I recently lost my Apple TV remote (the latest model) and despite apparently being somewhere in the couch according to Find My, my wife and I can not find it. We were using our phones as remotes for a couple days, which was annoying, but got the job done. But then I was doing something random with the TVs standard remote and for whatever reason I had the Apple TV on screen and used my Hisense remote to arrow around. To my surprise, it totally worked.

I’m sure this is a well-known thing, but I just hadn’t thought about my TV remote being able to control the UI of my Apple TV. I assume this is something to do with ARC over HDMI or something, but whatever the reason it works!

Now, I expected for this to feel like a stopgap until we found the actual Apple TV remote, but I actually really like using this compared to the Apple TV’s real remote. It feels better in the hand, the buttons are more satisfying to press, the buttons are less prone to accidental presses, there’s no trackpad I can accidentally brush and select the wrong thing, and the button layout is more logical to me. Seriously, I’ve been using the redesigned Apple TV remote since 2021 and I still have to look at it to remember where the mute and play buttons are because they’re not where I’d expect. 4 years of use and it’s still not muscle memory! Meanwhile, a day with the Hisense remote and I’m pressing buttons with confidence without looking at the remote. Maybe it’s a me thing.

But here’s the other thing…my TV (65" Hisense U7G Series Quantum ULED 4K UHD Smart Android TV from 2021, for those wondering) has its own app store as well, and I’ve been playing around more with that since my remote makes it easier than the Apple TV to launch Netflix, YouTube, and a few other services I use, so I’ve been playing in the Android TV interface for bit this week as well.

You know what…it’s pretty good! The main interface is certainly a little more cluttered than Apple’s, but it’s not bad, especially since the last few years of Apple TV software updates have pushed their recommended movies and shows much more prominently in the UI than the things I’m currently watching. There’s even a “play next” queue that is exactly like the Apple TV’s “continue watching” queue. And yes, just like on the Apple TV, Netflix is basically the only holdout of working with this queue.

One thing that really stood out to me is that my TV has a 120Hz refresh rate, and the UI updates at that full 120Hz. That means that scrolling around the home page as well as using every app on the system feels buttery smooth compared to the 60Hz locked output of the Apple TV interface. Animations are also a bit quicker across the board, and I find browsing apps like YouTube to be much nicer in the Android TV interface than on the Apple TV. What?! And it’s not just Google’s apps, it’s everything. Netflix feels better, Disney+ feels better, and even Apple TV+ feels better. What is happening?!?!?!

Now it must be said that while the in-app experience is very good across the board for me, there are some visual hitches in the Google TV home page interface when scrolling quickly, seemingly tied to when it needs to load a new section of the UI, and that does feel worse than the general consistency of the Apple TV. Also, it’s very nice being able to use my iPhone to type or fill in logins with my 1Password account when using the Apple TV, both of which are obviously not possible when using Google TV. And as someone who likes Apple’s movie storefront and who uses it to buy and rent most of the movies I watch, it’s a bummer that I can’t use that on Google TV (anticompetitive app store rules and commissions come for us all, even Apple).

So yeah, I don’t plan on abandoning my Apple TV or anything, but actively using Android TV and a more beefy remote for a few days has opened my eyes a bit to what else is out there and that it’s not as bad as us Apple-only folks often assume. If nothing else, it’s given me some things to wish for in the next version of tvOS: 120Hz support and quicker interactions would be nice. On the hardware front, I would love a chunkier remote with a better button layout and the ability to more easily avoid accidental swipes. Some more size might also make it easier to implement proper Find My support rather than the vague one we have today, although the added size would also make that feature less needed since it would be harder to slip into just about any crevice it gets anywhere near to.

Final disclaimer here is that apparently the Hisense line that I have sports a quite impressive processor for a TV and this smooth and fluid experience isn’t what most people will get on their TVs. I’ve used enough family TVs to know that the experience can often be very sluggish and pretty nightmarish. We have another TV in the house, a cheap Samsung that runs Roku and I want to jump out a window every time I use that god-awful UI. But Android TV on decent hardware is something I could easily use for the rest of my life and be pretty happy.