Manhattan Aero Freely Box Review: Freeview’s Future

For years, the idea of watching live British television without an aerial has felt like a futuristic dream.

Streaming versions of BBC One, ITV, and Channel 4 have existed for a while – but scattered across separate apps, without a proper TV guide, and without the feeling that you’re actually watching television rather than hunting through menus.

Freely was supposed to fix that. It promised a proper unified programme guide, live channels delivered over broadband, and catch-up content all in one place.

The catch? You needed to buy a brand new television to access it. That frustrated a lot of people. And it created a market.

The Netgem Pleio arrived in November 2025 as the first standalone Freely box – a small puck that brought Freely to any existing TV. It sold out within hours. Demand, it turned out, was enormous.

Now Manhattan TV – one of Britain’s most established set-top box makers, and the company behind the popular T4-R Freeview recorder – has entered the market with the Aero.

At £69.99, it’s the most affordable standalone Freely box yet, running TiVo OS alongside Freely’s live TV platform, and bringing Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and more to the same device. It also sold out within 24 hours of launching – but of course, it’s not all perfect.

After more than a week of testing, here’s whether it lives up to the hype.

Who Is The Manhattan Aero For?

Manhattan has been making Freeview boxes for over 30 years – but the Aero is something quite different from anything they’ve done before.

There’s no aerial port, no hard drive, no tuners. It’s a streaming-first device that delivers live TV entirely through your broadband connection, and it’s aimed squarely at viewers who either can’t get decent Freeview reception, don’t want to deal with aerials at all, or simply want a more modern way to watch free British television.

What Is Freely?

If you’re not already familiar with Freely, here’s the short version: 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 (and on-demand) TV 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, no pixelated pictures when it rains.

Freely launched in April 2024, but only on brand new smart TVs from a handful of manufacturers. If you had a perfectly good television already, tough luck.

The standalone Freely box market only emerged in November 2025 – and the Aero is the latest, and most affordable, entry into that market.

The one thing Freely doesn’t do – and won’t do, by design – is let you record programmes. You’re entirely dependent on catch-up services, which we’ll come back to later.

So Who Actually Benefits?

The most obvious use case is viewers with poor Freeview reception. If you’ve spent years battling pixelated pictures, missing channels, or signals that drop every time a plane flies over – the Aero solves that completely.

As long as your broadband is solid, you get clean, reliable HD on all the main channels, full stop.

It’s also ideal for second rooms where running aerial cables is impractical – bedrooms, kitchens, home offices – anywhere you’ve got Wi-Fi or an Ethernet connection.

And if you’re already a Manhattan customer with a T4-R in the living room, the Aero makes an interesting companion device rather than a replacement.

Keep the T4-R for recording and aerial-based Freeview, and use the Aero for its streaming picture quality – which is worth noting is consistently HD, whereas traditional Freeview still carries a large number of SD-only channels. The two devices actually complement each other rather neatly.

That said, the Aero isn’t quite the one-box-to-rule-them-all solution some viewers are hoping for.

TiVo OS covers the essentials well – Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, YouTube are all here – but some notable names are missing. Sky’s NOW, Apple TV, Discovery+ and Paramount+ don’t have native apps on TiVo OS, which means if those services are a big part of your viewing life, you’ll either need a workaround or a second device alongside the Aero.

The Netgem Pleio was the first standalone Freely box, launching at £99 last November (now £109.89), with a longer list of supported apps. The Aero undercuts it at £69.99 – and brings some meaningful differences to the table. We’ll get into that head-to-head properly later.

Setting Up The Manhattan Aero

The Aero is a compact square box – 96.4mm x 96.4mm, and just 26mm tall. I was expecting something similar to Manhattan’s T4 Freeview Play box, which is already on the smaller side, but the Aero is even smaller.

It’s not quite as tiny as the Pleio puck, but it’s not far off. Despite its small footprint, it has a satisfying bit of heft to it, and it looks the part too – smart and understated, the kind of thing that sits quietly next to your TV without drawing attention.

In the box, you get the Aero itself, the voice remote (with batteries included), a 1.2m HDMI cable that supports up to 4K/60Hz, and a USB-C power adapter.

There’s no Ethernet cable included – so if you’re planning to use the wired connection, you’ll need to supply your own – and no aerial cable, obviously, since there’s no aerial port.

The remote deserves a mention. It’s a TiVo remote at heart, so it does have quite a few buttons – it’ll take a little getting used to if you’re coming from something simpler.

But Manhattan has done a thoughtful job of customising it for the Aero. There are dedicated shortcut buttons for Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, Prime Video, and TiVo’s free channels hub, which are handy.

More importantly for Freely users, there are two buttons that cut straight to the heart of the device – a Freely button that takes you to the Freely homepage, and a prominent Guide button that jumps straight into the Freely EPG.

For less tech-savvy viewers (i.e. your grandparents), those two buttons are really all they need to know about. Tell your grandfather to press Guide for his channels, and he’ll be fine.

One practical quirk to be aware of: the remote uses Bluetooth, which is great – no need to point it directly at the box, and it works from anywhere in the room. However, waking the Aero from standby requires line of sight because it switches to infrared when the device is off.

In practice, that means you can’t tuck the Aero behind your TV or hide it in a cabinet – it needs a clear view of the room to wake up properly. Not a dealbreaker, but worth knowing before you decide where to put it.

On the back, you’ll find an HDMI 2.1 port, a LAN (Ethernet) port, a USB-C port for media playback from a storage device, and the USB-C power input.

The Aero also supports Google Cast, which will come in useful for some of the apps that aren’t natively available – more on that shortly.

Getting up and running is genuinely straightforward – arguably simpler than any Freeview box, because there’s no aerial scanning to sit through. Connect to your TV via HDMI, plug in the power, connect to your Wi-Fi, and enter your postcode so Freely can identify your regional channels.

No email address required, no account to create. The whole process took just a few minutes, and I was watching live TV almost immediately after.

A brief note for anyone using a Sky Glass TV: the Aero’s HDR output didn’t play nicely with Glass during my testing, resulting in washed-out colours. Turning HDR off in the Aero’s settings fixed it straight away.

It’s an unusual combination – if you’ve got Sky Glass and an active Sky subscription, you probably don’t need a Freely box in the first place – but it’s worth knowing if you happen to be in that situation.

Using The Manhattan Aero

When you first turn on the Aero, you’re greeted with the TiVo home screen – a combined view that shows you Freely channel recommendations alongside apps and content suggestions from the other streaming services.

It’s a reasonable starting point that gives you a flavour of everything the device can do in one place.

Press the Freely button on the remote, and you get the Freely-specific home screen instead – thumbnails of what’s live right now on Freely channels, on-demand recommendations from the broadcaster apps, and quick shortcuts to iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, and the rest of the Freely apps.

It’s a cleaner, more focused view if all you want is your free British telly.

And then there’s the Guide – which has its own dedicated button on the remote, and is arguably where many people will spend the most time.

I’ve been testing the Aero for just over a week now, and for the most part, the experience has been smooth.

That said, there are a few early-stage bugs: during my testing, the remote stopped responding for about 20 seconds on one occasion, the YouTube app crashed back to the main menu, and once the main TiVo home screen didn’t load properly and required a device reset.

None of these has happened more than once (so far), and they haven’t seriously disrupted my overall experience. Manhattan and TiVo will almost certainly iron these out through software updates, as they already have with previous devices, but if you’re buying now, just be aware it’s still early days.

Freely On A Box

For the majority of Cord Busters readers, this will be the main event – so let’s spend some time on what Freely actually feels like to use day-to-day, because if you’ve never used a Freely TV or the Pleio, it’s worth understanding how it differs from traditional Freeview.

Press Guide and you’re presented with an electronic programme guide that will feel immediately familiar to anyone who’s used a Freeview box.

Rows of channels, columns of time slots, and programme information when you highlight something. It’s not trying to reinvent anything – it just works.

As with Freeview Play before it, Freely’s EPG lets you scroll backwards. Go back through the guide and you can browse programmes that aired up to seven days ago – and selecting one takes you straight into the relevant catch-up app to watch it.

No hunting through iPlayer or ITVX separately, no trying to remember which app a show was on. It’s all right there in the guide.

You can also scroll forward, of course – up to seven days ahead to see what’s coming up and plan your viewing.

What you can’t do, unlike on a Freeview box, is set a reminder for an upcoming show. There’s no “remind me” option in the Freely EPG – if you want to make sure you catch something live, your best bet is to add it to the Freely watchlist and hope you remember to check it.

Speaking of the watchlist – it’s a useful enough feature. Flag a show you’re following, and it makes it easy to jump straight to the right app to continue watching. It’s less of a traditional watchlist and more of a quick-access bookmark system, but it does the job.

The Restart feature – which lets you jump back to the beginning of a programme that’s currently airing – works well on the main public service broadcaster channels.

It’s not available across all Freely channels yet, but for BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, it works as you’d expect.

Watching Live TV

Here’s where Freely’s streaming-first approach shows both its strengths and its trade-offs.

Changing channels takes around 2-3 seconds – there’s an unavoidable delay compared to the instant switching of an aerial-based Freeview box, simply because each channel has to be fetched over your broadband rather than received directly from a transmitter.

You get used to it quickly, and it’s quick enough not to kill the joy of channel surfing – but it’s worth knowing upfront if you’re a committed channel-flipper.

Once a channel is playing, though, the experience is solid. Picture quality is consistently good, and many Freely channels are in HD.

That’s a meaningful upgrade over traditional Freeview, where a surprisingly large number of channels are still SD-only. No pixelated pictures when it rains, no interference from passing planes, no fiddling with aerial positioning. It just works.

The one caveat is that Freely’s channel lineup, while growing steadily, is still smaller than traditional Freeview.

Some channels haven’t yet made the jump to streaming, so if you’re a devoted viewer of some of the smaller Freeview channels, there’s a chance your favourite isn’t on Freely yet.

Pause and Restart

Freely supports pausing live TV on all channels, but only for 15 minutes. After that, the stream simply starts playing again automatically.

For a quick distraction or a short phone call it’s fine – but if you’re used to the generous buffers on traditional Freeview recorders, 15 minutes feels like a fairly tight window.

Consider yourself warned: that’s a doom clock ticking away when you hit pause.

One Thing To Note About ITV

Of all the Freely channels, ITV is the only one that requires you to sign in before you can watch any live content.

Every other main channel – BBC, Channel 4, 5 – streams immediately without any account needed. ITV insists on a sign-in or sign-up to ITVX first.

You only have to do it once, and it only takes a couple of minutes – but it’s a slightly jarring experience when everything else just works straight away.

The Streaming Apps

Beyond Freely, the Aero gives you access to a solid selection of streaming apps through TiVo OS.

Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube, Tubi and Plex (including full personal media server access) are all here, alongside a handful of additional streaming services and apps you’ve probably never heard of.

There are also a handful of simple casual games available, though gaming isn’t really what the Aero is about.

Furthermore, TiVo+ brings a hub of over 400 free, ad-supported streaming channels – pulling in content from Tubi, Plex Channels, and TiVo’s own selection.

With such a large pool to draw from, there are some hidden gems in there, and the more popular older films are easier to find than on most FAST channel platforms.

The only downside is that right now, you only get channel thumbnails with no EPG – so you can’t easily see what’s on or browse a schedule. I’m told TiVo is working on adding an EPG for these channels, which should make the whole thing significantly more useful when it arrives.

What’s missing is where things get a bit more disappointing. Sky’s NOW, Apple TV+, Discovery+/TNT Sports, and Paramount+ don’t have native apps on TiVo OS.

For some viewers that won’t matter at all – but for others, those are significant gaps.

There are workarounds. Discovery+, Apple TV and Paramount+ are all available as Prime Video Channels – so if you have a Prime Video subscription, you can access them through that app, albeit via Amazon’s version of the subscription.

The Aero also supports Google Cast, which means you can cast from your phone or tablet to fill some of the gaps – I tested this with Apple TV (from an Android phone), and it worked, though the picture quality wasn’t quite as clean as a native app.

Watchable, but not something you’d want to rely on as your main solution.

There is some good news on the horizon. I understand that Sky’s NOW should be coming to TiVo OS later this year.

And HBO Max – launching in the UK on March 26 – is also expected to get a TiVo app, which is important because TNT Sports is moving to the HBO Max app as well.

That would plug one of the bigger gaps in the lineup. Whether those apps arrive quickly after launch or take a while to materialise remains to be seen.

For now, the honest truth is that the Aero isn’t quite a complete one-stop-shop. It covers the essentials well – if your viewing life revolves around the main streaming services and Freely channels, you’ll be fine.

But if you subscribe to some of the missing services, you’ll occasionally find yourself stopping to think: can I watch this on the Aero, or do I need to reach for something else? That friction is real, and it’s worth acknowledging – even if it’s likely to improve over time.

A Device Of Two Halves

Going back to having several separate homescreens – if any of this is starting to sound familiar, it’s because it’s a challenge that affects every Freely device – not just the Aero.

The fundamental issue is that Freely operates as a largely self-contained platform that doesn’t really talk to anything outside of its own ecosystem.

That means two separate searches (one for Freely content, one for TiVo apps), two separate watchlists, and two separate sets of recommendations – none of which know what the other is doing.

Voice search, for example, only works on the TiVo side – it can find content on Netflix, Prime Video, and the rest, but it can’t search Freely channels or broadcaster apps.

If you’re looking for something on iPlayer, or for the timing of a live show on ITV, you’ll need to use the separate Freely search instead, which doesn’t support voice.

It’s not a disaster, but it does mean you occasionally have to stop and think about which search to use – which rather defeats the point of having a search button.

This isn’t Manhattan’s fault, and it isn’t TiVo’s fault either. It’s simply where Freely is right now as a platform – and it’s a limitation you’ll find on the Pleio too.

What is specific to the Aero – and worth understanding – is that Manhattan has taken a different approach with this device compared to everything they’ve made before.

Their previous boxes, like the T4-R, run Manhattan’s own custom software, giving them direct control over every aspect of the experience.

The Aero runs TiVo OS instead, and while Manhattan worked closely with TiVo during development, they don’t have the same direct control over updates and feature changes.

The upside of that trade-off is significant – TiVo OS is a mature, polished platform that already has Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and more, all certified and working.

Building those integrations from scratch on a custom OS would have taken years. The downside is that Manhattan is more dependent on TiVo’s roadmap for improvements – so when new features arrive, or when issues get fixed, that’s partly in TiVo’s hands rather than Manhattan’s alone.

It’s a reasonable trade-off for a £69.99 device, but it’s a different dynamic to what Manhattan customers might be used to.

How Does It Compare?

The Freely box market has gone from nothing to three standalone devices in the space of a few months – so it’s worth knowing where the Aero sits relative to its competition.

Aero vs Pleio

The Netgem Pleio (see my full review) is the Aero’s most direct competitor – both are streaming-only Freely boxes with no aerial port and no recording capability.

At £109.89, the Pleio costs £40 more than the Aero, and that price difference is hard to ignore.

The Aero has a clear advantage in connectivity – it includes an Ethernet port for a wired connection, which the Pleio lacks entirely. The Aero is also the better value proposition for most viewers, full stop.

Where the Pleio fights back is in its app selection. Running Android TV means access to the Google Play Store – and that matters, because new streaming services tend to arrive on Android much faster than on TiVo OS.

You’re not waiting for TiVo to strike a deal and certify each new app – it’s just there.

The Pleio also bundles a gamepad and includes 12 months of cloud gaming access, which for the right viewer is a real bonus rather than a gimmick.

So the choice largely comes down to this: if gaming doesn’t interest you and you’re happy with the apps TiVo OS currently offers, the Aero is the smarter buy.

If you want the broadest possible app compatibility and don’t mind paying more, the Pleio has the edge.

Aero vs Humax Aura EZ

The Humax Aura EZ is a fundamentally different device, and it’s worth being clear about that upfront. At £249, it’s aimed at a specific audience – viewers who still value recording and aren’t ready to rely entirely on catch-up services.

The Aura EZ combines a traditional Freeview recorder (triple tuners, 2TB hard drive, record four channels simultaneously) with Freely streaming support.

If recording is non-negotiable for you, it’s currently the only Freely device that offers it – though it’s worth noting that recording only works from aerial-based Freeview channels, not from Freely’s streaming platform itself.

The catch – and it’s a big one – is that beyond the Freely broadcaster apps, there are no other streaming apps at all on the Aura EZ. No Netflix, no Disney+, no YouTube.

For a £249 device in 2026, that’s a striking omission. If you want your streaming services, you’ll need a separate device alongside the Aura EZ.

So if you record a lot and your viewing is primarily UK broadcast television, the Aura EZ makes some sense. If you rarely record and want Freely plus your streaming apps in one affordable package, the Aero is the more compelling option – at less than a third of the price.

What About Fire TV and Roku?

It’s worth briefly mentioning that if Freely specifically isn’t a priority for you – perhaps your Freeview reception is fine and you just want a capable streaming device – then a Fire TV Stick 4K (from around £59.99) or a Roku Streaming Stick (from £39.99) remain excellent options.

Both offer broader app libraries than any current Freely device, polished interfaces, and lower price points. The Fire TV even has a limited EPG that shows live programming from the British broadcasters, but when you select a programme to view, it opens up the relevant app.

What they can’t offer is Freely’s unified EPG – that seamless blend of live TV and catch-up content in one programme guide.

If that’s what you’re after, you need a Freely-certified device, and right now the Aero is the most affordable way to get it.

Bottom Line – Is The Manhattan Aero For Me?

Let’s be honest: for a lot of viewers – particularly those who’ve been watching Freeview for decades – the idea of ditching the aerial entirely and trusting your television to your broadband connection feels like a big leap.

What if the internet goes down? What happened to just… plugging in an aerial and watching telly?

The Aero won’t silence every one of those concerns. But it does something important: it makes the transition feel manageable.

At its simplest, the Aero is a device you can plug in, enter your postcode, and immediately start watching BBC, Channel 4, and dozens of other channels – in HD, without an aerial, without creating an account (pointing a finger at you, ITVX), and without navigating anything more complicated than a familiar-looking TV guide.

For viewers who want nothing more than that, it just works. The TiVo OS, the streaming apps, the FAST channels hub – all of that can sit quietly in the background until you’re ready to explore it. And if you never do, that’s fine too.

For more confident users, the Aero is a capable and well-priced streaming device that covers most of the bases.

Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube, Plex, Freely – all in one £69.99 box with no ongoing subscription.

That’s a compelling proposition, and Manhattan deserves credit for bringing it to market at a price point that makes it an easy impulse buy rather than a considered purchase.

The frustrations are real, though. The missing apps – NOW, Apple TV, Discovery+/TNT Sports, Paramount+ – mean that for some viewers, the Aero can’t quite be their one and only device.

The dual-system nature of any Freely device adds friction that shouldn’t really exist in 2026. The early-day bugs, while minor, are a reminder that this is still a young platform finding its feet.

And yes, I know – some people don’t want anything to do with a device that doesn’t record.

But here’s the thing: most of those issues (except for recording) are fixable, and the Freely platform itself will hopefully improve over time. The Aero you buy today will very likely be a better device in 12 months.

At £69.99 with no ongoing fees, the Manhattan Aero is easy to recommend to most viewers – easier to set up than any Freeview box, and genuinely good enough for the vast majority of what people actually watch. If the missing apps are a dealbreaker for you, the Pleio’s broader selection might be worth the extra £40. For everyone else, this is the one to get.

Note: The Aero was supplied by the manufacturer for this review. As always, this did not influence my unbiased opinion of the product.