Is NBC’s Peacock TV worth it
Peacock TV is a freestanding streaming service from NBCUniversal that offers a wide range of NBC shows, movies and popular live sports telecasts for a subscription fee.
I’ve used their services for a while and I am impressed with all that they have to offer. Not only that, but this platform also has a reasonable pricing structure making it affordable but I did come across a couple of drawbacks which I’ll get into below.
Let’s go over our Peacock TV review and talk about all that they have to offer.
Here’s what i’ll cover:
- Peacock’s TV Shows and Movies
- Does Peacock TV Have Ads?
- Peacock TV Interface
- Peacock TV Price and Subscription Tiers
- Using the Peacock TV Free Trial
- Peacock TV Compatibility
- Peacock TV : Pros and Cons
- Is Peacock TV Worth It?
NBC Peacock TV Review
Peacock’s TV Shows and Movies
While Peacock TV does not come close to heavyweights like HBO Max, Hulu or Netflix, they do have a significant number of niche TV shows and movies available on the internet.
There is over 13,000 hours of content for free tier members and over 20,000 hours for premium subscribers.
Premium subscribers get access to popular TV sitcoms and shows, Peacock Original TV shows, content from other networks, and live sports. Free subscribers only get access to NBC shows, and content such as Law & Order, Chicago Fire and This is Us.
The drawback of the free subscription is that new episodes of these popular shows will be uploaded on the platform a week after their initial airing. This is not the case with their premium package as users will be able to watch episodes of their favorite shows on the same day of its release.
Channels and On-Demand Content That’s Available on Peacock TV
The paid subscription includes over 20 different channels that also comes with on-demand content. Here’s the complete list of channels and on-demand content available on Peacock TV.
List of TV Channels on Peacock TV
- 80’s Mixtape
- American Greed
- Caso Cerrado
- CNBC Ka-Ching
- CNBC Make It
- D&D Live
- Fail Army
- Fallon Tonight
- Food52
- Hell’s Kitchen
- In It To Win It
- Kiss Me Deadly
- Laugh Here
- NatureVision TV
- NBC NEWS NOW
- NBC Sports on Peacock
- Olympic Channel
- Peacock Reality
- People Are Awesome
- Saved by the Bell
- Seth Meyers Now
- Sky News
- SNL Vault
- Telemundo Series
- The Choice
- The Pet Collective
- The Rotten Tomatoes Channel
- TODAY All Day
- True Crime
- Unsolved Mysteries
- USGA
- Weather Spy
- WWE Network
List of On-Demand Content
- The Office
- Jurassic Park
- The Mummy
- American Psycho
- Dracula
- 21 Jump Street
- Downtown Abbey
- Parenthood
- Below Deck
- Million Dollar Listing New York
- Southern Charm
- Botched
- Flipping Out
- Pawn Stars
- Real Housewives of Dallas
- Storage Wars
- Shahs of Sunset
- Top Chef Masters
- Hell’s Kitchen
- Dateline
- The Kelly Clarkson Show
- Saturday Night Live
- Chicago Med
- America’s Got Talent
Does Peacock TV Have Ads?
Peacock claims that viewers will get to see only 5-minutes of ads per hour or less across their ad-supported free tier..
They do have two ad-free tiers available and both are premium subscription plans that cost $4.99 and $7.99.
While using the free plan I did notice that there were ads riddled throughout the movies and TV shows on Peacock and a full length movie would be riddled with a minimum of 3-6 sixty second ads.
However, while streaming on the Peacock app on my iPhone I did not notice many ads and there was normally a single ad at the start of the movie and none played throughout the rest.
Though, this was not the case when it came to watching SNL where even on the iPhone I had between 7-9 short ads littered throughout the whole episode.
I mean it’s quite decent and much like watching stuff on the TV, but it’s free and can be streamed anywhere.
Now, regarding the ad-free plans. Both are not entirely ad-free and according to Peacock, even their most premium package contains ads in some form or the other.
Basically, a couple of premium TV shows, live events and Peacock channels will have one to two ads played at random during the episode or event and in my opinion, it’s pretty fair considering the low cost of their premium membership plans.
Peacock TV Interface
Peacock TV has a familiar interface and browse section that is quite like other popular streaming services.
There’s a carousel of popular and new release titles at the top of the page followed by rows of different genres including recently watched, continue watching, Peacock originals and featured films.
On the left of the page sits the categories and profile button that takes you to your account information, membership details and sign out. There’s even a kids dedicated page that has a couple of TV shows available meant for kids and most of their good cartoons and shows are available only in the premium membership plan.
With the website and TV app, parents can set PIN enabled parental controls to limit the content that’s displayed on their account and since there’s no option available to filter any of their premium content, there’s very little that kids can actually watch.
The one thing that I did not like about the interface is that premium and free content is mixed in the same screen with no segregation between the two so it tends to get frustrating while picking the show or movie to watch while using the free account.
A good thing about Peacock TV is that you can stream across three different devices simultaneously whereas the drawback is that while streaming, you will not be able to skip the intros and will have to watch the entire title track before starting an episode.
Peacock TV Price and Subscription Tiers
Now, Peacock TV offers three subscription tiers, the first one is the free tier that’s ad-supported and has limited on-demand shows and movies to watch.
The second tier costs $4.99 a month, is ad-supported and has a few more movies and on-demand shows to offer with live sports streaming.
The final and their most popular tier is the $9.99 which includes all that Peacock has to offer and it’s completely ad-free.
You can either opt for their free plan or if you want to watch all Peacock’s content, then go ahead and pick up a premium subscription instead.
The good thing about a premium plan is that subscribers will get a 7-day free trial to test Peacock TV before committing to their services. This trial can be canceled anytime within the 7-day period and there will be no charge made to their card.
If the free trial is not canceled before the 7-days are done then your card will automatically be charged for the next month.
Using the Peacock TV Free Trial
To get access to Peacock TV free trial you will have to sign up for their Premium or Plus plan and the trial will not be extended to those going ahead with the free plan.
The process of activating the free trial is easy and all I had to do was open Peacock TV on my browser and proceed to purchase one of the two premium subscription plans.
Once enabled I received immediate access to Peacock TV for free but was unable to view any of their premium or original content.
I was also given the opportunity to cancel my free trial at any point of those 7 days and not be charged on my account.
The only difference I found between the Peacock free trial and their free subscription plan was that the latter comes with ads in between the shows and movies whereas the former does not regardless of which premium plan is selected.
Peacock TV Compatibility
Peacock TV is available for a wide range of devices. They are:
| Web Browsers: | Chrome 75+ (Windows/Mac) Firefox 88+ (Windows/Mac) MS Edge 80+ (Windows/Mac) Safari 12+ (Mac) |
| Mobile and Tablet Devices: | Android: 6.0 or above iOS: 14 or above |
| Amazon | Fire TVFire Tablet (Fire OS 6 and above) |
| Android TV | Android TV-enabled Smart TVs, such as Sony Bravia, and set-top boxes, including NVIDIA Shield, running Android OS 5.1 and above |
| Apple TV | Apple TV HD (4th Generation or above) with tvOS 13 or above |
| Chromecast | 1st Generation or above, including Chromecast with Google TV |
| PlayStation | PlayStation 4PlayStation 5 |
| Roku | Roku 2 (4210X model only) Roku 3 & 4 (model 4200X or later) Roku Streaming Stick (model 3600X or later) Roku Express/Express+ (model 3900X or later) Roku Premiere/Premiere+ (model 3920X or later) Roku Ultra/Ultra LT (model 4640X or later) Roku TV and Smart Soundbar (model 5000X or later) |
| Xbox | Xbox One Xbox Series X Xbox Series S |
| Cable Provider Set Top Boxes: | Cox Contour Box with Voice Remote Contour Stream Player XfinityXG1v1 |
Peacock TV : Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Free tier has no major limitations | Premium tier still has ads and does not support offline downloads |
| Popular movies and network shows | Few high-quality originals series and lineup is missing |
| Flexible pricing tiers | Constantly changing movie library |
| Supports multiple account profiles | |
| Live sports for paid users |
Is Peacock TV Worth It?
In short, yes, Peacock TV is a worthwhile investment that doesn’t cost much. You get access to some of the most popular and critically acclaimed shows and movies spanning back over 100 years.
Signing up for Peacock TV however is not for everyone and those die-hard Netflix or Hulu fans will never convert to Peacock for a number of reasons. In my opinion, it’s a wonderful service that offers niche content that’s meant for all age groups.
It’s worth subscribing to because of their low cost plans, unlimited on-demand NBC content and an ever growing network of movies and TV shows that can be streamed on different devices.
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