Quick Review — Sony Android TV: First Impressions

This quick review will mainly focus on my initial impression of Sony’s Android TV implementation and not the TV itself.

Setup

Early setup phase is largely painless once I figured out how to switch on the TV. It seems after you initially plug it in, there is a warmup phase where the TV gives you no external indications that it’s even receiving power. But once past that, the setup was straight forward, particularly if you already live in Google’s world. The TV gives you some options to log in, but the simplest method is to access the web site URL it gives you and enter the pin it displays. Once you’ve done that and a standard TV channel scan, you’re setup and ready to go.

The only pain point I suffered was with Netflix. After installing the Android TV remote app on my tablet, I was able to pull up the keyboard to enter my Netflix username and password. The only problem is it only took what was inputted, it didn’t let me edit the full text field on my tablet. This only became a problem when auto correct would kick in, I’d type ben and it would then autocorrect and enter Ben on the TV’s input. As I wanted it lowercase (probably didn’t actually matter, but could cause problems elsewhere) I’d hit the backspace key for it to replace Ben back with ben, but this didn’t update the TV’s input, in fact it would duplicate what was on the screen so I was presented with Benben. An unusual issue, I haven’t yet been able to confirm if this is specific to Netflix’s implementation or if it is indeed an Android TV problem. Either way, it would be good if Netflix gave you the option to sign in via a pin as Google and Plex have implemented.

Usage

I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to navigate a TV interface that is responsive and quick. While this is my first foray into the realm of smart TV’s, I can tell you the experience is unlike any other TV I’ve had the misfortune to use. Flicking through icons and menus is fast, smooth and refined. But perhaps the most appealing aspect is that Android TV has the ability to keep all your currently watched programs from Netflix and alike populated in a bar running along the top of the home screen. From here, it’s simply a matter of clicking on the show you want to continue watching, removing the requirement to dig into the specific apps such as Netflix to find your fix. Of course if you want to dig into these apps to browse the selection you can, but keeping your most recent series in this quick launch bar makes it all the easier to get straight into what you want to watch.

Letdowns

Overall there haven’t been many letdowns, but I will say the TV Guide could do with some work. The two major issues I have with it is that it can interrupt TV playback when it pulls up the full screen guide and that you can’t tweak the full screen guide to only display favourite channels. You can use the Discover bar which is a quick popup at the bottom of the screen to only show favourite channels and get a glimpse of what is currently on, but it would be good if the full guide could also be cut down.

The second real grievance is with the remote. All in all the remote seems quite nice by TV remote standards, but having the pause/play buttons situation right at the bottom, makes them awkward to use. Admittedly, they aren’t used all that much and you can easily pause using the better situated directional controller, but I think they’d have been better moving the number pad to the bottom as they are even less likely to be used.

Killer Feature

As I mentioned earlier, the first line in the interface gives you a list of recommended content. That can be anything from Youtube videos to a Netflix series. Unless you are starting a new show, you can pretty much rely on only ever having to look at this bar to select what you are going to watch next. In fact, the first Youtube video it recommended was Adele’s Carpool Karaoke with James Corden, what a way to start!

Thoughts

All things said, I’m rather happy with Android TV. It fills the roll of Chromecast, media centre and TV all in one, and wraps it in a clean and easy to navigate interface. Time will tell if this feeling remains in a few months, but for now this holds the top spot in terms of best TV interface I’ve ever used. As I mentioned earlier, I haven’t personally used many smart TVs, but I’ve played with many media centre solutions and PVRs to know when I spot a good one, and Android TV definitely fills that spot.