Thinking of upgrading, anyone have Sky Q, is it worth the extra £12 a month and install fee?

Used to be that their business model involved giving you a box. If they can con you into paying many hundreds of pounds over the lifetime of the tech, that’s genius on their part.

I would say that hundreds of quid to watch your recordings offline on a tablet, or record a few extra shows simultaneously is most definitely not worth it, but your priorities may be different, obviously.

My guess is they will be giving ‘free’ Q boxes away to sweeten retention deals in a couple of years’ time.

I’m on the cusp of switching myself, the main thing holding me back is I don’t have a UHD TV at the moment. It would also depend for you if you want the multi-room features, I actually don’t (only have one TV) and I don’t watch stuff on my iPad either so my decision is literally just about UHD or not (and there’s not much UHD content on it yet hence I’m still on the fence).

It’s £12 x 18 months (£216) so not a massive amount but with Sky Q they actually retain ownership of the box but for me that’s a plus as it means they have to fix it. Think of the £12 as box insurance + additional content, I personally don’t think it’s a massive rip-off (especially with Black VIP you get the install free).

Sky Q is just Sky + similar to what Netflix/Amazon offer, but for a premium with a fancy box. Amazon can replicate much of it with a cheap Fire TV stick or the Fire TV box.

You can bin Sky entirely, get Freesat + Netflix and/or Amazon plus all the free TV apps (iPlayer etc). Which I’m considering doing myself. Streaming to tablets and stuff can be done in various ways without Sky. Likewise you can stream from tablets to modern TVs or stuff like the Fire stick. Offline on tablets is possible with the relevant apps (e.g. Netflix/Amazon). Or you could use stuff like Plex, though then you need to get content that isn’t DRM’d.

We only watch on one TV and at the moment our old 720p Plasma refuses to die so don’t need UHD either at the moment. I agree about them fixing the box but I guess it is quite an outlay for insurance when in the past I have just found a 2nd hand box when mine has expired (they seem to do that on a fairly regular basis).

Deadkenny – I agree with what you say – I have PRIME and use the fire stick quite a bit. Perhaps a DVR (recommendations anyone?) would be my best bet however you cannot get Sky Sports with a fire stick and I do watch the sports a bit (F1 and rugby/cricket). I have found that ‘alternative’ ways of getting sports is a massive hit or miss. The kids also like watching Disney/kids stuff…

Lowered our Sky to the minimum £22, kept the Sky+ box for recording and moved to Now TV.

Wouldn’t but a Q box as basically we’d just be buying extra storage space.

No not worth it IMHO. A great bit of kit for sure but very expensive and you have to be watching many many hours of TV to get your money’s worth.

I’ve recently ditched sky altogether and after a small adjustment period I’ve not missed it at all. I gat all the same functionality as I did before for a fraction of the price. There are various ways you can get sky specific content too.

Certainly not worth it for me. Sky+ does all I need – don’t need to record 17 channels at once, or restart a paused programme in a different room (only one telly in the house). £12 a month extra? Nah.

I’ll wait till they give it away for free.

The fact they don’t offer the old Sky+ box to new subscribers anymore means we as existing customers are getting fleeced as SkyQ is now their default box.

I would say that hundreds of quid to watch your recordings offline on a tablet, or record a few extra shows simultaneously is most definitely not worth it,

It does seem that most of the ‘features’ it offers have been rendered irrelevant by catch up streaming services. Yes, you can record XX number of channels simultaneously but on the very rare occasion that’s ever been an issue with Sky+ one of the shows has always had a repeat showing (and if it doesn’t you can download it from iPlayer/ITV player etc).

Maybe Sky Q makes it a bit more convenient but doesn’t Sky Go already give you the ability to watch your channels on your iPad?

I’ve just switched from Virgin to sky Q (because virgin was getting more and more expensive) we’ve been given the main box and one other for the bedroom for free. Don’t really know much about it other than being able to watch recordings offline on my iPad will be handy on occasions.

I’ve had it for a few months now. I have the mini box in the kitchen diner which gets used a lot, so really wanted to watch sport n’stuff in there without using the Lounge as I used to.

We had a lot of problems with the wifi initially, the mini box kept losing the signal, so be aware that might be a problem for you too. I resolved it, by moving the router around after getting tips on positioning and have the mini box on its side. No problems since.

I had done a lot of work to my house which included buying a new UHD TV, so just wanted to get all the latest kit in one hit.

We have it with mini box. Linked minibox via wifi inc sky booster box. Total rubbish. I have now worked out a cat5 cable route and mini box now works perfectly, it all works well for us as a family. Prob not the best or cheapest option. We have the Ulra hi res tv but it’s equally as fine without. I need to go to specsavers again before the definition of the tv matters!!

We’ve got sky Q had it about 8 months. It’s great, but not £12 per month great

We got it when I kicked off and threatened to cancel, the mini box is good in the bedroom, but doesn’t get used very much, I’ve been off sick twice this year and watched tv in bed which was a novelty. Loads more storage is good too

Offline programs is crap, almost anything you’d want to watch isn’t available to download, so I wouldn’t get it for that. you can watch anything on a tablet over the same wifi network so it would be great for turboing in the winter.

Sky Q really is pretty good (once you have got is set up to work reliably), if you don’t mind the expense. UHD makes a big difference over HD on a big screen. Only you can decide if that is worth the extra cash (it is for me).

was trying to work out the costs the other day and it looked like it wouldn’t cost me anything extra apart from the setup and for the 2nd mini box as i have the full package, hd and multi room at the moment. not sure if i’ll lose my discounted price though if i sign up for it so might just wait untill i’ve finished working on the house as the rooms the extra boxs are going in aren’t ready yet.
apart from football which i watch live pretty much everytrhing i watch is recorded so the main thing for me is being able to access recordings where i want.

My sky dish broke last winter. Sky wanted to charge me a fortune to replace it.

I got sky q instead. It was a free install which so saved me money.

I had my sky plus box routed to several TVs and used a magic eye to control it. I can’t use this feature with sky q.

Tbh it’s no different to before. When the contract runs out I’ll return it but I doubt they will return the dish. I’ll just then use sky plus and the magic eye setup

Personally i think its kinda great, certainly a leap up from Sky+. I do a lot of travel so the ability to shift recorded programmes to your tablet is great. The Multiroom setup is rather good as well, and seems very reliable (so far). 4K is really good if you have a 4K telly (obvs.), though there is a surprising lack of actual 4k content, certainly compared to Netflix and Amazon Prime…there are a few series (Riviera looks stunning and is rather good), just not a great many. The footy and cricket also look super in 4K. For some reason the 4K content is hidden away as well, you have to go digging for it, which is strange as its one of the selling points for upgrading. I managed to transfer over some good deals i had from Sky+ days as well, so i get the whole kit and caboodle, Multiroom, 4k, Sports, Movies and Fibre BB for about £90 a month, which i can live with. They can stick it for £140 a month though, or whatever the full price is.

Funnily enough I got a call from sky yesterday offering me a free sky q box and install but I’d enter a contract with em. Currently I am out of contract and haven’t yet called em to blag an offer