'I ditched my aerial for a Freely TV and I don't regret it one bit'
TV has changed a lot over the past few years, from flicking through channels to find something to watch, to now getting everything on demand and over the internet. That's extended to those programmes you used to get through an aerial, thanks to a service called Freely.
Freely takes BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 and delivers those over the internet, meaning that you don't need an aerial. As long as you can connect your TV to your home Wi-Fi, you can stream all that content instead.
I'm a TV review and tech expert and I ditched my aerial for a Freely TV and I don't regret it one bit. Freely is supported on a range of TVs, like this great-value Hisense E6N model.
This 50-inch TV is £249 on Amazon for a 4K TV with Dolby Vision, giving you access to those terrestrial channels via the internet, as well as the likes of Netflix, Disney+ and YouTube.
The best thing about the Hisense E6N is that it was double the price when it launched in 2024, so it's a huge discount and a lot of TV for the money.
The advent of Freely means that you can put a TV anywhere that you have Wi-Fi, without worrying about connecting to the roof aerial, or using a fiddly indoor aerial. If you want a TV in your kitchen, you can just make a space, mount it on the wall, or put it wherever you want.
If you want a TV for a bedroom, again, there's no stress about aerials or limiting what people can watch. You just connect to your Wi-Fi and let Freely do the rest.
Hisense has been making a big impact on TV across the UK over the past few years. It's a brand that packs a lot of technology into its TVs, from affordable models like the E6N here, right up to OLED and Mini-LED TVs, like the 75-inch Hisense U7 ( £999 on Amazon).
It's not the only brand offering Freely: it's also available on some Amazon Fire TV models, like the Fire TV Omni QLED (£359.99), as well as being a feature of affordable models using the new TiVo platform.
The great thing about this 50-inch model is that you're getting the full benefit of 4K resolution, so there's loads of detail on the screen. If you're watching Blu-ray discs they will be upscaled, while for Prime Video, 4K HDR content is standard, but for Netflix you'll need the Premium plan.
There's support for Dolby Vision for amazing colours and HDR highlights as well as HDR10+, which you'll find a lot of on Prime Video.
Hisense uses a platform called VIDAA, which has loads of streaming apps and is fast and smooth to use. It even supports Alexa, so you can use voice searching from the remote.
If you don't want to use Freely, there's a standard Freeview tuner built in, but if you can't connect an aerial, you just have to setup Freely when you first turn on the TV and you'll get those essential broadcast channels via Wi-Fi instead.
It is worth noting that like standard ariel TV it's reliability can be affected in bad weather. Back in May this year, Freely had to issue a statement to users.
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