The Manhattan Aero – the £69.99 Freely streaming box that launched to extraordinary demand back in February – has sold out again, and when it returns, viewers hoping to pick one up are in for a surprise.
The next batch isn’t expected until around early May, which means weeks of unavailability for anyone who’s had it on their shopping list.
But there’s more bad news alongside that. When the Aero does come back, it won’t be at the same price. Manhattan has confirmed a price increase is coming – and while they’ve been upfront about why it’s happening, it’s not going to be welcome news for the many viewers who’ve been trying to get one since launch.
The Aero Story So Far
Freely is Everyone TV’s streaming platform – the same organisation behind Freeview and Freesat – and it’s designed to eventually replace both.
Instead of receiving channels through an aerial or satellite dish, Freely delivers live TV and catch-up content entirely over your broadband connection. You get BBC, ITV, Channel 4, 5, and 60+ other channels wrapped up in a unified programme guide, with seven days of catch-up built in. No aerial required, no signal issues.
The Manhattan Aero arrived as the second standalone Freely box on the market – and the most affordable, undercutting its main rival, the Netgem Pleio, by £40 at launch.
It runs TiVo OS alongside Freely’s live TV platform, giving you those live channels and catch-up content from the major broadcasters, all over broadband. On top of that, you get Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, YouTube, and a solid selection of other streaming apps.
I reviewed it shortly after launch and gave it 4.5 out of 5 – an Editor’s Choice. Fast, easy to set up, and genuinely compelling with no ongoing subscription fees.
The main caveats were a handful of missing apps (Sky’s NOW, Apple TV+, Discovery+, and now HBO Max, which still isn’t available) and the slightly fragmented dual-system nature of any Freely device, where the Freely side and the TiVo side don’t quite talk to each other seamlessly.
The Aero sold out within 24 hours of launch at Currys – and then kept selling out with every subsequent batch of stock.
By late February, it had disappeared from Currys, Amazon, and John Lewis simultaneously, with Manhattan confirming a wait until the end of March for new stock.
That end-of-March restock arrived on March 31 – and promptly sold out again within days. In some cases, according to Manhattan, shipments of several hundred units sold in under sixty minutes.
Why It Keeps Selling Out
Part of this is simply extraordinary demand for a product category that didn’t exist just six months ago.
Before the Netgem Pleio arrived in November 2025 as the first standalone Freely box, there were no sales figures to reference, no historical data to work from. Manufacturers and retailers had no reliable way to predict how strong demand would be.
What’s become clear is that demand has significantly exceeded almost everyone’s expectations – repeatedly, across two different products from two different manufacturers.
Whether that reflects a sustained mainstream trend or a concentrated wave of early adopters who’ve been waiting a long time for an affordable standalone Freely box is still an open question. Either way, the pattern is hard to ignore at this point.
But demand isn’t the only factor this time. Manhattan has been candid that the supply situation has become more complicated for reasons that go well beyond how popular the Aero has turned out to be.
The Price Rise – And Why It’s Happening
When the Aero returns in early May, it will cost £89.99 – a £20 increase on the original launch price.
Manhattan has been transparent about why. The short version is that the cost of the memory chips and components that go inside devices like the Aero has risen sharply – and the culprit is the global boom in AI.
Building AI data centres requires enormous quantities of the same memory and chipsets that go into consumer electronics.
As that AI buildout has accelerated worldwide, the companies building those data centres have been hoovering up components at a scale that’s pushed prices up and made supply harder to predict for everyone else in the industry – including manufacturers of streaming boxes.
Manhattan says that getting the price to £89.99 rather than something considerably higher has taken real effort, and that it’s the minimum increase that allows them to keep making and selling the Aero.
Their commitment to delivering free British TV without monthly fees, they add, hasn’t changed.
This is a genuine industry-wide issue, not something specific to Manhattan – but that doesn’t make the pill any easier to swallow, particularly for the many viewers who wanted an Aero at £69.99 and never managed to get one before it sold out.
A 29% price increase, arriving before most people have even had a chance to buy the thing at its original price, is a frustrating situation regardless of the reason behind it.
The next batch is expected in early May, though Manhattan notes that stock will likely remain tight until their larger June shipment arrives – from which point they expect to have enough supply to meet demand for the rest of the year.
On a related note, Manhattan has also updated pricing on the T4-R Freeview recorder this week, for the same reasons.
This Happened With The Pleio Too
If this feels familiar, that’s because it is. The Aero isn’t the first Freely box to arrive at an attractive price and then get more expensive shortly after launch.
The Netgem Pleio launched in November 2025 at £99, sold out almost immediately, and then jumped to £119.88 just two months later – a 21% increase.
Netgem’s explanation centred on the cost of their ongoing subscription service and content curation, though the timing – arriving just as stock had stabilised and demand remained strong – was frustrating.
The Pleio’s price has been something of a rollercoaster since. It came back down to £99 for a limited Valentine’s Day promotion, settled at £109.89 around the time the Aero launched in February, and has periodically dropped back to £99 for special sales since then.
Where Does That Leave The Freely Box Market?
Which brings us to where things stand now.
As of this writing, the Pleio is back down to £99 as a discounted price (get it here). Whether that’s a coincidence or a deliberate response to the Aero going out of stock and its price going up is anyone’s guess – but the timing is certainly convenient for Netgem.
With the Aero unavailable and set to return at £89.99, the gap between the two has narrowed to just £10. At that difference, the Pleio’s broader app library – it already has HBO Max, for instance – starts to look more compelling.
The Aero still has its own advantages: the Ethernet port the Pleio lacks, and no ongoing subscription fees for any of its core functionality. But the price gap that made the Aero such an easy recommendation is no longer what it was.
The Humax Aura EZ remains the only option if recording is important to you, at £249 – but it still has quite a few technical issues, as I noted in my review of it.
And the Manhattan S4-R Freesat recorder is expected to be announced soon, adding another option to the mix.
The Aero at £89.99 is still a solid streaming device with no ongoing fees, and for most viewers it will still represent good value.
But £69.99 was exceptional – the kind of price that made it a genuinely easy impulse buy. At £89.99, it’s a more considered purchase, and one where it’s worth taking a proper look at what else is available before you commit.
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