Apple TV 4K GUI (UI) stuttery / lagging; poor Bluetooth connection to Siri remote

A final update: With Apple announcing no new TV devices today, it's just not rational to buy into their expensive 3-year-old hardware. If I were to contemplate something as expensive as a Mac Mini as an alternative device, I'd clearly want HDMI 2.1 with 4K 120Hz / sync support for that kind of money, but the brand new Mac Mini announced today only has HDMI 2.0. High-end 4K TV support is out of the question on Macs. They'll get there I think, but not this year.

So, since I'm staying with simple, dedicated devices: I just ordered a Roku Ultra ($99 US), which could be a transition device allowing me to move smoothly into alternative ecosystems, or perhaps have a good enough Apple TV app that I don't feel the need. Fingers crossed!

A follow-up for search engine archives. It's not a good outcome.

• The shop insisted that for Apple products, an on-the-spot replacement is not possible. I had taken more than 14 days to try and self-diagnose the issue before deciding it was some kind of fault, and it turns out Apple (in NZ at least) has a 14 day "dead on arrival" period where a retailer just replaces the device, but once that expires you're stuck with repairs.
• They sent it to the local Apple-approved service centre. The service centre misunderstood all info about both old unit & new unit remotes working fine on my old Apple TV, but both remotes failing the same way on the new Apple TV; so for some reason, they just swapped the remote rather than deducing that the fault must surely be in the Apple TV. This took 14 calendar days.
• Apple's authorised, qualified service centre did not, it transpires, re-test the device with that remote. When I got it home, I found it was in even worse state than when I gave it to them. It would boot to the initial country/region selection screen, but refused to pair with any remote at that point.
• I took it back. The shop insisted that NZ consumer law gives them 2 attempts to fix it, so back to the service centre it went.
• The service centre noted - now fully aware that swapping remotes made no difference - that the unit was not responding to the Siri remote at all, but did respond to an IR remote. Surely, even an unqualified individual would make a reasonable deduction that this was a bluetooth receiver fault in the Apple TV, but instead, Apple's certified technicians just ordered another replacement Siri remote.
• Unsurprisingly, this didn't work. They ordered a replacement Apple TV unit. They sent this back to me. The whole process took a further 11 days. They did not test the new unit; it was fully wrapped in the protective plastic, including the black sticky film that runs around the circumference of the AppleTV.
• I used the replacement unit last night. It seemed to work well for about an hour and, for a moment, I was actually able to enjoy watching TV to try and de-stress in the evening. The UI is still a bit stuttery compared to the old HD unit, especially in the "multitasking" switcher view; I suspect the GPU is underpowered given it has 4x the number of pixels to push in 4K vs HD; but that said, it was nowhere near as bad as the old 4K unit had been and the remote seemed to be working well...
• ...until after an hour or so while just watching some content, a "Remote disconnected" notification popup appeared, followed immediately by "remote connected".
• The UI started to lag more, the remote became very hard to use & it wouldn't even soft-restart - it would crash with the white LED permanently lit, but no TV display output, when asked to restart. Power cycles were needed by pulling out the power cable.

So, the new unit seemed to last about an hour before, rather bizarrely, suffering what appears to be the exact same failure as the previous Apple TV 4K unit. Meanwhile, my years-old-now 4th gen HD Apple TV unit continues to function smoothly.

The original 4K unit was manufactured, according to serial number, in November 2019. The replacement was built two weeks later, also in November 2019; I might suspect a bad batch of components, but the new one was made in a different factory so this seems unlikely. It therefore seems more likely that there is a hardware design issue that causes the 4K units to be prone to bluetooth failure (perhaps within some range of manufacturing date, due to maybe different part specifications over time - the 4K design has now been in manufacture for 3 years, which is an eternity for a computing device so sourcing the exact same Bluetooth, Wifi etc. modules may not have been possible).

Since the shop had now tried twice to repair it, I was _finally_ given the option to refund or replace. Between initially thinking it was something I was doing wrong, to going around the repair cycle twice, I've not had a working device for around 7-8 weeks. In the end, I obviously have no confidence in the current 4K Apple TV hardware so elected for a refund and will not be purchasing a replacement from Apple.

I'm investigating competitors such as Roku and in the mean time will use the TV's built in apps, for the short window of time while they still work (no OS updates are being issued for the TV anymore even though the design is only one year old).

I'm happy to hear about people who have no such issues or those who experience the same thing. In particular, if lots of people say "mine works fine" it adds weight to the idea that my unit is actually defective and I can get it swapped.

All opinions welcome - thanks :-)

Thanks - yes, it's connected direct to the TV with a 2.1 certified cable and the connection is very solid. No extenders (2m cable) and the HDMI connection tests work fine. Video and audio playback is great. It's just a stuttery UI and a bad Bluetooth connection.

I put my old Apple TV unit in the exact location with the same cables last night, and both old and new remotes functioned smoothly. A telltale is Siri dictation from the remote, which is almost completely non-functional with the new Apple TV unit but worked smoothly with the old.

I do note that the previous generation is Bluetooth 4 and the new is Bluetooth 5, so there's a decent chance that the new chipset has issues (either in bad software, or just in this particular environment) and/or is negotiating to a higher level protocol that might be more sensitive to range. Either way the outcome is bad.

Certainly it sounds possible-bordering-probable that the new 4K unit has hardware trouble. I'll be heading to the reseller today with the receipt to ask them what my options are, angling to swap it out as a precaution.

Sorry to hear that. When I finally got a replacement unit, I note that it was pretty fast at first. The "multitasking" switcher for app selection was stuttery, and that's definitely just an underpowered hardware issue - both CPU and GPU IIRC are about twice as fast, but at 4K vs HD it's pushing 4x the number of pixels - general scrolling and menu selection was fine, though and Bluetooth was just as responsive as the HD unit. It felt more or less just as fast as the old HD unit.

BUT - after a few hours that suddenly it all went south - the remote disconnected & reconnected and then, well, that was that. The UI started to struggle & the remote wasn't reliable anymore. Brand new unit, same old problem.

My guess is that something along these lines happens: The bluetooth chip / board in the 4K breaks down, perhaps from hot/cold cycles, or just warming up for the first time. Bad solder joint, bad board connection, whatever. The failure mode might be generating a large number of spurious hardware interrupts so the software system is running hard to deal with them all. That's why the whole device seems to slow down once the Bluetooth connection issue arises.

I know from my own tests and the repair cycles that this is a hardware fault. It is not fixed by software resets or remote changes, and either stays the same or worsens over time. The phone app works because it's going over WiFi not Bluetooth, but even then the UI will continue to visibly lag and struggle because the faulty bluetooth unit inside the Apple TV is still malfunctioning. At least the 4K still seems to play video OK - just the UI seems to start to fail - and yes, you can use the phone as a remote effectively. Going back to the older HD was a relief in the sense that the UI and remote works flawlessly, but you lose out on HDR and ARC doesn't work so well (perhaps because of fewer supported audio formats, and/or because it's only got HDMI 1.x support, not HDMI 2).

You've probably had a broken unit for long enough that it misbehaves even when first powered on "at the wall" and cold, so if it's under warranty, it'll be easy to demonstrate the issue and I would suggest you seek a replacement. There's a good chance it'll also fail, but if so, you can eventually aim for a refund under warranty if it can't be fixed, maybe?

Just as an alternative, bear in mind that the 2020 Chromecast (https://store.google.com/us/product/chromecast_google_tv) looks really amazing, performs extremely well, is only $49.99 USD and you can install all kinds of fun stuff like retro games console emulators. Yes, it won't (of course!) run the Apple TV app so iTunes content can't be played in 4K, but there's such a big price difference that you could just re-purchase quite a few movies off the Play Store and still have money left over.

I don't understand Apple's strategy with any of this - their offerings are so poor that they're kinda forcing me into the opposing ecosystem :-(