I’ve not been a beat-em-up player for a while so when I saw these new “fight sticks” I was fascinated because they’re supposedly the new hotness (well for a few years now).

My mate and I really got into SFIV back in 2009 and we got decent arcade sticks and bought Samwa parts and did them up, then played the crap out of SFIV and were still shit at the game. Good times.

But yes the Deck has great controller support. It has recognised nearly everything I’ve connected to it. Will definitely check out Fightcade.

As a person who has used both extensively:

The Shield is better at sideloading. So if you use apps like smart tube next, or other apps like cinema HD, Bee TV to tap into torrent streaming, Kodi for its addons, or real debrid streaming, then Shield is the way to go. It’s got better support for those types of apps.

I’m a heavy Plex user but use the Apple TV 4K (latest gen). Both are great for Plex but if you have a home theatre setup, the Shield is better because of its TrueHD capability.

The Apple TV has a faster UI. Shield is fine but it can definitely lag in places and my Shield is prone to crashing from time to time. Mic on the Siri Remote is the best I’ve seen on a remote. The Google Assistant has never worked consistently for me.

If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, the ATV4k has nice support for Apple AirPods which integrate very well.

It depends what you mean when you say it buffers. If it’s transcoding then one issue is that the LG TV client doesn’t support the video and it’s trying to convert on the fly. If it is, then it isn’t a bandwidth issue.

It’s debatable whether the WiFi on the Apple TV is faster than the LG TV. But it should direct play nearly all videos, and moreso if you use Infuse player (paid app/subdcription).

TV Launcher - this is like a EPG for terrestrial TV. It’s got a great interface and you can easily customise it for the channels you want/need. It’ll open up the correct app too. Really like it for the Now and Next and TV guide features.

Other apps I use: Infuse (I’m a heavy Plex user, this is essential for me), twitch, just watch.

My friend also picked up a high end Samsung TV the other day. Honestly, the OS already lagged when setting it up. I was not impressed. I even owned a Samsung TV and the OS was not easy to navigate. You’re making the right choice with using the Apple TV on it.

You could. But it’s not a direct replacement for the home pod. The speaker is similar to an Alexa speaker and is always on and waiting for you to say, “Hey Siri” or just “Siri”. The Apple TV does not have an always on mic. You’d have to use the remote and press it down. To be fair, I’m not sure if the remote is always listening. I assume not, I’ll check in a bit b

If using the remote only to toggle Siri options is enough then yes you could use it as a sort of replacement.

Then it’s not for you.

First and foremost they are streaming boxes with other QOL improvements that might mean a lot for somebody else but feel useless and pointless for you.

Things I benefit from:

Apple Ecosystem: easy to input text using your phone rather than on screen keyboard. One underrated feature is airpods. The spatial feature when using them is very very good.

Speed: It’s the fastest TV box/streaming device out there. Snappy and responsive. I have a Shield and I love it but only yesterday it crashed on an app and rebooted itself.

Codec support: I’m a heavy Plex user and via the device itself and an app called Infuse I consider it the best Plex experience regarding its UI and it flawlessly plays everything I have on my home server. Ethernet connection is also important to be, something a lot of streamer sticks tend to omit these days.

Mic: I personally think it has a pretty decent mic and voice assistant. I’ve had experience with the Shield (google) and Fire sticks (Alexa) and I never used their mics because they could never recognise what I was trying to say. The Siri remote is fantastic. I don’t use Siri in day to day life but on the Apple TV Siri does its job well compared to others.

It can do a lot more. It has a bit of a gaming ecosystem but you need to pair a controller for that, but that could be useful in a pinch. You can game stream to your TV with apps like Steam Link or Moonlight from your PC. The app support is pretty good, all the streaming services are well supported here.

Negatives: If you are a home theater nut with an expensive surround sound setup, the Apple TV 4K does not support lossless surround sound. Also, you cannot sideload apps on it, or at least you cannot do so easily. Android TV wins out by a mile if sideloading is your jam. Android TV has some great sideload apps like Smart Tube Next and SoundTV as just some examples.

My Macbook Air M1 is almost 3 years old now. I think my Air runs fine, very well even. I’ve updated it to Sonoma, and I honestly have no issues with the speed.

At one point, Safari seemed quite slow but I discovered that I had too many adblock extensions installed. Got rid of a few of them and Safari is a lot speedier now. Some apps are slow but they tend to be apps that haven’t been converted to support Apple Silicon yet but I’m very content with the way my Macbook Air is running.