Peacock TV vs. Xfinity Television plan comparison

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.

If you look at package rates alone, Xfinity is one of the cheapest TV providers out there—prices are low, and while the channel count isn’t the highest, it’s got all the most popular channels (1) covered. However, a slew of additional fees causes the monthly price to be quite a bit higher than advertised (it wouldn’t be a stretch to see $60 or more in fees on your TV bill, in addition to the package price). Ultimately, while the service itself is a solid value, it’s going to end up costing you.

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.

Xfinity offers the X1 DVR system, which is one of the best all-around DVRs on the market. It’s easy to use and offers a substantial amount of storage—up to 300 hours of HD video. The only unfortunate thing about the X1 system is that you need to order at least two set-top boxes to get an X1—the first box will just be a basic DVR without the advanced features and voice control. That said, many users will want at least one box for the living room and one for the bedroom, so this shouldn’t be too steep of a barrier to entry.

The standard X1 system comes with a sleek charcoal-colored remote with small buttons, but the company also offers a large remote with optional wrist-strap for customers who need the extra accessibility.

Xfinity also offers the Xfinity Stream app, which gives you access to your entire channel lineup, plus on-demand content and your DVR recordings, on any device. Xfinity Stream works on iPhone, iPad, and Android devices, and it’s a great way to stay up-to-date with your favorite shows while you’re traveling (or just waiting in line).

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?

Xfinity offers both professional and self-installation options. Having a pro come by costs less than $90, which is less than many other providers. The self-install kit is free of charge, though you may pay for shipping and handling. We generally recommend self-installation whenever possible, both because it’s cheaper and because you can do it on your own time.

Aside from the installation fee, you’ll need to determine how many DVRs you want for your home prior to installation. You don’t have to pay for them up front, and you can always add more later, but ideally, you’ll have the right number of boxes from the outset, so you can just start enjoying your new TV service.

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.

Xfinity has all of the premium channels you could want, including HBO Max, SHOWTIME, STARZ, Cinemax, EPIX, and more. Prices for these add-ons vary from around $5 per month to around $15 per month.

Xfinity also has a healthy selection of sports channels available, including ESPN, the Golf Channel, the Tennis Channel, MLB Network, the Olympic Channel, and many more. It’s worth noting that with sports, the selection does differ slightly between packages, so while the higher-tier plans offer more sports channels, you actually give some up in the process—just pay close attention to make sure you’re still getting the networks you want!

If the sports coverage isn't up to snuff, you may be in luck! Check out our expert resources on how to watch pro baseball, how to watch NFL games, how to watch hockey, and more.