Price

Sky Stream can be had for as low as £15/month on a 24-month contract with a subscription to Sky’s Essential TV package. There’s an option for a rolling 31-day contract that you can cancel whenever you want, but that bumps the price up to £18/month with the same subscription.

Prices for Sky Glass Air start from £21/month on an 24-month contract if you subscribe with the Essentials TV package. That’s the price for the smallest screen, with the price increasing as the screen gets bigger.

Of the two Sky Glass Air costs more, which isn’t a surprise considering it is a TV and Stream is, well, a streamer.

The Sky Stream is now available from £19 per month at Sky

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Design

The Sky Stream is a compact device best suited for those who don’t want a set-top box next to their TV. It comes with HDMI, Ethernet, and aerial inputs which can be found around the rear.

Sky Glass Air comes in 43-, 55- and 65-inch sizes and unlike Stream, it comes in an array of colours such as Sea Green, Carbon Grey and Cotton White. Connections include three HDMI 2.1 ports, USB-C and USB-A inputs, Ethernet and a DTT DVB-T/T2 aerial that offers basic Freeview.

That we’re comparing a TV with a streamer should make it obvious which device you want. Are you after a new TV, or are you happy with your current one and just want to add Sky to it? That will decide which model you’re after.

Channels and interface

As always with Sky, access to channels and content depends on the subscription you take up. Sky Essential TV offers the cheapest way to get into Sky at £15/month on top of whatever else you’re paying for the device. It provides Sky, Netflix and Discovery+ at “entry-level” prices.

Or you could go for the Sky Ultimate subscription package which features everything that comes with the Essential TV package and more channels like Sky Max.

Both Sky Stream and Glass Air get their content over the Internet, and both deliver it at a minimum HD resolution (for 4K you’ll need to purchase the UHD and Atmos package). That means there’s no content available in standard definition.

Both support Sky OS, which aggregates content from the likes of Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, and others. Choose a Sky Cinema sub and you can also get Paramount+ as standard.

Streaming takes up the same bandwidth on each device (10Mbps for HD, 25Mbps for 4K) and you can add more pucks either to your main ‘Stream’ device or Sky Glass Air (Stream and the Glass TVs can work together as part of Sky’s Whole Home package).

The only real difference is that Sky Glass Air supports hands-free voice recognition while Stream requires the remote for voice control, so isn’t technically hands-free.

Despite what Sky says, neither Stream or Glass Air record content. The Playlist feature ‘saves’ content to your profile. There’s no means of downloading content because it is all streamed.

As content is accessed through the cloud, you can watch stuff whenever you like, though there is a limit as Sky says only 1000 hours of recordings are possible. Another downside is that content that’s subject to rights agreements will expire and disappear from your playlist. This is to do with sports or shows such as Match of the Day.

Since you can’t technically record, once the series is gone, it’s not coming back.

Performance

This isn’t an easy comparison for obvious reasons. We haven’t tested Sky Glass Air yet and we only have our thoughts from a preview at Sky’s offices to go on. For what’s being presented as an affordable device, the picture quality looks good: bright, colourful and detailed without any obvious flaws in the footage we saw.

As Sky Stream is a device that you plug into another screen, it’s performance is entirely dependent on your TV. A good OLED, LCD or Mini LED TV will bring out the best of content available on Sky. A not-so good TV and you’ll be left wondering why The Last of Us looks so dull and boring.

What we can say is that Stream offers the highest potential for the best picture quality. It’s not tied to a specific screen, so it can be as good or as bad as the TV you have in your home. Sky Glass Air is a more affordable effort, and would seem to be around £500 level in terms of picture quality. That doesn’t buy you the best image, but it’ll be acceptable for some.

Early verdict

Sky Glass Air and Sky Stream converge on the same principle of delivering your favourite programmes over the Internet. The form is obviously different from one another, and will probably decide which one you get: a TV or streamer?

Once you’ve made that decision, you’ll be getting access to the same content and channels depending on the subscription you end up going for.

As we said, you can connect Stream to any non-Sky Glass TV you like; while the Sky Glass Air TV might live in your main living room or in a second room. There’s more flexibility with Stream, which might hold greater appeal for some.

If you have a high-end OLED or LCD TV, Sky Stream makes more sense. If you’re after a TV that’s more affordable and that has access to all that Sky has to offer, you might Sky Glass Air an offer you can’t refuse.