Copyright CNET
Sling TV is one of the best (and most affordable) streaming services for those looking to cut cable. Live TV streaming services, coupled with a streaming device or smart TV, are great ways to replace your cable TV subscription at a lower cost, while still watching the live channels you love. Yet for the budget-conscious TV viewer, not all services are created equal. For instance, YouTube TV offers a wide range of channels, but it costs twice as much as the cord-cutter-friendly Sling TV, and almost as much as cable. Starting at $46, Sling TV offers an excellent value with a wide range of channels available, with the only drawback being that local channels are limited. Yet, there's a fix for that. Sling TV differs from its rivals in that it offers two main plans for the same $46 entry price: Sling Orange and Sling Blue. They share a number of channels (like CNN, History and TNT), but others are exclusive to one or the other. Sling TV Blue is essentially the Fox and NBC option, while Sling Orange is the ESPN and Disney package. The biggest downside to both is that if you want a full slate of local channels -- namely your local ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC stations -- you'll have to augment Sling TV with an over-the-air antenna or the $150 AirTV 2 DVR (which is currently $49 when you prepay for three months). Meanwhile, more expensive alternatives such as Hulu Plus Live TV do offer local channels with no antenna required. When Sling TV increased the price on its two main packages from $40 to $46 in December 2024, one of the carrots dangled in front of paid subscribers was access to the games Pac-Man, Trivia Crack, Dots, Wordleful and Haunted Castle as part of its Arcade feature. Despite its lack of local channels, Sling TV remains my favorite affordable live TV streamer for the money, and the Blue plan in particular is a great deal. Even with yet another price bump, you can still save money compared to cable, and Sling TV Blue remains the CNET Editors' Choice as the best budget live TV streaming service. Read more: YouTube TV vs. Sling TV: Which Live TV Streaming Service Is Best for You? What is Sling TV, anyway? Sling TV is a subscription service that allows you to stream a selection of live TV channels over the internet. The channels offered by Sling are similar to those found in cable and satellite TV, but Sling has fewer of them, which means it costs less per month. You can watch Sling TV on televisions using the Sling TV app on media streamers (like Roku and Amazon Fire TV), smart TV systems (like Google TV, LG and Samsung) and game consoles (Xbox Series S and X), as well as on phones, tablets and computers, with no cable box required. It features a built-in DVR with 50 hours of storage, and users can upgrade to unlimited hours for $5 per month. Sling TV was the first of its kind when it debuted in 2016, but it now has a bunch of competitors at different prices, including Hulu Plus Live TV, YouTube TV, DirecTV, Philo and Fubo. For ease of categorization, I've separated these services into budget ($46 and under) and premium (over $50) services. Sling TV can still be considered a budget service, alongside the $33 Philo. Sling TV interface Of the two $46 tiers, I believe Sling Blue offers the best deal for most people. It has more channels than Orange and allows up to three people to watch different streams simultaneously, whereas Sling Orange only allows one stream at a time. You can combine the two Blue and Orange services for $61 a month, but you're only getting five more "top" channels than Blue (although this does include ESPN and ESPN2). If you're interested in more channels and don't mind paying a bunch more, competitors like Fubo ($85) and YouTube TV ($83) are better options, as they offer significantly more channels (including local ones) and unlimited DVRs (versus Sling TV's 50 hours). Sling is one of the only live TV services -- alongside DirecTV's genre packs -- to offer a bunch of add-on channel packages. You can pay $5, $6 or $11 monthly for packages such as Sports Extra, Comedy Extra, Hollywood Extra, The Best of Spanish TV and more. The channels in each package vary depending on whether you have Blue or Orange, and some channels (like Animal Planet and Nickelodeon) are missing completely. However, between its Extras and multiple base packages, Sling offers more ways to customize your channel lineup than any of its competitors. If you're interested in an even more budget-friendly option than the ones I've already outlined, there's the service's recently added Sling Select plan. It costs $20 a month and comes with a curated selection of channels, which include FX, NFL Network and Game Show Network, among others. You still receive 50 hours of cloud DVR storage and are permitted three simultaneous streams with this package. Depending on where you live, you can access local NBC, ABC and Fox affiliates. However, it's worth noting that you'll be charged an additional $5 monthly if you opt for one or two, while access to all three costs $10 more. If you're still interested in Sling but aren't the type to commit to a standard plan, Sling now offers Day Pass, which does exactly what it sounds like it does. For $5, you can get a day-long subscription to the service. In the same vein, you can choose a Weekend Pass for $10 or a Week Pass for $15, depending on your preference. Then there's Sling Freestream. The service's no-cost option comes with over 500 mainly FAST channels along with a sturdy selection of on-demand programming. You access Freestream via the regular Sling TV app and, while you don't need an account to use this feature, if you sign up for a free one, you'll get 10 hours of free cloud DVR storage. Check out the chart at the end of this article for all of the top 100 channels Sling's numerous services offer. It's a condensed version of our complete list of the Top 100 channels offered by every service. Sling stays inexpensive by eschewing most local channels. The Blue package has ABC, Fox and/or NBC in a handful of major cities but doesn't include any CBS stations. The Orange package offers no local channels, period. As any cord-cutter knows, local channels are also available by connecting an HD antenna to the back of your television. Sling TV offers another option, however: the AirTV series of over-the-air streamers. The AirTVs connect to an antenna and your network, and stream any local channels you receive into the Sling TV interface, integrating them right into Sling's program guide and other areas. You can also connect an external hard drive to the AirTV to record and watch over-the-air channels, which are separate from the 50-hour cloud TV storage, though they seamlessly integrate with other streaming channels. Other OTA DVRs are also available, although none of them integrate with Sling's interface. Whether you use an AirTV or not, Sling includes a cloud DVR for free that allows you to record almost any streaming channel on the service (the only exceptions are Local Now, ESPN3, ACC Network Extra and SEC Network Plus). It comes with 50 hours of storage, but the free version doesn't allow you to protect your recorded shows. You must pay an additional $5 per month for unlimited storage hours and the ability to prevent recordings from being automatically erased. What's Sling TV like to use? The menu system now appears and functions more smoothly than it did previously. Depending on how you access it, on a TV or phone, for instance, your content will appear organized horizontally on the left-hand side of the screen or at the top. The service's menu has now been whittled down to Search, Home, Guide DVR and On-Demand. I found that with the multiple discovery screens, including the main Home screen, there was plenty of programming available, especially when I didn't know what I was in the mood for. In addition to its upgraded cloud DVR, Sling now allows you to record and live-pause channels, including Disney and ESPN, which are bundled with the Orange packages. There's also its... Integration with AirTV While they're not the most elegant OTA solutions I've seen, the AirTV 2 and higher-end AirTV Anywhere are still solid options for integrating local channels into Sling TV. They will let users tune in to all of the available channels in the area, and in my own tests in New York, I was able to view and record 75-plus different stations. While the AirTV Anywhere features four tuners and an integrated 1-terabyte drive, the AirTV 2 requires a compatible external hard drive to function as a DVR. The company says, "Hard drives must be larger than 50GB, AirTV 2 currently supports recording up to 2TB of storage for DVR." During my tests with the AirTV 2, I was unable to pause live TV, though I was able to record. In my more recent tests, however, I haven't found an external drive that allows me to record at all, although I can at least view the local channels when I browse them in my guide. In comparison, the AirTV Anywhere should enable you to freeze live TV for up to 60 minutes. The AirTV recorders used to have two limitations that have since been fixed: They didn't work with an Apple TV or via a web browser (like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Safari). Now, they're compatible with both, and you'll be able to access your recordings and view the OTA channels you want to watch. The tuner is compatible with the Sling TV app, Roku devices, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, iOS or Android, Apple TV, or via the AirTV Mini or AirTV player. Also, be aware that the AirTV can't record streaming channels, only local ones, and therefore you're still limited to either the 50-hour or unlimited (with the DVR Plus upgrade) recording times. You can now access the AirTV from within the Sling TV app's settings, which is labeled Over-the-Air Channels. There is no longer any need to download a separate app. Should you subscribe to Sling TV? While you can save some money with Philo ($33), it is definitely worth spending a bit more on Sling TV Blue. The upgrade to the DVR alone makes even the recent $5 upcharge seem justified, especially when other rivals cost almost twice as much. The experience is better than Philo overall; it's zippier and it offers more channels. It's not perfect, but it's improving as a cable replacement, and it should save you a significant amount of money in the long term.
