I dumped Sky years back when it reached £40 or so with £60 or more seemingly coming along.
On the broadband front, go via Quidco or TCB and you generally get £60 or more cashback. I’m on Virgin with £75 off the bill so have yet to pay them anything almost two months in.
It’s a very minor hassle to switch suppliers every time the contract runs out. Doing that took me from 10mb to 130mb and brought in around £70 or so every 18 months too.
Hard to believe but we were OK with 10mb but much more stable on full fibre and 130mb (for now).
+1 for TopCashback or Quidco. In particular look at the ‘compare’ tools on there, as often the deals on there are stronger than the ones listed on the sites themselves.
If you haven’t already, do yourself a favour and buy your own router/mesh stuff. Then when you change ISPs in future you can just reconfigure your router and everything else stays the same, no ‘will the wifi be crap’ anxiety.
I bought my own Synology router a few years back and it was one of my smarter purchases.
If you have one router and that gets Wifi everywhere you want it to be, don’t worry about mesh stuff. Supplant that router with a decent one of your own and you can expect equal or better performance, particularly if it has Wifi6.
For me, I can get a decent signal inside my home but as soon as I leave the house and go in to the “conservatory” (quotes because it is way less fancy than that title might indicate!) or the patio area the signal dies completely. I put this down to the ‘engineering grade’ bricks used on this house’s outer wall - they’re also an absolute bit killer whenever I have to drill in to it. In any case, adding an extra wireless access point in the “conservatory” solved that problem for me.
If in doubt, start with a router which supports mesh stuff - Synology, Google Home, TP Link will all either support it or at least have some models which will support it. That way you can start with the base and add more nodes on later if needed. But as I say if you’ve had no need for it with your Sky Q router then there’s no reason to believe you’d need it now.
I have been wanting to get a mesh setup for a while, there are a couple of rooms that don’t get WiFi signal, we have Virgin fibre broadband. Tricky to decide between tp link, netgear, eero etc, and for three units prices range from £100 to £750+ Think I need to spend more time researching options, but it gets complicated.
We still get Freeview through the aerial, and together with Netflix and Disney, Prime (via WiFi, it’s a smart TV) and good old DVDs, this works for me.
Of those three you’re looking at, Eero would be my pick.
Eero’s big downside is Amazon ownership. But that’s probably a solid upside for other reasons too.
Google’s mesh system gets a lot of well deserved praise too.
I’ve always advocated more for Unifi’s amplifi range though. Will be interesting to see what the new Unifi Express means for that line of products though. Unifi’s app isn’t quite as friendly for the non-savvy customer as the Amplifi and Eero experiences are though.
I’ve virgin and the £100-ish tplink deco works great. Came with three units but we actually only need two. You just switch the virgin box to modem only, plug in the first deco and following the instructions you’re good to go in about 5 mins and less than that for the second and third ones.
We got the 3-5 bedrooms + AC1200 + Gigabit Ports one.
Interesting thread. I love Sky Q, but everything has it’s price. I’ve now cancelled, but so far retention offer’s haven’t been great. How do you find the UI compared to Sky Q?
Although I’m unfamiliar with the Freesat UI, it’s certainly taken no time to get to grips. The remote is hardwired for BBC iPlayer, itv Hub, Netflix & “ON Demand”.
The recording function is really neat too. I shan’t be reconnecting the Sky box even though I have a way to go before contract end,
Glad you’re enjoying it. Had Sky Q since it came out so somewhat nervous about moving on however most reviews on FreeSat have been positive. Plus, no subscription is a plus.
The only downside we’ve found is that we tend to build up subscriptions unless we keep an eye on them. At one point we had NowTV, Netflix, Disney and Amazon. There’s not enough hours in the day to watch all that, so a bit of a cull now and again is required.
I find that just picking a subscription and cancelling it works well. If nobody complains, I cancel another one
The only ones I keep ongoing are Apple TV+ and Disney+ (only because everyone started complaining and caring enough to pay towards it when I let the subscription lapse).
Everything else I just dip my toe into when there’s something I actually want to watch.
I recently moved after buying a flat and was considering the sky stream + Netflix with broadband.
For the speeds I wanted it came to 50 odd pounds.
Instead I got the below.
New Apple TV 4K (older gen Apple TV 4K moved to the bedroom tv) £150
Monthly:
Vodafone WiFi : £30
Netflix £11ish
Apple TV £6 (using friends student code)
Prime: £4.50 (friends student code)
Disney: £0 ( colleagues account)
All your normal on demand channels.
It comes out under what sky offer when you consider I would be paying £15-25 on top of sky for subscription bits.
I much prefer the viewing experience coming from sky. All the good stuff now is on subscription and you can dip in and out as you wish (did this with paramount+)
My Apple TV Home Screen keeps track of all the shows I’m watching across different platforms (besides Netflix) and the recommendations the suggest are much better than on sky. I am supper on to the whole Apple TV now and I have the big widget on my iPad and iPhone which are great!
Graham do you have any preference for fibre or ADSL?I have been using virgin (fibre) for some years, I have found them generally reliable, and I do need the speed, but they are not cheap.
Before them I used Plusnet ADSL, which was fine, reliable, and relatively cheap, less fast. But that was some years ago.
