Apple’s new Apple TV 4K is faster, smarter and a lot more expensive. Announced on October 13 alongside the HomeView smart display, the fourth-generation box costs $299 in the United States, up from $129 at the start of 2026. Pre-orders are open and it ships on November 13.
What’s New Inside
The headline change is the A19 chip. Apple says it delivers up to 50% faster CPU performance and up to twice the graphics performance of the previous model. Wireless gets an upgrade too, with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and the box adds hardware AV1 decoding.
Apple is selling a single configuration: 128GB of storage with Gigabit Ethernet. There is no cheaper Wi-Fi-only option this time.
Hands-Free Siri AI
Three far-field microphones now sit inside the box, so you can say “Hey Siri” without picking up the remote, even while music or a show is playing. That puts the Apple TV closer to what Amazon’s Fire TV Cube has offered for years.
The new Siri AI arrives as a beta on tvOS 27.2. It is the same assistant Apple is building the HomeView around, and it is a big part of why Apple is pushing its home devices as one connected system. The wider AI race is moving just as quickly elsewhere, as we covered in our look at OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra launch.
New Remote and Surround Sound
The updated Siri Remote supports Precision Finding, which helps you track it down using your iPhone. It costs $59 on its own and works with older Apple TV models, including the Apple TV HD.
For audio, Apple now supports a four-speaker home theater setup using HomePod mini 2 units. At $149 each, four speakers add $596 to the $299 box, bringing the full setup to $895.
Why the Price Jumped
Apple raised the old model’s prices in June, moving the 64GB Wi-Fi version from $129 to $199 and the 128GB Ethernet version from $149 to $249. Reports say the company pointed to surging demand for memory and storage from AI data centers. The new box costs $50 more than the 2022 model’s price after that increase.
Do You Need to Upgrade?
Probably not, if you own a recent model. Siri AI is coming to the second-generation Apple TV 4K and later through a software update, and the new remote works with older boxes. Both the old and new models also top out at 4K at 60 frames per second, so the A19 chip will matter mostly for games and heavy Siri use rather than for everyday streaming.
If you are starting from scratch, or you want the hands-free microphones and plan to build a HomePod setup, the new Apple TV 4K makes sense. Everyone else can wait for full reviews after November 13.
