Staff rating

3.0

n/a channels

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Staff rating

3.0

Customer rating

4.0

(155)

Plans starting at $19.99

140+ channels

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Staff rating

3.0

Peacock TV is a great supplemental service but doesn’t replace live TV

Home to greats like The Office, Parks & Rec, Real Housewives, and Law & Order, Peacock has some great content at a price we loved. But our hands-on testing revealed that its channel lineup was disappointing and couldn’t fully replace a more expensive live TV streaming service like fuboTV or YouTube TV.

What we like

Great shows
Delightful interface
Low price

What we dislike

No DVR
Mostly runs on "live" channels
No NBC, MSNBC, or CNBC

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Staff rating

3.0

No contracts and affordable prices

Spectrum TV is good if you’re bundling and on a budget, and we love the $500 contract buyouts. Better yet, Spectrum doesn’t force you into a contract, so you can give the cable TV service a try with relatively little risk. We don’t love the low channel count, and it’s a bummer that you can get 4K programming only if you also have home internet (and upgrade your DVR to an Apple TV box).

What we like

Simple package options
No contract to join
Up to $500 contract buyout if you switch

What we dislike

Second-year price hikes
High broadcast fee
No DVR with basic receiver

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Value

4.0

Great shows, movies, and sports—but don’t pin all your live TV streaming hopes on it

Peacock is a great deal, especially if you take advantage of its $1.99 per month offer. It’s one of the cheapest TV streaming apps, but if you want it to cover all your live TV needs, you’ll probably be disappointed. It’s great if you love international sports like rugby, soccer, and golf, or if you want live news from a few of the largest metro areas in the US (think Chicago, New York, Los Angeles). But you won’t have access to NBC/Universal’s live stations, CNBC, MSNBC, or, well, NBC. That means you can’t watch live episodes of The Voice with your friends. Instead, you can get them on Peacock the next day—after your co-workers passive-aggressively feed you spoilers. Womp-womp.

Still, Peacock gives you access to arguably some of the greatest shows on TV, like The Office, Parks and Rec, and all the Law & Order reruns you could ever want. It’s a ton of value, but we recommend considering it an addition to a more complete live streaming option like Philo, Sling, or Hulu + Live TV.

Peacock TV has three versions. The free version is kind of like a teaser for the paid versions. You get to watch a few new shows and a bunch of channels packed with syndicated reruns, all while drooling over all the shows you’d get if you coughed up the cash for the paid version. The next step up, Peacock Premium, is a great buy at $5 per month. You get all the content Peacock has to offer and commercials were surprisingly low-key. Finally, the premium tier is Peacock Premium Plus. It’s twice the price and, in our opinion, rarely worth the cost. You get the same content with fewer commercials and the ability to download shows to watch offline (but no ability to DVR live content). It’s pretty meh.

Value

3.5

Good starting prices, but extras add up quickly

Spectrum TV is a good choice for basic TV viewing on a budget, especially if you bundle with home internet. You get more than 125 channels with TV SELECT and more than 140 channels on MI PLAN LATINO, but those are your only package options. It’s a decent channel-per-dollar ratio, and Spectrum says all its channels are broadcast in HD. These basic packages include your local networks plus a range of options for news, entertainment, and sports. You’ll need add-ons for international programming, premium sports, and premium education and entertainment.

We love that Spectrum TV doesn’t require contracts and even pays to buy you out of another contract, and we like its upfront pricing structure. Compared to other live TV options, it’s easier to pay only for what you actually watch. However, add-ons get pricey in a hurry and you’ll pay even more for your cable boxes and DVRs. Plus, there’s virtually no way out of a local broadcast fee, which tops out at more than $22 per month. Worst of all, that low base price will increase in the range of $20–$30 per month after your first 12 months. Competing services have much bigger second-year price jumps (we’re looking at you, DIRECTV and Astound TV), but we still wish Spectrum would end the practice.

Content

2.5

Great live sports, on-demand movies, and day-old NBC shows—but its channel lineup is lacking

While Peacock has limited value as your only live TV streaming service, the content it does have is great. You get live NBC news from several big cities. Plus, NBC has some award-winning shows, both new and old. From The Office, 30 Rock, and Parks and Rec to Blacklist, all the Saturday Night Live, and Real Housewives, there’s some great content to watch on Peacock. If you work your way through all the episodes of these shows before you’re done binging (though we’d be surprised if you did), you can pick from over 40 channels of various news shows, classics like Dennis the Menace, reruns of Jimmy Falon, and more.

Peacock Premium and Peacock Premium Plus have some great sports content too. You’ll get a bit of everything, from soccer to golf to cycling to NASCAR to Sunday Night Football—all live or on-demand, depending on when you log in to watch. You also get the Olympics, of course, but these won’t be live. So if you like to stay up til three in the morning to watch your favorite curling team sweep their hearts out, consider this your permission to sleep in and catch all the bonspiels (that’s curling-speak for games) during normal waking hours. Oh, and if classic WWF matches are your jam (wait, is that just us?), Peacock has a channel that plays them 24/7/365.

Finally, Peacock has some great movies. Create a kids profile, and it’ll be packed with Dreamworks movies like Turbo, Shrek, and Shark Tale alongside shows like Blippi, Strawberry Shortcake, and Trolls: The Beat Goes On. Plus, you can dress to the nines in your living room and join the Gentleminions movement without besmirching your polite theater-goer reputation. Meanwhile, an adult profile will get you Peacock originals/exclusives like Honk for Jesus, Meet Cute, and Jurrasic World Dominion, along with faves like The Bourne Trilogy and classics like The Godfather.

Now for what you won’t get with Peacock TV: just about everything else. If you’ve had cable TV or another live TV streaming service like Sling, YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, or fuboTV, you might see Peacock’s channel lineup and snort out loud. And you’d be totally within your rights. Most of Peacock’s “live” TV channels just play reruns of specific shows all day and night. You can’t control which episode you watch or when you start one, nor are you getting fresh content. It’s kind of the worst of both the live TV and on-demand worlds. Our advice? Get Peacock TV for the sports, day-old NBC shows, and movies—not for the channels.

Features

3.0

Bare bones but nice for budget viewers, especially with bundling

Spectrum TV is pretty bare-bones when it comes to features. It uses HD receivers from a handful of companies, but none are very impressive and there’s no way to control which one you receive. The no-frills remote has controls for channels, a TV guide, and your DVR (if you pay extra for the service). It’s functional, but not nearly as good as the DVR setups you’ll get with satellite TV providers. We don’t love that you have to pay around $10 extra each month for DVR and even more for cloud DVR. Additionally, the HD receivers can handle only 1080p. You can get around that by using the included streaming service in 4K on a different device, but that feels like unnecessary hassle.

Rather than create its own high-tech DVR, Spectrum offers a payment plan for a 4K Apple TV that’s preloaded with the Spectrum TV app. You can also use your own Apple TV or buy theirs up front, but the Apple TV option requires internet access. It’s the best way to access 4K programming with Spectrum, but it ends up being a little more expensive than the competition’s top-of-the-line DVRs.

If you end service before you pay your Apple TV off, you’ll be charged the complete price for the device. It’s not a bad deal if you’re already in the Apple ecosystem and have multiple streaming services in addition to cable TV, but it’s not a huge value add for a lot of users.

Features

2.5

Easy parental controls and delightful details, but no DVR

No matter which Peacock plan you get, you’ll never be able to record live shows. There’s no DVR capability, but we’re not sure you’d need it. Most of the content we wanted to record was available on-demand anyway (except for live sporting events). And if you spring for Peacock Premium Plus (the highest-cost plan), you can download on-demand shows to watch offline later. We’d probably skip the upgrade, though. We liked the idea for long flights or keeping the kiddos entertained at the car wash, but we didn’t find a ton more uses for this pared-back feature.

Speaking of the little ones, Peacock makes it super easy to find shows for your kids. Just create a kids profile for quick access to only childrens shows. You can also set up a PIN to keep the little ones restricted to these kid-friendly profiles. As a bonus, parents’ profiles won’t be bogged down with Curious George or Blippi episodes. (Although we’d probably keep a kids profile around just for all the Dreamworks movies.)

We confirmed that you can stream only three devices at once on Peacock. When you try to add the fourth, you’re alerted (by the adorable Puss in Boots from Shrek giving you those big, precious eyes in apology). You don’t have to worry about kicking anyone else off their show—but you can’t choose to either. You’ll have to kick them off the old-fashioned way, with a text, phone call, or shout down the hall. Unfortunately, we could not confirm that Peacock has 4K content. While Peacock says it has 4K content available and it’s labeled as such when you browse, we didn’t find any shows or events with that badge.

Beyond the basics, Peacock has some fun extras that delighted us. We loved picking profile avatars using headshots of our favorite NBC characters (we’re looking at you, Ron Swanson). We also enjoyed discovering the “Content curated by dinosaurs” section—spoiler alert, T. Rexes love Jurrasic Park and The Expendables, while dilophosauruses love The Real Housewives. Who knew?

Equipment and installation

2.5

Not much to praise, but it is functional

Spectrum’s equipment isn’t the best. You can’t choose which set-top receiver you get, and you have to pay extra to rent a DVR and even more for cloud storage. You can buy an Apple TV 4K from Spectrum, either in monthly installments or as a lump sum, but will pay extra for DVR services, which are available only over the cloud.

Installation isn’t top of the line, either. Spectrum doesn’t list its installation fees publicly, but many customers report a $50 charge for professional installation. We’ve also heard of a charge for self-installation. That price isn’t too high, but we don’t like the idea of paying for an installation when you do the work yourself. Waiting for a free installation promotion or calling to order over the phone is the best way to wriggle out of these fees.

Usability

3.0

A few minor annoyances make Peacock more browser-friendly than phone-friendly

Something Peacock TV does really well is let you jump between devices in the middle of watching a show. It easily picked up where we left off when we switched from computer to the phone app to TV and back again, whether we were watching live or on-demand content. For some streaming services, (we’re looking at you, Sling TV) switching devices mid-stream can get glitchy fast. So well done, Peacock!

In other ways, Peacock wasn’t as easy as some of the other live TV streaming services we tested, especially on our phones. We were bummed that we couldn’t multitask: there was no mini video we could watch while firing off an email or answering a text. And the Peacock app made us browse shows and channels in portrait mode, then flipped us to landscape mode to watch, which was annoying. Additionally, there’s no “back” button on the app, so if you get a few clicks into browsing for on-demand shows, you have to hit the Home button and start all over if you want to back out (If you’re using a browser, you can hit its back button). There’s a “back” button on the live TV side of things, but, oddly, it doesn’t take you back a step. Instead, it brings up the channel guide on the bottom half of the screen while your show keeps playing. We liked being able to browse while catching up on the news, but it was confusing at first.

The only real gripe we had about using Peacock TV on a browser was that a lot of the descriptive text (like the channel guide and show descriptions) disappeared faster than we could read it, which meant we had to keep moving the mouse to get it back. It was a minor annoyance, but we’d love to see this fixed in the future. We’re not all speed readers, Peacock.

Sports and premium channels

3.0

You'll pay extra for most popular channels and find fewer options

Sports are one of the main reasons to pay for live TV, and you can catch a lot of games in HD with Spectrum TV. Channels like ESPN and ESPN2 come included with the standard packages, and you can pay an extra $6 each month for a sports package that includes NFL RedZone, MLB Strike Zone, and Golf Channel. For around $100, you can add MLS DIRECT KICK or MLB EXTRA INNINGS.

There’s no way to watch every NFL game under the sun like you can with DIRECTV, but we like that Spectrum rolls its regional sports fee into its broadcast fee. Compared to Xfinity, you’ll pay about $10 less in broadcast and sports fees every month.

For movies and entertainment, Spectrum’s add-on prices are on par with the competition. You can choose HBO Max, SHOWTIME, STARZ, CINEMAX, THE MOVIE CHANNEL, or Epix, and everything’s in HD. There are fewer available add-ons than with Xfinity or either satellite provider, but Spectrum has the basics covered.

You won’t see promotional pricing on any of the premium channels like you will with the competition, but we aren’t mad about it. Those promotions mostly amount to hidden charges a few months into the contract, and we applaud Spectrum for being more straightforward.

Read our expert guides to learn more about how to watch MLB, how to watch the NFL and the top cheap providers we tested.

Endnotes and sources

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