Sky Glass review: the ideal mix of TV, sound and style?

If you’re looking to upgrade your TV this season, Sky Glass is a fun and convenient option worth throwing into the mix of the best TVs for 2022.

Sky Glass is the first streaming TV platform to combine hardware, software, and content in one device, and its stunning screen comes finished in five head-turning colours. Unlike Sky Q, Sky Glass doesn’t require a satellite dish or Sky Q box, which keeps the look minimal and the setup straightforward. Its intuitive screen menu works to pull together all your favourite content together from Sky TV, live, and on-demand streaming apps for movies, fitness, music, and more. This means a host of content is easy to access via remote or by using your voice by saying 'Hello Sky'.

Since its launch, Sky Glass has had a criticism, however. One of the drawbacks is that you’ll need a strong broadband connection to get the best picture quality and performance. The minimum broadband speed requirement for Sky Glass is 10 Mbps, but they recommend a fibre connection to protect your picture quality. To watch in UHD the minimum broadband speed is 25Mbps. You'll also need to pay for a Sky TV subscription on top of the cost of the TV, plus all the extra third-party app subscription costs. You can expect to pay from £23 a month for Sky TV and Netflix (usually £26 per month). That said, Sky Glass does have clever features and an overall package that makes it an enticing buy for anyone who loves to get their TV content from a wide range of apps.

‘One year ago, we launched Sky Glass and have constantly been updating Sky’s Entertainment OS with new innovative features for our customers, with over 200 since launch,’ says Kathy Morel, Group Director of Product Management at Sky. ‘With Sky Glass, we have combined hardware, software, and content for the smartest TV experience yet - with cutting-edge design and cinematic 360° Dolby Atmos sound.’

Keen to know more? We trialled Sky Glass at home over the course of a few months to see just how enjoyable it is to control and watch.

(Image credit: Hey Sky, Show me comedy movies | Photo: Emily Peck)

How much does Sky Glass cost? 

In terms of pricing, Sky isn't as expensive are you may first think, but you need to be aware of all the add-ons. You'll need to subscribe to Sky TV to get Sky Glass, plus either pay for the screen outright or spread the cost with monthly payments – much like you would a mobile phone.

You can buy Sky Glass outright (from £649 for a 43 inch model) or pay monthly (from £13 per month with a £10 upfront fee on a 48-month contract).

In addition to your TV, you'll also need a Sky subscription. Sky Glass requires its Ultimate TV offering, which pairs Sky Entertainment with Netflix Basic for £23/month (usually £26 per month).

If you add on a Sky Stream Puck for £12 a month (first one is free), you can stream Sky in another room. At peak trading times such as Black Friday, you can also make use of Sky Glass bundles with extras such as broadband and apps included in the purchase price. 

It's worth noting that Ad Skipping is no longer free on Sky Glass, however. You will need to factor in the £5 a month cost if you want to avoid having to endure ad breaks while watching Sky TV or you can cancel at anytime.

Sky Glass: Key info

• Ultra HD and Quantum Dot technology produces over 1 billion colours
• Powerful subwoofer and built-in speakers with 360° Dolby Atmos sound 
• Choose from five colors and three sizes
• It relies on broadband with an 10mbps minimum 
• With voice control, you can simply say 'Hello Sky' to find content 
• World's first TV to be certified CarbonNeutral 

(Image credit: Sky Glass remote )

Sky Glass: Set-up

We found the setup of Sky Glass surprisingly straightforward. The delivery team brought the TV to a room of our choice, unpacked it and placed it on a flat sideboard. All we needed to do was plug it in and connect to WiFi and follow the start-up instructions. They also took away the packaging. 

To extend Sky's Entertainment OS (what Sky calls the Sky Glass user interface) onto any TV in another room in your home, you can add a Sky Stream Puck. You can add up to five Sky Stream devices per household. All you need to do is plug it into a power source, connect it to our existing TV via an HDMI port, enter the broadband password and follow the steps, which we found easy to do.

Sky Glass: Design

Sky Glass has been designed to be part of the furniture as opposed to just another piece of technology. Its streamlined Ultra HD and Quantum Dot technology screen produce over 1 billion colours, and this instantly makes for enjoyable viewing. It also comes in three sizes - 43”, 55” and 65” - in a choice of five colours - Dusty pink, Racing green, Ocean blue, Anthracite black, Jade and Ceramic white. 

We chose the 65” Dusky pink Sky Glass to match the pop of vibrant pink in our sofa scatter cushions and had the TV mounted onto the wall by professionals using a SANUS Black Full Motion Mount for 37"- 80" screens. For any guest visiting, comments such as ‘Wow, you have a huge pink TV’ have since become the norm.

One of the pros of Sky Glass is the fact that you won’t need to team it with a separate audio system or soundbar to enjoy cinematic sound. It includes six powerful, integrated speakers in optimal positions around the frame to give you edge-to-edge Dolby Atmos sound. Its built-in subwoofer gives you a rich, deep bass that is perfect for enhancing the drama when watching action movies. We were impressed with its big sound - particularly when comparing it to your standard flat-screen TV with built-in speakers. 

(Image credit: Sky Glass Fitness category | Photo: Emily Peck)

Sky Glass: Performance

Sky Glass has far-field voice and Glance Motion Technology, so you can turn the TV on by walking past or saying ‘Hello Sky’. While this can take some getting used to, we found it rather handy when we were trying to multi-task and shut the curtains, for example. With a considerably poor 24mbps broadband speed in our home in Dorset, we didn’t have great hopes for Sky Glass' performance at first. But overall, we were very impressed at how well it performed. There were times when we were watching a show, and it began to buffer, but this was often momentary or could be fixed by turning our temperamental WiFi hub on and off again.

The Sky Glass interface is designed so you can easily pull up content in categories. This means you can access live and on-demand Sky TV, Freeview and content from popular streaming apps such as Netflix, Disney+, Peloton and BBC Sounds within one easy-to-scroll menu. This means that no matter how many apps you subscribe to, all your favourite content will be easy to view and select on the screen – either using the remote or with voice control. 

We enjoyed selecting the Fitness category, which gave us fitness content from a range of sources, such as YouTube and Peloton, in one place. The Audio and Music category also makes it easy to access radio stations as well as the latest music documentaries and any music-related linear TV shows in one place. 

The Playlist + button

Sky Glass works differently to Sky Q in that while it doesn't allow you to 'record' content onto a box, you can add whatever you’re watching to your Playlist using the + button on your remote. This means you can watch that show at a later date. Playlist will also automatically add new episodes of your favourite shows into one place so you can easily find and watch them. Restart is also a useful feature, and it gives you the option to watch any show from the start, even if you’ve missed the first half. There's also an Sky update coming soon that gives you 'personalised lists' so you and your household can add content to your own dedicated Playlists.     

Updates

Since it launched back in October 2021, Sky has been rolling out updates to improve its user experience. It has now added more channels to Sky Glass that you can find on Sky Q – such as TalkTV and GB News, for example. Another useful update means that you no longer need to keep track of multiple passwords for BBC Apps. So if you log into BBC Sounds or BBC iPlayer, you’ll be automatically logged into the other. Small wins, but when you’re desperate to log into your favourite show at the end of the day, every little counts.

Remote control

The TV also comes with a remote to match its frame color, with a black dial in the centre for quick functionality to pause, select, forward and rewind. Three buttons at the top of the remote are designed to give you shortcuts to features such as subtitles, the search button and quiet mode for night-time viewing. While the remote is generally easy to use, we did sometimes find the dial tricky to control when we wanted to forward and rewind content.

Voice control

Using both the remote and voice control, you can access content from all your apps, live and on-demand TV. Voice control makes it particularly easy to search by category. So instead of having to go in and out of every single app you subscribe to, you can search by name of actor, genre or movie or, more specifically, a specific program. For example, you can say, ‘Hello Sky, show me comedy movies’. 

When we tried this, it took Sky a minute or two to load content, but we were given a wide range of options taken from Sky Cinema, Apple TV+, Disney+ and more. We like the way that this opens you up to new content you wouldn’t necessarily have chosen yourself.

(Image credit: Sky Glass | Please wait... | Photo: Emily Peck)

(Image credit: Sky Glass TV Guide | Photo by Emily Peck)

Sky Glass: Our verdict

In terms of design, it’s easy to see why Sky Glass is one of the most talked about TVs on the market. On the plus side, Sky Glass gives you access to a host of TV shows, apps and web content, scouring through all your services and apps to highlight content from a certain category, so you don't have to - be it audio and music, fitness, kids, movies, sport or news. Plus, it has excellent sound quality and the convenience of voice control. It isn't, however, as reliable as Sky Q in terms of picture quality and ability to record and save content. 

The good news is that Sky will soon be releasing a major software update for its Sky Glass TV to dramatically improve picture quality across live, on demand and all apps. Sky will be updating local dimming to provide higher contrast and brightness and have recently added Vivid Mode in the Options menu to create a punchier picture with higher levels of contrast and colour saturation to give an extra pop to the colors. 

While the frame looks great in situ, you do need a reliable broadband connection to get the best picture quality. But aside from the odd bit of buffering, we appreciated the big sound and colorful picture produced by Sky Glass – particularly when watching movies and sports - even on our particularly poor broadband. 

You’ll need a minimum speed of 10mbps to enjoy Sky Glass in HD and 25mbps for 4K. Meanwhile, you also need 15mbps if you want to make use of a multi-room and stream Sky to another room using the separate Sky Stream device.

While it took us a little while to navigate the home screen and work out the benefits of each section, we soon found ourselves using the voice and remote controls intuitively. We found voice control could be a little hit-and-miss, but our overall experience of using Sky Glass was positive. We really enjoyed the convenience of being able to say 'Hello Sky' and ask the TV to find specific programs rather than having to sift through the apps ourselves. If you do prefer using a remote over voice control, however, you’ll be pleased to hear that Sky has just announced a new ‘Find my remote’ feature coming this Christmas. This means there will be no need to turn your carefully styled décor on its head every time you misplace the remote. And for this reason alone, we think Sky Glass is one for the wish list.