Full Sling TV Review: Can You Build Your Perfect Streaming Plan?

Sling TV is one of the most customizable streaming services I’ve tried. Its vast array of add-ons lets you create a truly personalized streaming package cheaper than most other cable replacement plans I’ve seen (probably because you’re not paying for excess channels you don’t use). I did find it lacking in local channels, though its integration with an antenna was surprisingly timesaving.

In a hurry? Sling TV allows you to build almost any channel lineup you want at a lower cost than most — great if you know exactly which channels you need and don’t want to pay for the ones you don’t. Save 50% on your first month of Sling TV.

Pros & Cons of Sling TV

Sling TV Overview

Sling TV is one of the cheapest ways to stream live TV online. While I thought this was because it offered fewer channels than many others, I’ve since realized this is Sling’s strength: first, it doesn’t provide many of the smaller niche channels you probably won’t ever use, and second, Sling TV’s customizable add-ons let you design your perfect streaming package — so you’re only paying for what you want and will use.

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Plans and Channels

Instead of tiered plans, Sling TV has two separate base packages: Sling Orange and Sling Blue, starting at $45.99/month. Or you can get both at the discounted price of $60.99/month. to get 50+ channels.

Sling Blue is suited for pro football and news, including Fox Sports (FS1) and NFL Network, plus your local Fox and NBC affiliate (if you’re within a select market). Sling Orange is better for college sports fans and families as it has channels such as ESPN and Disney.

Once you have a base plan, you can add more channels with one (or more) of Sling’s “Extras” packages. These are typically 5-10 channels within a particular category, such as sports, kids, or movies, for $6-$11 per month.

Additional Features

Sling TV works on most devices, including smartphones, smart TVs, and even gaming consoles like Oculus Go. Depending on your plan, you can watch on up to four screens at once, and every Sling subscription includes 50 hours of cloud DVR storage.

You don’t even need to sign up to get content with the launch of Sling Freestream. This claims to provide 500 live channels and more than 40,000 on-demand shows and movies for free — though most of the titles and channels I’d never heard of.

Sling TV’s basic plans are comparable to Philo in price, though I think Sling offers a more premium channel selection. And when you include its bundles and add-ons, Sling TV rivals Hulu and fuboTV as a cheaper cable replacement.

Sling TV Base Plans

There are two base plans with Sling TV: Sling Blue and Sling Orange. Each of them costs $45.99/month, or you can combine the two for $60.99/month.

The Sling Blue plan includes Fox and NBC channels, while the Sling Orange plan includes ESPN and Disney channel. They both offer many of the same popular channels like AMC, Cartoon Network, CNN, Comedy Central, Food Network, Nick Jr, TBS, and TNT.

If you combine Sling Blue and Orange, you get all 50+ channels. See our Sling TV Packages Guide for a complete list.

Sling TV International and Latino

Sling also provides plans for channels and content in over 20 languages, including Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic. There are extra options for international sports, such as cricket and soccer.

Local Channels

The only local channels available with Sling are Fox and NBC, and you’ll only get these with Sling Blue if you’re within a select market. Check out our full guide to local channels on Sling TV to see if your area is covered.

Sling’s local channel offering seems disappointing at first, but then I discovered Sling integrates with antennas –- it’s the only streaming service I’ve tried that does this. If you set up an antenna (and Sling will offer you a discounted one if you prepay three months of your plan) any channels that antenna picks up will be shown in your Sling TV guide. This was more timesaving and useful than I first thought, and considering most areas get ABC, CBS, NBC, and one or more Spanish-language channels, it’s also cost-efficient.

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Sling TV Add-Ons

The add-ons are what make Sling TV stand out from its competitor streaming services, even those that cost more than twice as much per month. They may seem confusing at first, but they allow you to create a completely customized plan so you’re only paying for the channels you want and will use.

See our full Sling TV Packages Guide for further details on extras and add-ons.

Sling Extras

There are seven “Extra” packages, which are a small bundle of channels within a set category, such as News, Sports, Entertainment, Kids, and Lifestyle. Most of the included channels are the same whether you have Sling Blue or Sling Orange, but there are the occasional differences.

Sling also has non-channel add-ons, such as its DVR Extra which upgrades the storage on your included DVR.

Sling Premium Channels

I was in awe when I first saw Sling’s list of premiums — they’re the icing on the customizable cake. You can choose from standard premium channels like Showtime, Starz, and MGM+, or take a look at the three or four documentary channels such as Discovery+. You can even subscribe to TV for your dog.

Most are under $10/mo, with many under $5/mo. You can subscribe and cancel whenever you like and never commit to longer than that month.

If you’re an existing Sling TV subscriber and want to cancel your plan, we’ve got a guide for that.

Sling TV in Action: User Experience

When you sign up and log in to your Sling TV dashboard, you have six main menu options:

• My TV: TV channels and programs based on categories such as genre and release date. You can also create your own custom row of live TV channels here. The most popular rentals are also shown here, so some of the sub-menu content overlaps.
• On Now: Similar to the ‘My TV’ tab, this sub-menu shows you categorized programs, but only what’s currently live. If you prefer a visual of titles, you may prefer to use this over the Guide tab.
• Guide: The classic TV guide with each channel taking a row and programs are shown by start and finish time (it also has a list view and a block view of channels too). You can scroll through the page to see each channel’s program plan, change the day to see future guides, or filter channels by clicking on the ‘All Channels’ filter icon. When you pick a channel, you can choose to record a program, start it from the beginning, or watch it live.
• Sports: Again, this page categorizes sports programs by type of sport like baseball, boxing, or football. You can see what sports are on live, categories of sports channels in your Sling TV plan, and any sports available on-demand.
• Rentals: Movies that are not included in the on-demand library are available to rent.
• On-Demand: Sling TV has thousands of titles in its on-demand library, even though it’s mostly known for the cable-free live TV feature. From movies to TV series and documentaries, you can find many on-demand titles to choose from.

Aside from these main menu options, you can also use the search bar to find titles by name.

How to Change the Settings on Your Sling TV Account

There’s a settings menu labeled with a gear icon (⚙️). This has six sub-menus where you can manage your Sling account settings:

• Account: Manage your username, password, and subscription plan.
• Parental Controls: If you have kids using the Sling TV account, this menu allows you to filter any content that’s considered inappropriate based on ratings. You can also lock rentals and add-on purchases.

• DVR: Your recorded titles and DVR settings can be managed from this menu. If you have the basic 50 hours of DVR space, you can also upgrade to 200 hours here.
• Support: Contact Sling TV’s customer support via this sub-menu. There’s a URL that takes you to the online help center.
• Closed Captions: Toggle closed captions as default for all available titles.
• Device: A device manager where you can see which devices you’ve used Sling TV with. You can also rename devices in this menu.
• Connection: Check your Wi-Fi connection and bandwidth use and set limits to your maximum bandwidth.

If you’re using an antenna with Sling TV, you’ll also have a settings menu for OTA channels to manage the local channels you get.

Note that these sub-menu labels may differ on some devices, but the features are the same.

How to Add Channels To Your Custom List

To create a custom list of live TV channels, follow these steps:

1. Log in to Sling TV
2. Go to My TV > My Channels
3. Click Add Channels
4. Select channels you want to add to Favorites by clicking on the icon
5. Click Done.

Clicking on this category now will display all your favorite channels and the programs they’re currently playing, including whether the show is a new stream on live TV, what time it started, and what program is up next.

Sling TV’s Performance and Specifications

Sling provides 4K streaming with all its plans, but you need a 4K-compatible device for this to work. I tried with my Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and found it worked as promised.

I recommend you have an internet bandwidth of at least 20 Mbps per session to get 4K.

Sling TV Interface

Sling TV released a major interface overhaul in 2021, which slowly rolled out to various devices over months.

This will differ slightly depending on the device you’re using, but in general the Guide is now subdivided into several useful categories: All, A-Z, Favorites, Recents, Sports, News, Movies, Kids, and Free.

I found the Recents function particularly useful (perhaps because I’m too easily distracted)!

TV Everywhere Coverage with Sling

Sling TV allows you to use other apps to watch supported content. I thought this was fairly limited:

Devices Supported by Sling TV

Sling TV works on most streaming devices, including:

See our Sling TV Devices page for a complete list and more details.

How to Get Freebies from Sling TV

I’ve seen Sling provide several offers for devices over the years if you prepay some of your subscription in advance. Here are Sling’s current offers:

• Free AirTV Mini: Prepay for two months of your subscription and get a free AirTV Mini streaming device. Worth $79.99, the AirTV Mini supports 4K streaming and is optimized for Sling TV.
• AirTV 2 + HD Antenna for $49: Prepay for three months of your Sling TV plan and get this package of devices $100 cheaper than their $149.94 value. An antenna will pickup any local over-the-air (OTA) channels and the AirTV 2 device will stream them straight through the Sling TV app.
• AirTV Anywhere + HD Antenna for $99: Prepay for three months and get an antenna and streaming device worth $244.98 for $150 less. Like the AirTV 2, the AirTV Anywhere streams local channels from your antenna onto your TV, but it also has a built-in hard drive for DVR recording and extra tuners (so you can watch on more screens at once, depending on your plan’s limit).

How To Watch Sling for Free

I was shocked to discover there’s now a free version of Sling TV — and you don’t even have to sign up or enter a credit card! You can access it from your browser too.

The service is called Sling Freestream, and it provides 500 live channels and more than 40,000 on-demand shows and movies for free. But after trying it out, I was a little disappointed to realize I didn’t recognize many of the titles or channels offered. So while I can’t complain, since it’s free, I can’t see it replacing paid streaming services any time soon.

Final Thoughts

Considering it’s one of the cheapest streaming services, Sling TV has a lot to offer. You can take advantage of its free offerings, sign up to a base package as a low-cost bargain service, or create your own custom package with Sling’s multitude of add-ons.

Because that’s where Sling really shines: no other service comes close to offering the vast number of individual add-on options. If you get the Sling Orange + Blue plan for $60.99/month, and go for the Total TV Deal on top, you’ll pay $82 per month for multiple streams on up to four devices, 200 hours of cloud DVR, and 120+ channels that include sports networks covering entire seasons of football, soccer, MLB, college baseball, and more, plus at least a dozen kids channels and general family-friendly TV shows and movie networks.

I will point out that it can be a little dangerous when you start adding all those extras — a $3 add-on here, a $6 add-on there, and you can easily get carried away; before I knew it, Sling was no longer the cheapest deal around! But if you know exactly what you want, Sling is a rational option with plenty of useful and efficient features (especially when it comes to integrating free local channels through an antenna).

Get started with a free trial and you don’t even have to pay anything to try it out for yourself.

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Frank Moraes

I am a Senior Content Editor at Hotdog.com, specializing in sports streaming and regional programming issues. With a PhD in Atmospheric Physics from the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and extensive experience in remote sensing technology, including early video streaming, I bring a unique technical perspective to the streaming industry.

My expertise in sports coverage, particularly for out-of-market games and regional sports networks, stems from years of hands-on experience as an early adopter of streaming services and my work addressing fans' viewing challenges. As a longtime cord-cutter and subscriber to multiple streaming platforms, I combine my technical knowledge with practical user experience, making me a leading expert in the field of sports streaming and entertainment technology.

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