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Sling TV review: A cheap(er) way to watch live sports, but not the budget streamer it once was
Higher prices and limited offerings make Sling harder to recommend as a cord-cutting solution.
I'm just going to say it: Sling TV is weird. On the surface, it appears a more affordable live-TV alternative to the likes of DirecTV Stream, Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV. But with recent price increases, a comparatively modest selection of channels and a fairly pointless division of its lineup, Sling feels less like a deal and more like a set of compromises. While it gets some things right and may yet appeal to budget-minded cord-cutters, there's a much cheaper option for those who don't watch sports and a better overall value available for those able to pay a bit more. Here's my Sling TV review.
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Rick Broida/Yahoo
VERDICT: Once the cord-cutter's bargain, Sling TV now offers too few channels for too much money. You can pay less elsewhere for a better basic-cable selection, or pay more and get significantly greater value.
- Clean, straightforward user interface
- One of the least-expensive ways to watch live sports
- Live stream retreats to a window while you browse the program guide
- Select sporting events streamed in 4K at no extra cost
- Drab-looking channel guide
- Confusing packages, minimal savings
- Limited channel selection, especially locals
- Most streams are 720p; 4K available only on select devices
- Limited DVR unless you pay extra
Sling TV: What will it cost you?
Sling has two available packages: Blue and Orange, each with its own channel lineup. Blue, for example, favors news and entertainment across its 43 channels, while Orange leans more into sports and family for its 35. But there's significant overlap between them: 26 of the channels are available on both tiers, which begs the question of why they're separated at all.
If you want locals, choose Blue — but keep in mind Sling carries only ABC, Fox and NBC, and only a few cities can get all three. Some are limited to just one or two; here in Detroit, for example, I have access to my local Fox station and that's it. None of the other major live-TV streaming services impose such limitations; most offer all five broadcast networks (including CBS and PBS).
Blue and Orange cost $46 separately per month, but you can get both for $61 — the only option that really makes sense. That's still a fair bit less than others, which range from $83 to $87, though you get less as well. In fact, if you tack on Sports Extras, which adds 20 more channels (some of which are already included with competitors' base packages), now your monthly total is $76.
Whatever package you pick, you get just 50 hours of DVR storage. You can bump that to 200 hours for an extra $5 per month, but all the competing services — including Philo, detailed below — provide unlimited DVR.
Sling TV: What it's like to use
I tested the service on a Sansui S55VOUG TV, which runs the Google TV operating system. Sling employs a fast, familiar interface based around the now-standard left-side menu, which provides easy access to things like Search, Home, Guide and DVR.
The program guide is where you're likely to spend a fair amount of time, and it's a mixed bag: drab colors and wonky navigation, but with some appreciable features. For example, I like its large, easy-to-read font, even if it sometimes works against it: There's little room for program description, and in fact if you navigate to a half-hour show, the box doesn't always have room to display the full episode title. Every episode of Friends, for example, displays only "The One With"... the rest is cut off.
Something else I had to get used to: After you open the guide (which occupies the entire screen, obscuring the side menu), you then press left on the control pad to access the channels column and then left again for a lengthy, vertical list of filters: favorites, recents, entertainment, sports, reality and so on (in no particular order).
These are nice to have, no question, and I like the way each filter brings up a narrowed version of the channel guide. But when you select one, all the menus disappear again, leaving you with just the guide. It would be nice if the menus simply collapsed instead of vanishing; as it stands, it feels like a lot of back-and-forth.
I like that if you want to browse the program guide, whatever you're currently watching retreats to a window so you can keep watching while browsing. Meanwhile, a little pop-up explains that if you press and hold on a channel logo, it gets added to your favorites — a great feature for quickly browsing your most-viewed channels. I discovered a related feature by accident: If you press and hold on a show or movie in the program guide, you immediately get recording options, without the need to "click through" to its description page.
Although Sling's search option doesn't support voice, it does produce dynamic results as you type with the onscreen keyboard. And my "Tom Cruise" search correctly returned lots of the actor's movies — though it wasn't immediately clear which ones were available on-demand or for future recording. I especially appreciated that the interface shows a list of recent searches, potentially saving you from repeat typing.
Also appreciated: When you pause a live show, a timer shows your elapsed "time behind live," which is particularly helpful when you step away from a sporting event. But I was annoyed to see ads consume most of the screen not long after you a pause a program. (Thankfully, you can toggle this off in the Device Settings menu. Why anyone would leave it on is beyond me.)
I also encountered slightly glitchy behavior when fast-forwarding or rewinding live TV (aka time-shifting): sometimes the progress bar would jump all the way to one end or the other, even though there was still time life to, er, shift. This didn't affect the results — I was able to continue skipping — but it was confusing.
Sling TV: Channels and image quality
As noted above, even if you subscribe to both Blue and Orange, you don't get a ton of channels. The two packages combined net you just 46, which is half (or less than half) what you get from DirecTV, Hulu and YouTube TV. And while Sling claims a handful of "exclusive" channels, including Disney and Discovery, at least some of them are indeed available elsewhere.
Sling streams entirely in 720p (same as most competing live-TV services), though you may be able to watch "select events" (namely sports) in 4K. However, you need a compatible Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV or Roku device to enjoy that; for whatever reason, Sling's 4K streaming doesn't currently work with Android TV or Google TV.
As I've discovered with most live-TV streaming services, 720p is... fine. Shows don't look razor-sharp, but that can be true of cable and satellite live-streams as well. And for the likes of Friends reruns and cooking shows, you don't really need 4K — or even 1080p. (The latter would certainly be preferable, though. YouTube TV streams at 1080p, as does Hulu + Live TV on select devices.)
Sling TV: The verdict
A few years ago, Sling was the budget choice for live TV: You could choose the package that best suited you and save a decent amount compared to competitors. Now, along with those competitors, Sling has raised prices — but without raising value. You still get a paltry channel selection, even if you bundle the two packages together, with few (possibly just one or two) local networks and limited DVR.
Granted, if your primary interest is sports, and you determine that most of the games you want to watch are available via Sling Orange or Blue, you could subscribe to the appropriate package and pay just $46 monthly. That would make Sling the cheapest option for streaming live sports.
On the flipside, if you don't care about sports but do want access to lots of popular cable channels, Philo gives you over 70 of them — plus unlimited DVR — for just $28 monthly. And if you can swing it, Hulu + Live TV also has a lot more live channels — along with Disney+, ESPN+, "regular" Hulu and all five major locals — for $83 monthly.
Sling does offer a free trial, the length of which can vary; at this writing, you can watch free for seven days. You should definitely take advantage of that before deciding whether to subscribe.
Check out Yahoo's latest streaming advice, based on hands-on testing.
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