- Lawrence Ng
Apple TV 4K 2022 Speeds Up And Improves Picture Quality Of Your TV
Updated: Dec 19, 2023
We paired a TV that costs under S$1,500 with the Apple TV 4K 2022, and it now looks and feels like a TV that cost over S$3,000.
We were blown away by the quality of Apple's content on the Samsung QN900B 8K TV we reviewed not too long ago. Watching Dolby Vision-optimised shows like See made it clear how much more detail is visible even in low-light situations. It's just easy on the eyes because you won't have to strain to make out what's going on in the background.
Season 2 of See featured much darker and cooler scenes, which worked well with the story's progression as it gets darker. As content creators ourselves, we understand the difficulties that the excellent crew faced in bringing these sequences to life. It's so challenging because the lighting must be just enough to let the main characters stand out while also allowing the background to be visible, but not too bright to draw attention away from the main subjects. It is a work of visual art masterpiece, and we recommend you watch it.
If you have watched See on a high-end TV, we are pretty sure you would have appreciated the shades of grey presented in those darker scenes. And now you can experience this on more affordable TVs by just pairing them with an Apple TV 4K.
The new 2022 version looks nearly identical to the 2021 version, which boasts 4K HDR video up to 60fps with support for Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and HDMI 2.1, but the new version is somewhat smaller and lighter, supports HDR+ and is also faster thanks to the adoption of the A15 Bionic chip, the same processor unit found in the iPhone 13. It is the fastest processing unit available in any digital media player, however, TvOS does not allow users to make adjustments to its visual performance such as noise reduction, motion smoothing and so on. With that kind of power, we're confident it'll outperform even the most expensive digital media player on the market right now. As for casual gaming, it is more than capable to handle any of the games you can find on Apple Arcade, but we don't think many will feel the difference in performance compared to the previous model.
The new Apple TV 4K controller now includes a dedicated Siri button, which is useful if you frequently use Siri. Oh, and did we mention it's now less expensive? The basic 64GB version cost S$129 while the 128GB version with an internet port costs just a little more at S$149.
Why would I need a separate Apple TV 4K device if I already have the Apple TV app on my Android Smart TV? We had the same question, so we decided to compare the quality of the Apple TV Android app with the Apple TV 4K hardware. We noticed that streaming with the Apple TV 4K device results in better picture quality, as seen below.
Apple TV 4K 2023 (left) vs Apple TV Android app (right) - Loss in picture details in Android app
We can't tell if this is because the Android app lacks Dolby Vision or because Apple sends a higher-quality feed to the Apple TV 4K. Nonetheless, you will notice a difference. We also tested the Google TV Chromecast, which has a little lower stream quality than the Apple TV 4K 2022.
Apple TV 4K 2023 (left) vs Google TV Chromecast Apple TV app (right) - Loss in details but still slightly better than Smart TV Android app.
Similar to our earlier suggestion in our review of the Apple TV 4K 2021 model, we believe it is a must-get if you are already a user of the Apple ecosystem because it just provides a whole new experience with what you are already familiar with. However, if you already own the prior model, the upgrade is negligible.