If you’ve been trying to get your hands on the Manhattan Aero – the £69.99 Freely streaming box that launched earlier this month – you may have noticed it’s become rather difficult to find (again).
As of this week, it’s sold out at Currys, Amazon, and John Lewis simultaneously, and Manhattan has confirmed that new stock won’t be available until the end of March.
That’s roughly a month’s wait – which is going to be frustrating news for anyone who’s had the Aero on their shopping list.
The sellout does say something encouraging about demand for Freely standalone boxes, and Manhattan clearly isn’t complaining. But if you were hoping to buy one soon, you’ll need to either sit tight until late March, or look at the alternatives in the meantime.
Here’s why this keeps happening – and what Manhattan has to say.
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 of them.
Instead of receiving channels through an aerial or satellite dish, Freely delivers live TV and catch-up content over your broadband connection.
You get BBC, ITV, Channel 4, 5, and 60+ other channels, all wrapped up in a unified programme guide that lets you scroll backwards through the last seven days and jump straight into catch-up content. No aerial required, no signal issues.
When Freely launched in April 2024, the only way to access it was by buying a brand new smart TV from a handful of select manufacturers.
That frustrated a lot of people with perfectly good existing televisions who just wanted to try the platform without spending hundreds on new hardware.
The standalone Freely box market only emerged in November 2025, when the Netgem Pleio launched as the first device to bring Freely to any existing TV via HDMI.
The Manhattan Aero arrived on February 5 as the second standalone Freely box – and the most affordable yet, at £69.99.
Running TiVo OS, it gives you Freely’s full live TV and catch-up experience alongside major streaming apps including Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, and YouTube.
It also includes both WiFi 6 and Ethernet connectivity, 4K output, and voice control. No aerial port, no recording capability – it’s a streaming-first device, pure and simple.
I reviewed the Aero last week and gave it 4.5 out of 5 – it’s a compelling device at a price point that makes it an easy recommendation for most viewers.
The main caveats are a handful of missing apps (Sky’s NOW, Apple TV+, Discovery+) and the dual-system nature of any Freely device, where the Freely side and the TiVo side don’t quite talk to each other as seamlessly as you’d like.
Sold Out Again – And Again
The Aero has now sold out not once, but multiple times over since its launch.
When it first went on sale at Currys, it was gone within 24 hours. Fresh stock arrived at Currys around February 17-18, with Amazon and John Lewis also receiving allocations around that time.
For a brief window, all three major retailers had it available.
That window didn’t last long. Stock sold through rapidly at all three retailers, and this week the Aero has gone dark everywhere at once.
Manhattan addressed the situation this week, calling the response “nothing short of extraordinary” and acknowledging that shipments to Currys, John Lewis and Amazon had repeatedly sold out within hours of going on sale – at a speed that had, in their own words, “quite simply taken our breath away.”
Alex Arbab-Zadeh, Manhattan’s COO, told Cord Busters: “The response to the launch of the Manhattan Aero has been astonishing, with repeated shipments of stock arriving at major retailers and then selling out in just a few hours.”
He added: “The reaction from media, retail and – most importantly – from our customers, has been incredible and we are working to ensure that, barring the short lull in availability we will see over the next few weeks, we will be able to meet demand going forward and over the long term.”
Why Does This Keep Happening?
It’s worth understanding why stock shortages like this happen, because it’s not simply a case of poor planning.
The standalone Freely box is a new product category. Before the Pleio launched in November, it didn’t exist at all – there were no sales figures to reference, no historical data to work from, and no reliable way for either manufacturers or retailers to predict how strong demand would actually be.
When the Pleio arrived in November, it sold out on Amazon within hours of launching – catching Netgem themselves off guard.
At the time, it was easy to write that off as a one-time surge of pent-up enthusiasm from early adopters who’d been waiting 18 months for a standalone Freely device to exist.
But when the Aero launched in February and immediately repeated the pattern – selling out within 24 hours – that explanation starts to feel less convincing.
When a brand-new type of product arrives, retailers (and the manufacturers) naturally tend to be cautious with their initial orders. Order too conservatively, and you sell out immediately and disappoint customers.
Order too aggressively, and you’re left with a warehouse full of unsold stock and a problem of a different kind. With no precedent to go on, caution is understandable – even if it’s frustrating from a buyer’s perspective.
But at this point, with two different products from two different manufacturers both repeatedly disappearing off shelves, the message is fairly hard to ignore.
Whether this level of demand reflects a sustained mainstream trend, or a concentrated wave of early adopters who’ve been waiting years for an affordable standalone Freely device – that’s a harder question to answer.
The Aero’s £69.99 price point makes it an easy impulse buy, and Freely has had significant pent-up interest since launch.
As the platform moves beyond the early adopter crowd and into more mainstream territory, we’ll get a clearer picture of whether demand continues at this pace or settles down – and what this means for the future of Freeview and Freesat.
When Can You Get An Aero?
According to Manhattan, a significant new shipment will be available at Currys, John Lewis, and Amazon by the end of March – so roughly a month from now.
If you want to be notified the moment it’s back in stock – and be in with a chance of winning one of 10 Aeros that Manhattan is giving away in a raffle alongside their newsletter signup – you can register your interest here.
What Are Your Alternatives In The Meantime?
If a month feels too long to wait and you want to get onto Freely sooner, there are two other standalone Freely boxes currently on the market – though both come with their own caveats right now.
The Netgem Pleio is the Aero’s most direct competitor, running Android TV and priced at £109.89 – £40 more than the Aero (but currently down to £99 as part of a limited time offer).
That higher price buys you broader app compatibility through the Google Play Store (including services like NOW and Discovery+ that aren’t yet available natively on TiVo OS), plus a bundled gamepad and 12 months of cloud gaming access.
It’s the better option if app selection is a priority for you. Worth noting, however, that the Pleio has also disappeared from Amazon this morning – we’ve reached out to Netgem to find out what’s happening there, and we’ll update you when we hear back.
The Humax Aura EZ is a rather different device altogether – a £249 hybrid box that combines a traditional Freeview recorder (2TB hard drive, triple tuners, record up to four channels simultaneously) with Freely streaming.
It’s the only standalone Freely device that lets you record at all, which makes it a compelling option if recording is non-negotiable for you (but only from the aerial-based channels, not from Freely).
The significant trade-off is that it has no third-party streaming apps whatsoever (other than the Freely broadcaster apps like iPlayer and ITVX) – no Netflix, no Disney+, no Prime Video – which is a notable gap for a £249 device in 2026. The Aura EZ is currently available from Currys.
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It is quite confusing with these Freely boxes. I the demand so high they can’t keep up with it or is production so slow and limited in volume because they are struggling to source the components? Without knowing how many units have actually been shipped and sold so far it’s hard to know for sure but maybe it’s a bit of both especially if they are going to take a month to manufacture.
I’m considering getting rid of Sky Q and getting a Freely box. I would want to watch Sky occasionally, so I’d need NOW. You say that this isn’t “yet available” on the Manhattan. Do you know whether it’s coming? Or am I reading too much into the word “yet”? Also, it’s disconcerting that the Pleio listing has completely disappeared from Amazon. Hopefully just temporary.
I understand a NOW app is indeed coming at some point – but WHEN is a different matter…