If you’ve been waiting patiently for the Manhattan Aero to come back into stock, today’s your day. The £69.99 Freely streaming box is available again from this morning – but if the last few months are anything to go by, it won’t hang around for long.
The Aero is available now at Currys, with John Lewis expected to follow within a day or two.
Amazon is a different story – Manhattan has confirmed that the stock they’ve sent to Amazon likely won’t extend beyond the pre-orders already taken, so don’t count on it appearing there as publicly available for long (but you can check the stock here).
A Quick Recap: What Is The Manhattan Aero?
The Manhattan Aero launched in February 2026 as the second standalone Freely box on the market, and the most affordable – at £69.99, it undercuts its main rival, the Netgem Pleio, by a significant margin.
It’s a compact streaming box that brings Freely – Everyone TV’s broadband-based TV platform, backed by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – to any TV with an HDMI port.
No aerial, no satellite dish, no installation. Plug it in, connect to Wi-Fi, enter your postcode, and within minutes you’ve got 60+ live channels and over 75,000 hours of on-demand and catch-up content, all completely free.
On top of Freely, the Aero runs TiVo OS, which brings Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, YouTube, and a selection of other streaming apps alongside the Freely platform.
It also supports 4K output, Wi-Fi 6, Ethernet, and voice control.
I reviewed the Aero shortly after launch and gave it 4.5 out of 5 – an Editor’s Choice. It’s fast, easy to set up, and a genuinely compelling package at the price.
The main caveats are a handful of missing apps (more on that in a moment) and the dual-system nature of any Freely device, where the Freely side and the TiVo side operate somewhat independently of each other – separate searches, separate watchlists.
Neither of those is a dealbreaker for most viewers, and Manhattan deserves real credit for bringing a device this capable to market at £69.99 with no ongoing fees.
Why Has It Kept Selling Out?
The Aero has now sold out not once, but multiple times since its February launch – which raises a reasonable question: why does this keep happening?
The honest answer is that the standalone Freely box is still a brand-new product category.
Before the Netgem Pleio arrived in November 2025 as the first device of its kind, there was simply no market to reference, no historical data to work from, and no reliable way for manufacturers or retailers to predict how strong demand would actually be.
What’s become clear is that demand has been stronger than almost anyone expected. Both the Pleio and the Aero sold out within hours of their respective launches – and the Aero has continued to sell through rapidly with each new batch of stock.
Whether that reflects a sustained mainstream trend or a concentrated wave of early adopters who’ve been waiting years for an affordable standalone Freely device is still an open question – but the pattern is hard to ignore at this point.
Alex Arbab-Zadeh, Manhattan’s COO, said: “The Aero sold out faster than we could have anticipated, and we know a lot of people missed out.
“We’re delighted that a significant new shipment is now available. The response since launch has been a genuine validation of what the Aero offers and of where free TV in the UK is heading.”
What About The Missing Apps?
The Aero’s main weakness at launch was its app selection – or rather, what’s missing from it. TiVo OS covers the major bases well, but Sky’s NOW, Apple TV+, Discovery+, and Paramount+ don’t have native apps on the platform.
There’s some good news on that front, though. TiVo have told me that the HBO Max app – which launched in the UK on March 26 – is already available on TiVo-enabled smart TVs, and should be coming to the Manhattan Aero in the coming weeks.
No confirmed date yet, but it’s on the way. That’s worth knowing, because TNT Sports has now moved to the HBO Max app – so it plugs what was one of the more notable gaps in the lineup.
NOW is also expected to arrive on TiVo OS at some point this year, though again, no firm date has been confirmed.
In the meantime, TNT Sports, Apple TV+ and HBO Max are all accessible as Prime Video Channels if you have a Prime subscription, and the Aero supports Google Cast for anything else you might want to throw at it from your phone.
How Does It Compare To The Competition?
The Aero’s main rival remains the Netgem Pleio, which originally launched at £99 and is currently priced at £109.89 (it does occasionally drop back down to £99 for limited periods, so worth keeping an eye on).
The Pleio runs Android TV rather than TiVo OS, which means access to the Google Play Store and a broader app library – including HBO Max, which is already available on the Pleio now.
If app selection is a priority, that’s a meaningful advantage.
The Aero fights back on price, on connectivity (it has an Ethernet port; the Pleio doesn’t), and arguably on overall polish.
For most viewers who are happy with the apps TiVo OS offers – or are willing to wait for the ones that are coming – the Aero is the better value proposition.
The third option in the standalone Freely box market is the Humax Aura EZ at £249 – a hybrid device that combines Freely streaming with a traditional Freeview recorder (2TB, triple tuners).
It’s the only Freely device that lets you record, which makes it relevant for a specific audience. The trade-off is that it has no third-party streaming apps at all beyond the Freely broadcaster apps, and, for now, still has a lot of issues.
Getting One Today
- Currys – available now, online and in store
- John Lewis – expected within a day or two
- Amazon – Stock won’t hold for long, but more should arrive at some point.
At £69.99 with no subscription required, the Aero is still one of the easiest device recommendations we’ve made in a while. Just don’t leave it too long – the last few batches have gone quickly.
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