Sky Glass Air

Introduction

What if you had a budget TV and wanted a better experience, but couldn’t spring the dosh for it?

While the budget TV market is filled with options – not all of them great (or even good) – most look for a TV that can do a job and nothing more.

With Glass Air, you get the glitz that Sky’s entertainment service brings in a form that’s more affordable. Despite Glass Air having familiar failings that afflict less expensive TVs, this is a surprisingly well-rounded package for the price.

Price

Prices for the TV (on its own) start from £6/month for the smallest screen. Add Sky Essential TV package and it’s £21/month as the cheapest option.

For the medium sized screen it’s £10/month, and for the largest set it’s £13/month before adding a TV package.

You can choose to pay over the course of a 24-month contract or in rolling 31-day contracts.

Design

• Easy to assemble
• Central pedestal
• Three sizes and three colours

Sky Glass Air comes in 43-, 55-, and 65-inch sizes. The model I have is the smallest of the trio. Given the apparent surge in bigger TV sizes, I’d have thought Sky would have offered sizes bigger than 65-inches, which I think is a missed opportunity. Who wouldn’t want to watch the Masters golf on as big a screen as they can afford?

Nevertheless, Sky Glass Air isn’t built like the proverbial brickhouse that is the Gen 2 Glass model. Slimmer and less brutalist, you can wall-mount (there holes on the back for adding a wall-mount (sold separately), and it comes in three colours: Sea Green, Carbon Grey and Cotton White.

The colours make Glass Air more attractive, much more of a lifestyle TV. I’m still puzzled why a black rectangle still seems to be the aesthetic norm.

It sits on a central pedestal stand which doesn’t offer clearance from the ground. That’s not great for adding a soundbar in front. Sky believes having a TV’s speakers closer to the ground improves the performance and that some may consider wall-mounting this TV, in which case the lack of clearance doesn’t matter. I’m not so convinced.

Setting the TV up takes about two minutes and requires no tools. It’s best to flip the TV over and slot the stand in and once it clicks in, the stand stays put. Power and mute buttons are located on the side of the TV in case you lose the remote.

User Experience

• Sky OS
• 30 extra rails of content

The Sky OS experience is the same as on Glass Gen 2. You’ve got the top rail for trending programmes or last used inputs, followed by another with access Playlist, TV, Sports etc. There aren’t as many apps as other TV interfaces, but all the usual apps are covered, and there’s the Sky Store to fill in the gaps (if you want to rent or buy outright).

Sky’s non-partisan approach to aggregating content is a really good method for finding something off the beaten track.

A less welcome development is that Sky has added 30 more rails. I’ve liked Sky’s more selective curation in that, like Google TV or TiVo OS, they’ve avoided overwhelming the user with lots of rows.

I’m not a fan of the ‘doom scrolling’ that Fire TV engages in, and by adding 30 more rails it does give you more choice but I want to get to content faster, not spin my wheels searching rail after rail through stuff that I might not be interested in.

For me, it’s an argument in favour of user profiles. I want content tailored to my tastes, not more of it. Sky still seems to insist that what you see is tailored not only to what you watch, but also to the times of the day you watch it at. However, I’m simply not going to scroll through 30 more rails. It’s a time sink.

With that moan out of the way, another problem is that the interface doesn’t feel as nippy as Sky Glass or Stream. There’s a slight latency to the Bluetooth remote that slows down scrolling through the rails.

The remote is the same as it is with Stream and Gen 2 – it’s battery powered, and I’d hoped that Sky would at some point have ditched it for rechargeable USB-C, given its commitment to sustainability.

Gaming

• 60Hz screen
• ALLM support
• No Sky Live compatibility

Glass Air is light on gaming features. It’s a 60Hz panel, so 4K/120Hz, VRR, Dolby Vision Gaming are out the window here. It’s also a budget TV and unlikely to have advanced gaming features in the first place.

There is support for the auto low latency mode (ALLM) that automatically places the TV into its most receptive state for gaming. Unfortunately it’s not a selectable mode, but you can engage the ‘Auto Game mode’ through the settings. As I can’t find a way to test input lag with the game mode engaged, Glass Air offers an input lag of 127.5ms in its standard TV modes.

I understand Sky is going for simplicity, and it wants its customers to have a plug-and-play experience without seeing behind the curtain. But if other TV manufacturers can offer a manual game mode, why not Sky? Like Ruben Amorim, Sky is a bit stubborn in its approach.

There’s no Sky Live compatibility with this model, so you won’t be able to get the built-in gaming component that Sky Glass supports. There are other games you can play, though trying to load Monopoly took so long, my arm got tired holding the remote waiting for it to load.

Connectivity

• Three HDMI inputs
• Dolby Vision HDR
• AirPlay 2

There are three HDMI 2.1 inputs – the same as on Sky Glass Gen 2 – which I think is fine for this price point.

There’s an HDMI eARC input for an external sound system, though as I’ve mentioned earlier, it’s tricky to add a soundbar without blocking the screen if the TV is on its stand. Then you have two USB inputs (USB-C and USB-A), plus an Ethernet port for a hard connection.

It’s Wi-Fi 6 compatible and supports Bluetooth 5 Low Energy as well as Apple AirPlay 2 and HomeKit. The DVB/T2 tuner is a backup with access to basic Freeview if the Wi-Fi falls over.

Features

• Quantum Dot panel
• Dolby Vision support

This isn’t much of a smart TV in terms of connectivity with other systems, and voice control is through a button on the remote or hands-free by saying “Hello Sky” but I’ve found both to be hit and miss. Maybe I need whatever the human version of a Voice Boost.

It’s a Quantum Dot screen with HDR support, including HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision, but no HDR10+. Sky Glass Air supports Dolby Atmos over HDMI but not through its 30W sound system (Dolby Audio and Dolby Digital+).

Picture Quality

• Dim with HDR content
• Global dimming
• Extra Vivid mode

Most budget TVs aren’t bright enough for true HDR. The upscaling is rough, black levels aren’t true black, and there’s backlight issues. Sky Glass Air manages to keep the lid on most of those issues.

Sky Glass Air averages about 350 – 360 nits throughout its picture modes; other TVs average closer to 300 – 320 nits, so Sky Glass Air is slightly brighter but not by much. Its Extra Vivid mode does give it a well-needed boost, pushing the TV above the 400 nit mark.

That level of average brightness means that HDR content can look dim. Watching Life of Pi (HDR10), the picture is not the brightest or most colourful.

HDR and Wide Colour Gamut (WCG) are all about showing the range of brightness and colours from the brightest to the darkest, but with Glass Air, the results are more like slightly bright to slightly dark. Even with Dolby Vision content, designed to help massage those levels of brightness and darkness, the TV has a dim look to its colours and highlights.

It’s a familiar failing that affects most budget TVs – if you see someone, somewhere describe Sky Glass Air’s colours as vibrant, I’d have to disagree. Colours lack punch and saturation in the TV’s Movie and Entertainment modes, with Sky seemingly placing an emphasis on accuracy. I think that’s odd, considering the audience this TV courts isn’t likely interested in ‘accuracy’.

Sky Glass Air’s colours aren’t as good as the Sharp GM6245K – they’re a bit plainer – however its images are watchable. For this screen size, areas such as clarity, sharpness and detail all look good with 4K content. It’s more accomplished than I expected.

Black levels aren’t the deepest, but they’re fine for a budget TV. Glass Air uses ‘Global dimming’ which suggests a Direct LED panel. Black levels can look shallow and lacking in depth with dark scenes, and the lack of brightness hurts the TV’s sense of contrast. HDR can make images look almost 3D but Glass Air has a flatness to its picture.

Motion is done automatically with no settings to adjust. Watching sports, including tennis, golf and some football, there wasn’t any judder, stutter or motion smearing that I could spot.

I can see the Extra Vivid mode getting plenty of use. If you feel the TV is missing punch, contrast and saturation, this mode provides that. Is it accurate? Likely not, but watching the most recent animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film on 4K Blu-ray (HDR10), it’s a much more watchable image than on most budget TVs at this price.

Upscaling

• Slight lack of detail
• Accurate-looking colour performance

Sky Glass Air doesn’t have any Standard Definition streams (just High Definition). Its HD performance is fine but depends on the quality of the stream itself.

Much like with the Gen 2 Glass, I didn’t find it to be the sharpest image or the crispest – it looks slightly soft in terms of detail – but colours and skin tones look good without necessarily jumping off the screen with streams of Seal Team and Magnum PI.

A DVD of Spider-Man looks pretty decent. Any noise is tastefully managed, and while there are jagged edges and lines from time to time, you’ll need to be staring with your nose close to the screen to notice it during motion.

There are moments where the brightness looks a little too hot in some scenes, but overall, Sky Glass Air feels pretty steady and surprisingly quite accurate in terms of SDR colours for a budget TV.

Sound Quality

• 30W system
• Limited bass
• Clear and spacious sound

Often, with budget TVs, the worst aspect is the sound system. Some can sound crude, others so distractingly bad you have to buy a soundbar just to protect your ears. Sky Glass Air is one of the better ones.

Like with its picture, it has the familiar problems that affect even the best cheap TVs. Bass is not especially present unless you turn the volume to 100% (which brings its own problems) and Bass Boost doesn’t have much of an effect. It can sound thin, and it seems to struggle when there are lots of sounds happening at the same time (it almost sounds as if it gets quieter in these instances).

But it does offer a clear and natural sounding performance with dialogue. There is some decent welly to the sound system but its focus is with the highs and midrange. The top end is clear and sharp, avoiding any sibilance, while the midrange offers solid levels of clarity and detail.

The soundstage isn’t the widest, but it does come across as cluttered, and placement of dialogue on the screen is accurate. Even sounds off screen are managed decently.

When turned up to full volume there’s some power and punch to Glass Air’s performance without totally losing grip with the highs and midrange. There is some bass distortion at full volume, a case of one step forward, another step back.

Of course, you could remedy these issues with a soundbar, but Sky hasn’t made it easy to add one without blocking the screen. You might have to dig out a soundbase from the attic to improve the sound further (or consider wall-mounting).

Should you buy it?

FAQs