There are plenty of options if you’re trying to leave behind your smart TV user interface and grab a dedicated device for it. Some of my favorites are the Roku Ultra, Apple TV 4K, and Fire TV Stick. I have all three of these devices in my house, and they each serve their role well.

I have my Apple TV 4K set up in my living room, where I do most of my watching. It’s plugged into a receiver powering a Dolby Atmos system, and I’m pretty happy with how things have turned out. Any time I watch something on my Apple TV with Atmos, I get the best experience I can get with my equipment. However, it’s not all smooth sailing.

The problem with the Apple TV 4K is that there’s no audio passthrough to my receiver. That means your Apple TV is handling the audio, which is perfectly fine if it’s Dolby Atmos. The downside is there are plenty of other audio formats outside of Atmos, and the Apple TV 4K doesn’t support those. Yes, the sound will still come out of your speakers, but it won’t be as good as it can be since it’s not passing it through to your receiver that can recognize the different formats. It’s for that reason that the Apple TV 4K isn’t the best choice for home audio. The Roku Ultra actually comes ahead.

Brand

Apple

Bluetooth codecs

5.0

Wi-Fi

6

Ethernet

Gigabit (128GB model only)

Storage and RAM

64GB, 128GB

The Roku Ultra beats your Apple TV here

A surprising outcome

I’ve been clear for a while now that the Apple TV 4K is my favorite streaming device. I say this as somebody who actually owns a Roku Ultra. I did replace my Apple TV in the living room with my Roku Ultra for a little bit, but the UI is the main reason I switched back. I love the clean look of the Apple TV, and that gave it the edge over my Roku. I now use my Roku Ultra in my bedroom, and it still gets used nightly.

Although I take my audio seriously, I find most of my serious watching is on a disc, and instead of using the Apple TV, I use my 4K Blu-ray player which can pass the audio through to my receiver. A lot of what I watch streaming are things where I’m not all that concerned about audio quality, and that’s a big part of why I’m okay with the Apple TV not having audio passthrough.

If you do most of your viewing on streaming services, it does get annoying. I spent a weekend catching up on Oscar nominations on various services — none of which had Atmos mixes for the movies. This meant my receiver read as Multi In since the Apple TV couldn’t do anything other than Atmos. It’s not the end of the world since it still comes out as surround sound, but it’s a little sad that installing Peacock on my smart TV instead of my Apple TV would give me better sound quality.

Despite that, I keep using my Apple TV 4K in my living room. The drawback of not having the right audio format every now and then is fine for me to put up with, since I still like the speed and look of my Apple TV. I understand not everybody is the same, and if you prioritize audio quality over everything, you should look elsewhere for your streaming box.

An update could come, but don’t hold your breath

I got my hopes up before

Considering that the cheaper Roku Ultra has audio passthrough while the expensive Apple TV 4K doesn’t is puzzling. I don’t really know why that’s the case, and to make matters even worse, it doesn’t seem like Apple plans on addressing it. There was a moment last year when it seemed like Apple was going to add the feature in based on some wording in some patch notes, but that never happened. It feels like it’s always going to be on the wish list of features, but nothing more.

We feel long overdue for the next generation of Apple TV hardware, so maybe that’ll be what it takes for us to get true audio passthrough. The last refresh came in 2022, so we’re already past the normal lifecycle of these models, which can either mean one’s right around the corner or that Apple has slowed down with the releases. Rumors have been swirling for over a year now, so it feels like nobody really knows what’s going on. I hope a new Apple TV 4K is coming, but there’s no telling at this point. I’m still using a first-gen model, so I could certainly use an upgrade. I’m going to keep using mine until it no longer performs. Hopefully a fourth-gen model will be out by then. If we’re still on the third-gen Apple TV 4K, then I’ll just pick that up.