The new Siri Remote’s best new feature won’t work without a very new iPhone

With a price bump on top of an earlier price bump, it’s now $299, which puts it way out of the realm of “streaming box for normal people” and into high-priced enthusiast territory. However, despite the somewhat unecessary upgrade to an A19 and a couple of built-in microphones so you can trigger Siri hands-free, it’s missing some really obvious enthusiast features such as 120Hz output, variable refresh rate, or bitstream audio passthrough for formats like DTS or Dolby TrueHD.

What happened

However, despite the somewhat unecessary upgrade to an A19 and a couple of built-in microphones so you can trigger Siri hands-free, it’s missing some really obvious enthusiast features such as 120Hz output, variable refresh rate, or bitstream audio passthrough for formats like DTS or Dolby TrueHD.

Where the sources line up

There are only two real upgrades that are meaningful for someone willing to spend $299 on a new Apple TV 4K: Support for Siri AI, and an upgraded Siri Remote that supports Precision Finding with Find My and has a speaker to chirp at you.

Practical impact for readers

The Siri AI thing isn’t really a big deal, because it’s coming to the 2nd- and 3rd-generation Apple TV 4K as well, using your iPhone 15 Pro or later on the same network. And as it turns out, that remote (which you can just buy on its own for $59 to use with your existing Apple TV 4K) may not be that big a deal, either.

Who should pay attention now

It turns out that Precision Finding doesn’t work unless you have an iPhone 17, 17 Pro/Pro Max, iPhone Air, iPhone 18 Pro/Pro Max, or iPhone Duo. In other words, if your iPhone is more than a year old (or if you have an iPhone 17e), you just get regular ‘ol standard Find My just like you get with the older Siri Remote. The only difference is that it will play a chime, which is admittedly very useful, but probablty not worth $299.

What is still unclear

So why does the new Apple TV remote require a very recent iPhone for Precision Finding when that has been a feature supported since the iPhone 11? It’s all about Apple’s new Bluetooth chip.

Source notes

Macworld