Sky Live review: Clever interactivity but limited appeal

When Sky first announced its Sky Glass streaming TV back in 2021, it promised there would be a camera with it too. Fast forward two years and here we are – it’s called Sky Live.

Sky Live offers four key things; Zoom video calling, a developing library of movement-orientated games like Fruit Ninja – as well as branded bits and pieces from Monopoly, Morph and Peppa Pig – a new fitness app called Mvmnt that reacts to your actions in real-time and finally, watch together so you can see sport or movies alongside your friends. More experiences will come says Sky, but these are the ones it is currently concentrating on.

You can get Sky Live from £6 per month or from £20 per month with a 43in Sky Glass, though you need to add a Sky subscription on top of that from £26 per month.

• See the Sky Live deals from £6 per month

Design and how it works

There’s one prerequisite for Sky Live and that is Sky Glass. It can’t yet work with Sky Stream or Sky Q. It takes up two ports on the back of the Glass – HDMI (ARC) and USB-C and as such it is quite resource-hungry on a TV that only boasts three HDMI ports. A privacy button on top turns off the camera and mic.

The Sky Live camera tracks movement. It works very similarly to Microsoft’s now-defunct Kinect camera tech for Xbox. And that’s no surprise since Microsoft’s involvement was announced at the very first preview of the camera at the Sky Glass launch. It’s taken two years more for the project to yield a shipping product.

Most control is still with your Sky Glass remote, though. When you first plug in Sky Live, it pops up on the Sky Glass interface, known as EntertainmentOS. You simply set it up from there and enter the Sky Live menu when you want to use one of the camera’s features. Setup is relatively simple and you’ll be up and running in just a few minutes.

Apps and games

The games are fun. Things like Fruit Ninja really come to life as you use your hands to slice through fruit. It’s mostly novelty stuff though. New games will need to appear on a regular basis to hold the interest.

Watch Together is compelling in theory but in practice very limited – because it requires your watchalong buddies to also have Sky Glass and Sky Live. It could be pretty effective for sport though.

Fitness is really the killer app for this camera and the Mvmnt app can act like a personal trainer. Since the camera tracks your movement, it can give you tips on what you’re not doing so well and stop you from slacking. You can also see how well you did with the workout overall and track your progress over time.

Zoom is a welcome addition to Sky Live and the companies worked together to optimise the experience. Anyone who has used Zoom before will be familiar with it. The camera will also track those in front of it and automatically zoom to keep everyone in focus or pan across the room.

Mvmnt is developed by those behind another fitness app called WithU and there are 130 workouts available for you to try. Clearly a lot of work has been put into this part of the experience in particular – it’s pretty slick.

Sky Live verdict

The four main Sky Live experiences are great, but some are more compelling than others. Fitness is where it’s at for us and while the gaming is good fun, more games and apps will be needed over time to keep the experience fresh. To be fair, Sky has said that Sky Live will keep developing and if it does it could become the success that Microsoft’s Kinect wasn’t.

Sky Live tech specs

Camera	12MP HDR with 110 degree field-of-view
Microphones	4 mic array
Outputs	USB-C to USB-C and HDMI (ARC)
Dimensions	145x47x31mm
Weight	130g

• See the Sky Live deals from £6 per month