FuboTV aims for fans of sports and 4K, but at this price it needs ESPN – CNET

In the future, live TV streaming services like YouTube TV, Sling TV and FuboTV are what live television is going to look like. No set-top box (although AT&T TV seems to think it’s a necessity), and instead all of your live TV shows will be streamed over the internet. To differentiate itself from rivals, FuboTV touts a sports-centric focus and also happens to be the only such service that streams shows in 4K, including the Super Bowl. It offers a lot of non-sports content too, including plenty of the most popular channels. At $55 monthly, though, it is one of the most expensive options.

Like all live TV streaming services, FuboTV offers a free trial period (one week) and theoretically if you wanted to sign up for a one-off event, like, say, the Super Bowl, you could always cancel afterward and not pay a dime.

FuboTV does what it’s supposed to do, but it’s not a great value because of the channels it’s missing — namely ABC local stations and, in a major omission for a sports-centric service, ESPN. At this price, most people are better off getting YouTube TV. 

What is FuboTV?

FuboTV launched in January 2015 as a soccer (er, football) streaming service and has expanded its reach with an extensive list of channels. Of our top 100 channels Fubo has 65, second only to YouTube TV with 67. FuboTV branches out into most categories including crime, drama and movies, but its sports origins are still apparent. For example, on the home page, after the 4K spotlight, the final row is a list of football games, mostly UK soccer at the time of our review.

While Fubo does offer live 4K sports programming it’s only for a select number of events, including the Super Bowl and The Westminster Dog Show in February and the NCAA basketball tournament (March Madness) next month. You can find which events, including the Super Bowl, are coming up in 4K on FuboTV here. While it’s regularly updated, it’s not the most glamorous or easy-to-find list — as it’s buried deep on Fubo’s support page. 

There are some channels missing, however. Firstly, the lack of ABC is weird for a service that charges $55 a month — every other premium live TV streamer carries ABC local channels live. And despite its sports heritage the omission of both ESPN and recently, Fox’s regional sports networks (RSNs) is also pretty glaring. Fubo also recently dropped FX and FX Movies, although it does carry Fox News. The chart at the end of this article has a full comparison of how FuboTV’s channel lineup fares against competitors.

The cloud DVR comes with just 30 hours of recording by default, although users can boost this to 500 hours for an extra $9.99 a month. By comparison, YouTube TV’s DVR has unlimited storage. I found that I filled Fubo’s 30-hour limit without trying at all, so I would recommend upgrading — especially if you record entire TV series or games from your favorite teams.

What’s it like to use?

The options across the top of the home screen are myriad: Search, Home, Sports, Shows, Movies, Guide, Recordings and Account. It’s too much and feels cluttered. YouTube TV offers five options but they’re grouped in a much less visually demanding way, with account and search collected as smaller icons in the corner.

Most of these menu options summon a Netflix-like grid, which groups similar types of content, and the navigation speed varied according to platform. I used the interface on the most popular devices including Roku, Fire TV Stick, Apple TV (

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), iOS and the Chrome browser. I found that while the mobile/browser versions worked as expected, the TV iterations varied, and some were a little rough around the edges. 

I liked Roku best for browsing — it was responsive and let me use the fast-forward key to zip through the thumbnails. Roku weirdly lacked a progress bar from some on-demand content (SyFy and BBC America for example) so it was hard to know how far forward or back I was going.

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The Apple TV offered an unusually sloppy experience — at times the Apple TV remote felt too sensitive, and it was easy to scroll up or down too far with a single press. Similarly, search was hit or miss — you need to have the mic button appear on the screen while on the Search page or else attempting a voice search pulls you out into the Apple TV interface. Meanwhile, I found that its competitor, YouTube TV, offers a much more tightly integrated Siri experience — press the mic button and it searches within YouTube.

My least favorite Fubo platform was the standard Amazon Fire TV Stick, and this is likely due to the hardware itself — the first giveaway was the lack of a fast-forward capability that Roku offers. Scrolling, whether it up/down or left/right was laggy, with a noticeable stutter and each thumbnail would take a couple of seconds to appear. The newer Fire TV 4K was better, but it still lacks Alexa integration for quick voice searches.

Speaking of search functions, Fubo predictably falls short of YouTube TV on every platform. Using “Super Bowl” as my search term brought up 25 different programs — mostly pregame events — none of which were the game itself. I had to search for “49ers” to get the game. Searching Super Bowl on YouTube TV put the correct event at the very top.

Should you get it?

FuboTV is enjoyable enough and it offers a number of different channels, but for the money there is some very tough competition. If you’re a hardcore sports fan, and particularly of soccer, it could be worthwhile to sign up for at least a week and try it out. At the end of the day, though, FuboTV’s deficiencies outnumber its advantages: compared to its closest competitor YouTube TV, it’s it’s more expensive, harder to use and offers less channels.