s no way to record shows onto the device itself. Instead, Sky has created a new Playlist function, which uses cloud recordings on Sky’s servers and pulls shows from catch-up services like ITVX and BBC iPlayer to offer TV shows after they’ve aired.

Sky debuted this feature with its Sky Glass television last year – as that all-in-one 4K TV doesn’t have a spinning disk inside either! Since the launch, Sky has steadily improved its functionality and there’s very little that it now misses or that you won’t be able to find.

There are also some advantages to this new approach – you’ll never be told that Sky cannot record a new series or movie because you’ve run out of space, since everything is stored on servers far away from your living room. Poor signal won’t ruin any recordings either, since it’s not your box physically recording the content.

If there’s a problem with your box, you won’t lose any shows or movies when Sky ships out a replacement… that’s not the case for Sky Q owners who will lose all of their recordings if anything goes awry with the hard drive, the rest of the circuitry in the box, or want to upgrade to a newer model.

However, in our opinion, Sky Playlists still can’t quite match the simplicity of a built-in hard drive as there are some things this clever replacement still misses. For example, Match of the Day is only available on iPlayer for a limited time and once it’s gone …it’s gone! That’s not the case with Sky Q which will keep recordings for as long as you want.

It’s a compromise, but Sky clearly thinks its all-new Playlists feature is the future, so expect more improvements in the coming months.

In comparison, Sky Q is starting to look a little long in the tooth (and is becoming increasingly tough to find on Sky TV’s own website!) so we wouldn’t expect a flurry of exciting new features and improvements for that box to be released by the developers at Sky anytime soon…

If you love watching shows from across a variety of different streaming platforms, Stream offers a pretty seamless way to jump from services such as Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video and Apple TV+.

During the set-up process, you will need to sign into each service individually, but once that’s done you’ll see recommendations and top picks right from the home screen. Everything is synchronised across your devices – from Sky Go, other Sky Stream boxes, and even the Netflix app on your iPad or phone.

Since Sky Playlists is drawing from these on-demand services, movies and shows can show up in your Playlist before they’ve aired on telly. That’s perfect for anyone who can’t wait for the next episode. A good example of this was when we added Mamma Mia to our Playlist after we spotted it coming to ITV. Sky Glass instantaneously checked and added the film straight to our Playlist as it’s currently available via Netflix, so we could watch hours earlier than originally planned. That’s very clever stuff.

Sky kickstarted 2023 with a blockbuster update to Entertainment OS – the name of the operating system that powers Sky Stream and Sky Glass. One of the biggest new additions with Entertainment OS 1.1 is the ability to create up to five Playlists on a single Sky Stream box.

Until now, whenever you added something to your Playlist it would appear in a single menu, exactly like it always did on the older Sky Q box too.

If you live with a partner with vastly different tastes in telly, that could mean a lot of scrolling to find the film or boxset that you added to the Playlist months ago that you’ve now got time to dive into. For those with younger viewers, it could mean children accidentally stumbled on the latest episode of Gangs of London when all they wanted was a new instalment of Peppa Pig.

You can name these Playlists anything you want. As well as having specific lists for different household members, Sky Stream also lets you create a Family Movie Night list where you can start to collate films that you want to watch together on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

It’s a very welcome tweak to the Playlist feature and brings feature parity with some of the biggest streamers, like Prime Video, Disney+ and Netflix, which offer the ability to create different profiles for users to categorise the films, documentaries and series they want to watch.

Once you’re all set up, pressing the + button on your remote as usual will summon a new menu with a list of all Playlist profiles.

Stream offers a pretty cheap way to tune into Sky TV.

If you’re happy to sign up for an 18-month contract, you can currently pick up this device for as little as £26 per month, which includes channels such as Sky Atlantic, Sky Max, MTV, Sky Comedy and more, there’s a Netflix Basic subscription bundled too. If you don’t want to commit, you can opt for the option to go contract-free and pay £29 per month. That’s a little more expensive but does allow you to leave the service at any time – just as you can with a Netflix, Disney+ or NOW (formerly NOW TV) subscription.

Of course, the more things you want to watch on Sky Stream, the more expensive things become.

For example, add Sky Sports and you’ll face an extra £20 on your bill or include Sky Cinema and things will go up by £9. And then, there’s 4K Ultra HD and Dolby Atmos support, which is £6 and advert skipping for an extra £5 per month. If you include everything Sky offers the total bill is over £95 per month. Ouch!

And on top of all of the above, you’ll need a speedy full-fibre broadband connection to watch everything in your pricey order.

Sky Stream finally brings the same slick, modern, satellite dish-free experience that Sky Glass owners have been enjoying for the last year without the need to switch to a brand-new telly. Simply plug-in the box to any television and stream live channels, exclusive TV shows form HBO Max, Sky Originals and Peacock, sports fixtures, and more.

Yes, this palm-sized box packs some almighty features into its mini design.

The redesigned user experience has more in common with the likes of Apple TV, Fire TV and Chromecast set-top boxes than Sky+ HD. Anyone who has used any of these popular streaming gadgets will feel instantly at home with Sky Stream, including the Netflix-like cancel-anytime rolling contract.

For our money, Sky Stream offers the most seamless way to move between live television channels and streamers like Netflix and Prime Video.

If you miss the start of a show, you can instantly rewind back to the start – even if your Sky Stream wasn’t on when the programme began, thanks to Sky leveraging the power of catch-up services like BBC iPlayer, ITV X, All4, UKTV Play and others behind-the-scenes. Power cuts and signal problems are no longer an issue – so you’ll never have to deal with a poor quality recording, something that Sky Q owners can still be plagued by on particularly stormy nights.

However, there are some disadvantages to this approach too. The lack of a built-in hard drive means shows that don’t play nicely with catch-up services, like Match of the Day, will vanish prematurely from your Playlist menu if you’re not quick enough. And shows with previous seasons available on Netflix can be a little overwhelming as Sky aggregates everything into your Playlists – so adding a single upcoming episode of Gogglebox to your Playlist will trigger an influx of hundreds of episodes from on-demand services.

Despite some quirks, Sky Stream comfortably stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the award-winning Sky Q box.

And it surpasses that satellite box in a number of key ways too. First up, the redesigned remote feels premium and arrives with backlit keys to make volume changes during movie nights much simpler – something you won’t find on the ageing Sky Q channel changer. Sky Stream can be installed without any help from engineers in minutes too – a huge bonus. There’s also no need for a satellite dish outside of your house (or holes in the wall to run cables to and from said dish either).

And lastly, there’s the price. At £26 per month, this feels like a total bargain, especially as that includes a Netflix Basic subscription and High Definition (HD) quality streaming as standard.

Yes, your quickly bill rises if you start adding extras, but if you go for that entry-level telly package, this really is an affordable and easy way to get the best exclusive shows, sports and films from Sky TV. If we had a choice we’d possibly still pick Sky Q for its built-in hard drive, which still has an ever-so-slight edge over cloud recordings.

Undoubtedly, Sky Stream is the future and will spell the end of the satellite dish.