The Netgem Pleio – the UK’s first standalone Freely streaming puck – turns six months old this week, and Netgem is marking the occasion with its latest monthly content drop, headlined by a new cloud game that ties in neatly with something already happening on your TV.
Freely is Everyone TV’s streaming platform, designed to eventually replace traditional Freeview and Freesat.
Instead of relying on an aerial or satellite dish, it delivers live TV through your broadband – BBC, ITV, Channel 4, 5, and 60+ other channels in a unified programme guide, with seven days of backwards catch-up built in.
Until November 2025, it was only available on select new smart TVs. The Pleio changed that.
The Pleio is a small streaming puck that plugs into any TV’s HDMI port and brings Freely to screens that would otherwise never see it – no aerial, no new television required.
On top of Freely, it runs Android TV 14 with full Google Play Store access, so Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Prime Video, and hundreds of other apps sit alongside your live channels on the same device.
It also comes bundled with a wireless gamepad and access to 300+ cloud games through the Pleio Extra subscription – included free for 12 months, and £9.99/month after that. All for £99.
I reviewed the Pleio back in November and gave it 4 out of 5 stars – a promising first attempt with some rough edges, but genuinely useful and with clear room to grow.
Six months on, it’s had several updates, a few pricing adventures, and some stiff new competition. More on all of that below.
What’s New in May
NBA Bounce Joins the Gaming Library
The headline addition this month is NBA Bounce – an arcade basketball game published by Outright Games that’s already available on PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam, and is now coming to the Pleio’s cloud gaming service.
It’s not a simulation – think fun over realism. You pick from all 30 NBA teams, play on team-themed courts with mascots bouncing around the sidelines, and can get up to four players involved locally across modes including Training, Full Season, and Party Mode.
Easy to pick up, chaotic enough to be entertaining, and the kind of game that works well in short bursts – which, as we know from Netgem’s own data, is exactly how most Pleio users play.
The timing is deliberate. The NBA Playoffs are currently streaming on BBC iPlayer, so if the basketball has caught your attention and you fancy taking it a step further, NBA Bounce is a reasonable way to do that without needing a separate console.
Joining it in the gaming library this month are Backpack Hero (a roguelike dungeon crawler where your inventory management is basically the whole game), Dome Keeper (a mining and defence game with a cult following on PC), Gigantosaurus: Dino Kart (a kart racer aimed at younger players), and The Patrick Star Game (yes, from SpongeBob SquarePants).
New FAST Channels
Four new free ad-supported channels are also arriving this month as part of the Pleio Extra subscription:
- The Osbournes – a dedicated channel built around the Osbourne family’s TV output, for anyone with fond memories of Ozzy wandering around his mansion looking confused
- Baby Shark TV – the inevitable small-screen extension of the song that’s been lodged in parents’ brains since approximately 2016
- Adrenaline+ – action and extreme sports content
- Unbeaten – sports-focused, covering underdog stories and sporting comebacks
As with previous content drops, all of this is included in the Pleio Extra subscription – which comes free for 12 months with the device, and costs £9.99/month after that (so basically still free at this point in time for anyone who bought the Pleio).
The core Freely service remains completely free forever.
Six Months In – Where Does the Pleio Stand?
It’s worth pausing on the six-month milestone, because the Pleio’s journey since November has been anything but straightforward.
It launched to genuine excitement, sold out within hours, and then promptly went through a pricing rollercoaster – £99 at launch, up to £119.88 in January, back down for Valentine’s Day, hovering around £109.89 for weeks, before Netgem finally settled on a permanent £99 in April.
That instability didn’t do it any favours with potential buyers, but the permanent price at least draws a line under it.
The competitive picture has also shifted over time. When the Pleio launched in November, it was the only standalone Freely box on the market.
By February, the Manhattan Aero had arrived at £69.99 and sold out overnight at Currys.
The Aero has since gone up to £89.99 – narrowing the gap with the Pleio to just £9 – and the Humax Aura EZ arrived at £249 for those who still want aerial recording alongside Freely.
The device itself has improved through updates. February brought Continue Watching and My List to the home screen – both with caveats about fragmented watchlists that still haven’t been fully resolved – and April added a picture-in-picture-style preview for FAST channels.
The gaming library has grown steadily, and Netgem’s own data shows that 55% of Pleio users have tried cloud gaming at least once, with active gamers averaging around two and a half hours of play per week.
Meanwhile, the monthly content drops signal that Netgem is treating the Pleio as an ongoing platform rather than a one-and-done hardware release.
At £99 with 12 months of gaming and extra channels included, a bundled gamepad, and full Google Play Store access, the Pleio still offers more out of the box than the Aero.
Whether that extra cost is worth it still comes down to whether you want Android TV’s app flexibility and gaming – or a slightly simpler experience with no ongoing fees.
For more news about Freely and streaming TV, Sign up to our free newsletter.