Is the Apple TV 4K still worth buying after the price hike?

Is the Apple TV 4K still worth buying after the price hike? Much of Apple's hardware just got a lot more expensive. The most recent Apple TV 4K is a four-year-old product that Apple never seems quite sure what it wants to do with. And yet, the very same model, like many other Apple products, just became a lot more expensive, thanks to the ongoing memory crisis and rising component costs. The various iPad and Mac price increases might have grabbed all the headlines when Apple announced them last week, but the Apple TV 4K price jumping from $129 to $199, a $70 hike, is pretty significant too. That adjusted price is for the 64GB model, with an even bigger bump to the 128GB variant, which now costs $249 (up from $149). The obvious question these price hikes raise is whether Apple can justify charging more money for an aging product, and whether there are alternatives that represent better value for money. So let's dig into that. Why is the Apple TV 4K so popular anyway? To be clear, there remains a lot to like about the Apple TV 4K. When Engadget's Devindra Hardawar reviewed the most recent version of Apple's streaming box back in 2022, he called it the best of its kind "by a long shot." It also ranks as the "best premium streaming device" in our buying guide of the best streaming devices. Everything that was great about the Apple TV 4K in 2022 remains good now. It supports all the major HDR formats, including Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos sound, and pumps out a picture that looks really quite fantastic, whatever you're watching. The A15 Bionic chip is very powerful, making navigation and loading apps supremely speedy, a user experience rarely matched by the built-in smart interface most modern TVs offer. As you'd expect, being a paid member of Apple's walled garden elevates the experience. Having an iPhone makes setup a breeze, and subscription services like Apple Arcade and Fitness+ are even better when paired with an Apple TV 4K, with the latter letting you watch workouts on a big screen while your Apple Watch tracks your metrics. Third-party app support is also very good, and even Siri is actually pretty useful when it lives inside a TV remote. At $200 it's hard to argue the Apple TV 4K still offers value for money At $129, the Apple TV was an excellent — albeit expensive — streaming device. At $199 you really need to examine whether another device might give you more bang for your buck. Take the Google TV Streamer, for example. At $99, it's a whopping $100 cheaper than the newly revalued Apple TV 4K, and yet we still awarded it "best all-in-one streaming device" in our buying guide. The Google TV Streamer outputs in 4K/60fps, just like Apple's box, and supports all the important HDR and audio formats. It's not quite as fast as the Apple TV 4K, but it definitely isn't $100 slower. Like the Apple TV 4K, it offers voice support via Gemini, and our experts think Google TV is the best smart TV interface thanks to the way it pulls in content from diffe…