We've compiled a 'Top 10' list of the best iOS apps to hit the App Store in the month of July 2016. The apps mentioned in this video include Pokemon Go, Canva, Tinycards, Highly, RealTalk, Cubicle, Pikazo, Postepic, Hyper and Laser Dreams. Which app is your favorite?
When it comes to new flagships in the second half of 2016, we already know that we’ve got the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 and Apple iPhone 7 to look forward to. Now we know that the LG V20 is coming, too.
Just the other day, BlackBerry unveiled their second Android device, the DTEK50. While the name isn’t great, or even memorable, the device tackles a couple of important areas for Android users: affordability and security. The “problem”? The DTEK50 is identical to Alcatel’s Idol 4.
Google has been releasing Android 7.0 developer previews all summer to help devs get their apps ready for Nougat’s public release, but the only public launch info that Google has given for the update itself is that it’ll be coming this summer. Now we may have a more narrow release window.
BT is the last of the big internet service providers in the UK, after Virgin Media, Sky and TalkTalk, to introduce an upgrade to its router, more than two years after the last one, the Home Hub 5, came to market.
The Smart Hub (notice the subtle name change, although effectively this is the Home Hub 6) claims to have the most powerful Wi-Fi signal in the UK thanks to its seven antennas, more than its main rivals.
It also packs some clever technology that reduces interference, improving reliability by reducing the number of dropouts. Another nifty piece of tech, BT Smart Scan, seamlessly swaps channels in the background to dodge any congestion.
There are plenty of little details that BT engineers and designers seem to have worked on with the Smart Hub, starting from the box. It is slim enough to slip through most letterboxes according to BT, which is done to encourage self-installation and therefore reduce the cost of visits for BT.
Furthermore, the instructions are printed on the inside of the box and BT encourages its existing users to recycle their old routers by shipping them back in said packaging.
It's also worth noting that the lights on the router can be switched off or dimmed, and the lights and icons present on the Home Hub 5 have been removed to avoid confusion.
You will still need to check the user guide to interpret the hub lights though (no lights, green light, flashing orange, flashing purple, steady orange, red and blue).
BT gives you three copies of your Hub details (SSID, admin password for hub manager and wireless password or key). Two of those are on the router itself, and one is available on a sticker, handy if your router is located far from your home office for example.
The hub is much taller than the one it replaces, but shares a lot in common with its predecessor. At the back, there are four Ethernet ports (all Gigabit capable), a USB port, a power in socket, a power on/off button, an RJ11 broadband socket and a factory reset button. On one side of the router is a WPS Wi-Fi setup button.
We don't know who built the BT Smart Hub but we suspect it is either Arcadyan or Sagemcom, the outsourced manufacturers for the Home Hub 5, the current BT router which is still being sold for £129.
We did manage to open up the device but failed to recognise or indeed log any meaningful indicators except for the character string RTV1906VW-D18. All of the major components were hidden under a metal cap which prevented us from identifying them.
That was not the only surprise that BT had in store for us. There seems to be two versions of this router as well, aimed at two categories of customers according to the moderator of BT's customer forum.
The first one – the one we got for review – has four GbE ports and is meant for FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) and ADSL customers. The second one is for FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) customers, and in this variant one of the GbE ports has been configured to work as a WAN port for the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) connection.
Unlike some of its competitors, the Smart Hub offers only one SSID by default which combines both 2.4GHz and 5GHz signals.
As for the configuration manager, it is far more intuitive than you'd expect with clearly identified, logically grouped sections: My Devices, Wireless, Status, Help, Hub Light Control, Broadband Test, Smart Setup, Restart and Advanced Settings.
The latter is where all the fun is, allowing the more expert user to tinker with port forwarding or UPnP.
Sadly, we couldn't fully test the Smart Hub; as a Virgin Media customer, we had the wrong type of router sent to us (the one without a WAN port) – not that this was anyone's fault.
The Smart Hub is available for new BT customers for free on BT Infinity Broadband. Those on standard BT broadband can upgrade for a fee (to get the router free, as it were) or they can buy a BT Smart Hub for £50, an £80 saving.
Non-BT customers can make their way to eBay where they will find quite a few Smart Hubs already on sale despite being launched just a few weeks ago. Just be aware that you will need the WAN-enabled version to make the most out of it.
Note: We've asked BT to send us the other version of the Smart Hub router and will update this review as soon as possible.
I have always been the type of person to do anything in my power to do something myself before asking for help. If I make something, I usually do it myself. If I have an ailment, I usually either wait it out or try stuff I already have at home before heading to the doctor. If I have an issue with an electronic device, I will troubleshoot my issues via Google before asking for outside assistance.
But the one exception, at least when it concerns hardware, is my smartphone.
Earlier this week, a couple of new smartphones launched in Beijing. Called the Gionee M6 and M6 Plus, these phones may look pretty ordinary but if there's anything to know, it's the fact that you should not judge the book by its cover.
Gionee M6
Earlier today, AT&T announced the latest Android tablet to join their roster of devices: the new Trek 2 HD. The Trek 2 HD is the successor of the Trek HD, which was released back in 2015. And just like its predecessor, the Trek 2 HD is mid-specced budget tablet with features that make up for its price.
Reports of a security vulnerability with SwiftKey surfaced on the internet recently. SwiftKey users reported that they started seeing email addresses and phone numbers of strangers on their mobile devices. While the Microsoft-owned company has declined there was a problem with its security, they have went ahead and shut down the cloud synchronization feature of the app.
The smartphone industry moves quickly, even as it slows down just enough to warrant some much-needed attention and limelight for some companies out there. The major brands, like HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and LG all warrant a few days where they can not only launch their new device, but also let the reviews start to wade in as well. But as soon as the moment’s over, it’s back to looking forward, at what’s coming next.
In most cases, that even means looking forward to what’s next from the company that just announced something new.
We've compiled a 'Top 10' list of our favorite Android apps to hit the Google Play Store in July 2016. The apps highlighted in this video include Pokemon Go, ASAP Launcher, Lexa, Walli, PS Vue Mobile, Shapist, Swiftmoji Keyboard, Notification Manager, Prisma, and Rolling Sky. Which app is your favorite?
Soundbars are all the rage these days and it's easy to see why – they take up very little space, sound way better than your TV's speakers and are dead-simple to set up. And while some feel that soundbars might not sound as good as a true surround sound system or even a good stereo setup, I've found that they do a good enough job that most people won't mind skimping on some sound quality for an easier setup and smaller price tag.
That said, the LG SH7B soundbar system sounds great for the price, offering a ton more features than other soundbars. It's also as easy as it comes to get set up as it doesn't require routing wires or the need for an preamp and amp of a traditional surround sound system.
Said simply, the LG SH7B offers an attractive package for movie and music enthusiasts who don't want to break the bank. The soundbar and subwoofer package retails for $500 (about £380, AU$666) but, give it some time, and you'll be able to find it for even lower on the web.
The 360-watt LG SH7B comes with a soundbar and subwoofer in the box. The soundbar measures a slim 41.73 x 2.09 x 3.35 inches (L x W x H) and the sub is a compact 6.73 x 12.6 x 9.92 inches (L x W x H).
The subwoofer is wireless, so all you need to do is plug in its power cable and it'll sync automatically with the soundbar. There's a single status light located on the subwoofer that tells you if it's connected, which comes in handy if you ever need to troubleshoot it.
The LG SH7B offers a ton of flexibility for mounting. Wall mount adapters are included in the package and the soundbar is light enough that it'll fit just about anywhere.
Alternatively, if breaking out a drill wasn't on your agenda for today, you can simply place the soundbar flat on your home entertainment center without needing to drill. Plus, since the sub is wireless, you can place it anywhere within the room – but I suggest putting it in a corner to maximize bass impact.
Behind the soundbar you'll find connections for HDMI in and out, optical, auxiliary and ethernet. What you don't see physically are connection options for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi that make the LG SH7B quite a versatile speaker setup for all your music or movie streaming needs.
To get started, you'll need to download LG's MusicFlow Player app, as it allows you to seamless transition from listening to music on your phone to all of your LG speakers at home. LG's MusicFlow line of speakers all work in tandem with the SH7B to create a multi-room listening experience that in some ways rivals Sonos systems. (However, for the record, I've previously reviewed the LG MusicFlow P7 portable speaker, which I found to be less than impressive.)
While the SH7B's setup was mostly a breeze, I found LG's Music Flow Player app for Android a buggy mess. I tried multiple times to connect the SH7B to my wireless network but it always failed. I switched to my iPad and downloaded the iPhone version of the app and it connected the first time. So much for being platform agnostic.
With the SH7B hooked up to your home network, you can use Google Cast to stream your music over Wi-Fi, offering an audible performance bump over the Bluetooth connection.
For its light weight and reasonable price tag, the SH7B surprised me with an above average sound. It still sounds like a soundbar – with its narrow imaging and simulated surround sound – but this is the tradeoff you make for going with a simplified audio solution.
Movies, overall, sound good, with powerful bass impact and distortion-free playback, even at higher volumes. Out of the box, the bass is a little overbearing, but that can be adjusted with the included remote. For the most part, mids and highs sound good with dialogue sounding clear.
Watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the sound of blasters and lightsaber wooshes filled my apartment. Lasers hit home with impactful blasts of sound, with the subwoofer generating an impressive amount of bass for its size. However, there was very little surround sound effect, which pulled me out of the experience and made everything sound a bit two dimensional.
The SH7B's limited imaging means you won't get true surround sound, but it's not a problem exclusive to LG's latest 'bar – most other soundbars under $1,000 typically face that problem as well. To its credit, though, its sound is concentrated around the center channel but there's still good stereo separation to help create a more immersive listening experience.
If you want a comparison to another manufacturer, the Samsung HW-J650 goes for around the same price of the LG, but features an annoying echo effect making the LG a better buy.
Music sounds mediocre on the SH7B with the speakers missing top-end resolution and offering sometimes muddy bass. However, turning down the subwoofer level helped to tame the bass and balance the sound. If you're more of a casual music listener, the SH7B is more than adequate but you might be better off with a stereo bookshelf speaker, which will sound better for music and cost a little less.
One thing I really enjoyed about the LG SH7B is its ability to be used without turning on the TV. I streamed music via Google Play Music and Soundcloud to the soundbar. I love that Google Cast is built in, making it easy to start streaming music from any Android or iOS device.
Although the SH7B doesn't offer the finest audio quality, LG managed to pack its entry-level soundbar full of useful features that still manages to sound good. Having Google Cast built in makes the SH7B a versatile home theater product for all of your music or movie needs.
Plus, it's easy to set up and having a wireless subwoofer makes setup easy. You can also add rear Musicflow speakers to upgrade the SH7B into a true surround sound setup.
Out of the box, the SH7B has overwhelming bass. It's easy enough to turn down via its remote control, but bass sounds a bit uncontrolled for some movies. While setup is painless for the most part, LG's MusicFlow Android app is extremely buggy compared to the one it released on iOS. The SH7B still sounds like a soundbar with its limited three-dimensional imaging so those looking for true surround sound should look elsewhere.
It's hard to fault the LG SH7B too much – it does a lot with a minuscule physical footprint and a reasonable price tag to match. I really enjoyed my time using it for playing back music and watching movies, even if the lack of true surround sound made the films less immersive than I was used to.
That said, it's a breeze to set up since its subwoofer is wireless but Android users may be frustrated by LG's buggy app. Sound quality is great for the price, but in the end loses out to traditional bookshelf speakers in terms of clarity on the high-end. If you want a soundbar that can take on every type of media you can throw at it, though, the LG SH7B is a great option.
As the BYOD (aka "bring your own device") movement gains more traction than ever, people are expecting more portable, multi-purpose and even stylish devices. Lenovo, the de facto leader in the business hardware world with IBM's ThinkPad brand in hand, has been paying close attention.
It's latest attempt to appease the iPad-hungry audience is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Tablet, arguably its most adaptable computing device yet. Complete with hot-swappable modules, a built-in fingerprint sensor for Windows Hello and ThinkPad's signature slick but understated design, is this the work-ready tablet to rule them all? It's a bit more complicated than that.
Lenovo clearly crafted the ThinkPad X1 Tablet with versatility in mind, drawing inspiration from unique ideas of its own (e.g. a projector module similar to that of the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro) while cribbing – and improving upon – at least one from the market-leading Surface Pro 4 (e.g. the magnetized keyboard cover for multiple typing angles).
Like so many of its products, Lenovo's new modular business hybrid comes coated in a black, soft touch paint that looks slick and understated, a hallmark of the brand that is never lost on Lenovo. If you're trying to give off a professional but tech-savvy vibe, this tablet's profile will serve you well.
However, we have one major pain point with the ThinkPad X1 Tablet design: the kickstand. Rather than opening out and upward, like the Surface Pro 4, this tablet's hinge opens out and downward, so that the base of the kickstand rests on your lap, not the edge of it like with Microsoft's solution.
Because this arrangement doesn't offer much resistance beyond its sturdy hinge, it's far easier for this tablet to slide off of your lap than it is for Microsoft's. That's because the latter uses the friction created by the lip of its kickstand to keep it steady.
While a bit of a pain, and definitely a matter that should be accounted for in considering whether to pick one of these up, the reasoning for the design makes sense. The various connections and controllers for the tablet's available modules likely need that space that would otherwise be thinned out for a hinge that flips upward. But, was that a worthy trade off?
Well, that's tough to say with 100% certainty, as we've yet to use Lenovo's Presenter module outside of a press briefing. But, the fact that the Productivity Module boosts battery life by nearly two hours in our tests speaks pretty well as to whether it's worth a bit less stability on your lap.
And that's before you even consider the additional ports it offers: one more USB 3.0, HDMI and Lenovo's OneLink port. Not a bad trade-off at all. That said, it's the $150 (about £116, AU$197) price tag that will hurt more than a bit of a slippery grip on your legs.
The Presenter Module, while we haven't been able to test it out in any detail since CES, throws an 854 x 480-pixel image up to 60 inches wide from 200cm (about 6.5 feet) away. The module operates fanlessly and adds up to 2 hours of juice to the tablet's battery. Finally, its HDMI port can accept both incoming and outgoing connections.
However, at $300 (about £226, AU$394), the Presenter Module is rather prohibitively priced. Granted, IT fleets might only carry a few of these for employees to share, but for the individual at a startup that might be looking at this versus a legit, full HD projector for about the same price, it becomes harder to justify.
Regardless, with modularity sweeping the tech scene right now, we hope that Lenovo continues exploring and – more importantly – refining these ideas, because something tells me this trend isn't going to fade anytime soon.
The configuration you see above goes for around $1,600 (about £1,199, AU$2,096), with the starting setup poised to run you about $1,100 (around £830, AU$1,440) – both of which come with the ThinkPad Keyboard cover. The entry-level spec halves both the available memory and storage space while bringing the dual-core processor down 100MHz in frequency.
Without the keyboard cover, which we'd say is all but essential, the ThinkPad Tablet X1 starts at $899 (about £679, AU$1,199)?. That's a bit pricier altogether than Microsoft's latest Surface Pro 4 device, but it's hardly an apples-to-apples comparison.
Speaking of the keyboard, expect to find nothing less than Lenovo's stalwart typing pedigree on display. This is all but a traditional Lenovo AccuType keyboard, with a firm keyboard deck and the satisfying kickback you've come to love plus the traditional, accurate and smooth TrackPoint inputs.
Of course, the whole set of keys is brightly and uniformly backlit. But, the stars of the show are the two magnets through which the keyboard attaches to the tablet or any module that's attached to its base.
Taking the concept one step further than the Surface Pro 4, these offer not one, but two additional angles from which to type. Then again, we find ourselves using the "default" that's at about a 35-degree angle than the new one that's about 50 degrees – it's simply too elevated.
At any rate, this is one of the most comfortable keyboard covers we've ever typed with, so kudos to Lenovo on that.
Lenovo's latest business-bent tablet has done Intel's Core m line of chips a great service with some positive PR. Despite what assumptions you may have about the fabricator's line of mobile-focused silicon, the ThinkPad X1 Tablet nearly surpassed the Surface Pro 4 model we tested late last year housing an albeit dated Core i series CPU.
The Lenovo system also completely smoked the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S we reviewed earlier this year, though Samsung's was rocking a Core m3 chip while the X1 Tablet here contains an m7 model of the same generation.
We get it, these numbers alone don't say much about what this tablet is capable of, so we'll put that into perspective. With one of the beefiest Intel Core m chips to date, the Tablet X1 can all but handle the same workloads the Surface Pro 4 can, coming within three – yes, it was that close – points of its PCMark 8 score.
With graphics test scores like these, I wouldn't expect to get much more out of the Tablet X1 than silky smooth HD video playback and the most casual of games during those lunch breaks. As far as productivity goes, that 8GB of RAM will let you keep way more than 10 browser tabs open without having to reload their contents. And, that chip will do just fine throughout various intense spreadsheet functions, like VLOOKUP.
Oddly enough – considering this is Core m we're talking about here – what you have to look out for is battery life.
Lenovo projects its Tablet X1 to last for up to 10 hours of continuous use. However, in our testing, we saw just over three hours from the PCMark 8 Battery Test at 50% brightness. That said, slapping on the device's battery-packing Productivity Module increased its lasting power in the test, which simulates general use from word processing to video chatting, to 4 hours and 37 minutes.
In our local video playback test (also at 50% brightness), the tablet lasted for 5 hours and 7 minutes without the module and 6 hours and 45 minutes with it attached. So, if you want something close to all-day battery life from this device, the Productivity Module is all but required. However, the module costs, again, a cool $150 (about £115, AU$200).
The module does add a bunch of valuable ports in addition to extra battery life. But, when the Surface Pro 4 can reliably last for 5-plus hours, and Samsung's TabPro S even longer at 6-plus hours – both without the need for a $150 attachment – it's enough to make you second guess.
Perhaps part of the blame for the X1 Tablet's relatively short battery life is its awfully sharp screen. Taking a cue from Microsoft's Surface, the 3:2 display puts out 2,160 x 1,440 pixels, which is quite a lot for word processing, spreadsheet work and presenting to potential clients or what have you.
Don't get us wrong, the IPS panel, with its screen-sharably wide viewing angles, is downright gorgeous. Colors pop but look realistic, and it gets plenty bright – not to mention that the bezels are pretty thin considering the fingerprint sensor on the right bezel. But, is it perhaps a bit overkill for who you might figure the target audience is? In our opinion, the general professional would do just fine with a standard FHD screen if it meant even a small amount of extra longevity.
So, is this the new go-to tablet for professionals, or does that accolade still belong to the Surface Pro 4 or iPad Pro? Again, it's a bit more complicated than that.
Versatility is the name of this tablet's game, and the ThinkPad X1 Tablet has no rival here. Theoretically, the X1 Tablet can last as long as how many charged-up Productivity Modules you have on hand, which power users will appreciate. Plus, the keyboard cover, being adorned with Lenovo's AccuType keys, is arguably the best tablet keyboard on the market.
That said, achieving the X1 Tablet's superior versatility gets expensive pretty quickly, especially when bought in individual units. Also, spending that extra cash doesn't get you as much battery life over the competition as we feel it should. Finally, the hinge design isn't all that conducive to lap typing, which train and/or bus commuters will find bothersome.
For the ThinkPad diehards out there, you've just met the best business-bent tablet that money can buy. However, no product exists in a vacuum.
For as impressive as the ThinkPad X1 Tablet is, both Apple and Microsoft still rule the roost when it comes to ergonomics and cost-effectiveness. Unless you're running several presentations a day on the go or have incredible love and loyalty for AccuType keyboards, there isn't a terribly compelling reason to buy this tablet over either Microsoft or Apple's.
Sky's new Now TV Smart Box is in many ways very similar to its existing Now TV Box. It still offers a temptingly cheap way of getting Sky's suite of Now TV streaming services onto your TV, it still offers access to a wide range of other on-demand services, and Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are still annoyingly absent.
The main thing that's new here is the inclusion of a Freeview HD tuner for watching TV, which also allows you to pause and rewind as you watch. This means there's a decent case to be made for Sky's new box being the only thing you need to plug into your TV.
Whether this really is the only box you need, however, is something of a vexed issue, as it depends on a few things – namely how 'smart' your existing TV is, what streaming services you currently use, and how you like to watch live TV.
Before we get deeper into those considerations, let's look at what you get with the Now TV Smart Box.
The Now TV Smart Box costs £50, or it's free as part of Sky's new triple-play Now TV Combo offering, which enables you to pay for TV, phone and internet services on a monthly basis, without having to sign up to a contract. Prices for that start at £9.99 a month (not including line rental).
If you don't take advantage of Now TV Combo, you can access Sky's TV services via the traditional Now TV route of purchasing monthly passes for Entertainment, Sky Cinema, Kids and Sports programming (sports fans can also purchase weekly or 24-hour passes), and via the Sky Store app.
The Smart Box itself is a 1080p-resolution Roku-manufactured device, and comes supplied with power and HDMI cables, and a remote control. Note, though, that you don't get an aerial cable, so you'll have to buy one separately if you don't have one lying around.
The device is considerably larger than the Roku 3-style Now TV box, and is more similar to the Roku 4 in size and appearance.
On the rear of the device you'll find the HDMI and aerial ports, as well as an Ethernet port should you wish to use a wired internet connection (Wi-Fi up to 802.11n is supported). There's also a microSD card slot under the HDMI port, but you'll need a keen eye to spot it.
The microSD slot, along with a USB port on the right of the device, can be used to play back video files (in MP4 or MKV format), music files (in AAC, MP3 or WMA format), or to view JPEG, PNG or GIF images.
There are no separate audio-out options – your only option is to have the audio channeled via the HDMI connection.
The box comes with 12 apps as standard, including Now TV and Sky Store (naturally), BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, Demand 5, YouTube and Vevo, and there are numerous others available through the built-in app store, including Spotify, IGN and Facebook.
Disappointingly, however, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video continue to be absent from Sky's Now TV box, so if you subscribe to either of those services you'll need to have another device hooked up in order to access them.
Setting up the device is relatively painless. Simply plug in the power, HDMI and aerial cables (alongside the optional Ethernet cable), and turn on the device.
You'll be walked through a couple of initial steps, including entering your Wi-Fi username and password, and selecting your resolution. The device will then scan for Freeview channels, and finally you'll find yourself at the Smart Box's home screen.
Once you've set up your Smart Box the home screen is what you'll see when you first turn it on, and you can go there at any time by pressing the home button on the remote.
The top left tile of the home screen shows a live feed of the last channel watched, while the others will show a curated selection of on-demand titles from Now TV and other services.
When I checked out the home screen the selection was dominated by picks from Now TV, although there were a couple of options from the BBC and Channel 5 in there as well; this may change over time, depending on what's available.
The next menu down the list is a 'Best of Catch Up' selection, which is dedicated to the five main on-demand services. Each app gets its own row, featuring a link to the app itself at the far left, and 10 top picks from that service.
This is helpful if you're just browsing for something to watch, but if you want to search for a particular programme you'll have to boot into the specific app; there's no universal search feature along the lines of what you get with the Roku 4.
The next item in the list is the TV Guide. There are three tabs here: one for the device's 60 free-to-air Freeview channels, one for the Now TV streaming channels, and one for radio stations.
From here you can select any of the Freeview TV channels or radio stations, and they'll play more or less instantly.
Annoyingly, though, selecting any of the Now TV channels doesn't take you directly to that channel; instead it will launch the Now TV app, and from there you need to select the channel again.
This is especially grating if you've scrolled down a fair way to select the channel you want on the first list, as you'll be dumped right back to the top of the new list; it's a small thing, but it makes the experience feel a lot less cohesive, and more like a collection of apps than a selection of platform-agnostic content.
When you're watching Freeview content you can press the up and down keys on the remote to scroll through channels, or press left to view a list of available channels – it's here that you might start to wish the remote (which is the same as the one that was included with the last Now TV Box) had a number pad to enable you to jump quickly to a specific channel.
You can also pause and rewind up to half an hour of live TV, but the absence of recording functionality is unfortunate. Yes, many shows will be available on the various catch-up services, but inevitably many others won't; additionally, having the ability to record shows means you have a permanent copy, with most catch-up content expiring after a set period.
Our final stops on our tour of the menus are the My Apps list, which enables you to select apps directly, and the App Store, which enables you to download more. Each app has its own interface, and some are definitely easier to navigate with the Smart Box's remote than others.
It's in the My Apps list that you'll find the Sky Store, where you're able to purchase movies and TV shows to stream whenever you wish.
It feels odd that the Sky Store doesn't have a menu all to itself, given that it has a dedicated button on the remote, but at least the button makes it easy to get to.
An annoying result of the Sky Store being a separate app within the Smart Box is that you need to sign into your Now TV account a second time before you can make any purchases. Again, this makes the Smart box feel like a collection of separate apps rather than a single unified experience.
This sign-in process is thankfully a one-time thing, but it's annoying all the same.
As for the remote, it's a perfectly passable experience, but it's not the best around.
Amazon Fire TV's Alexa has brought voice search to streaming boxes, Roku has its remote built into an app for phones and tablets, and even your average Freeview box has a numpad to enable you to quickly skip to the required channel.
Compared to those, navigating through channels using the Smart Box's minimalistic remote can feel like a chore, especially when you're skipping from a channel like E4, which is pretty far down the TV guide, to ITV, which is near the top.
It's not a bad remote by any means. It's fast and responsive, and you can certainly do most of what you need to do quite easily; but it's also exactly the same as the remote that came with the streaming-only Now TV box, and I can't help thinking it would benefit from a few more buttons to help users get around the expanded selection of content a little more easily.
Sky's Now TV service might be limited to 720p resolution, but the Smart Box itself is a 1080p machine. This means that it's the streaming services themselves that get to decide between 720p and 1080p.
It would've been nice to see Sky offer up an Ultra HD 4K streaming box like the Roku 4 – although with only Netflix and Amazon Prime currently offering 4K streams, and with both of those services absent from the Smart Box, the increased resolution would, as it stands, be of limited use.
I watched a variety of content, from live TV through Freeview to on-demand viewing and live TV streamed through apps, and the video quality was consistent with my previous experiences of each of the major services.
Obviously various factors will influence the quality of the images you receive, such as your internet speed and television reception, but in my experience the Now TV Smart Box delivers solid image quality, with little in the way of artifacting.
Sound quality is also good. I wasn't able to test the box through its maximum 7.1 surround sound configuration, but a 90W Roth Audio sound bar I had to hand made audio sound crisp and clear.
In my introduction I said that deciding whether the Now TV Smart Box was for you was a complicated question, and hopefully by now you'll have an idea of why.
There's nothing especially bad about the device, but it's usefulness to you will depend on what streaming services you use, how you like to watch live TV, and what your current setup is.
If you currently have a smart TV that offers you access to Now TV, then the Smart Box will add the ability to pause and rewind live TV.
Or, if you don't have a smart TV but do have a streaming box, then the Smart Box's contribution to your setup will be putting Freeview and streaming into one place – but you won't want to throw away your existing streaming box if you use Netflix or Amazon Prime.
The Now TV Smart Box is great at bringing Freeview and streaming services together into a single package. The two elements are combined nicely, and it's easy to jump between them.
Picture quality is good, and support for up to 7.1 surround sound systems is an welcome inclusion.
The absence of Netflix and Amazon Prime is disappointing, and ultimately means that you'll have to have a back-up streaming box available if you want to enjoy these services. And, while many programs will be available on on-demand services, Freeview recording functionality is another unfortunate omission.
Navigating the numerous menus with the included remote can feel clunky, especially when it comes to the Freeview channels. The device's various apps feel very separate, and there's no ability to search for content regardless of platform.
At times the Now TV Smart Box can feel like a jack of all trades and master of none.
On the one hand it offers Freeview, but it doesn't have the ability to record – and dedicated Freeview boxes tend to be easier to navigate thanks to the number pads on their remote controls.
On the other hand it also offers streaming services, but the absence of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video prevents the Smart Box from being a one-stop-shop for all your TV and movie content.
So, if you want a budget box that combines a functional Freeview machine with a handful of catch-up services, the Now TV Smart Box could be exactly what you need.
But if you're big into your streaming or flexible TV viewing respectively, you might be better off going for a dedicated machine for each.
