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Home / Awards / The Stuff Gadget Awards 2023: TV streaming service of the year

The Stuff Gadget Awards 2023: TV streaming service of the year

Which service is best for bingeing? We’ve been watching closely – and we have winner

streaming service of the year

We’ve mainlined so much telly this year that our eyeballs have gone veritably cuboid, and still we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s available via the streaming services.

With more of them around than ever, checking out everything worth watching is all but impossible to anybody with a family, job or adequate personal hygiene regimen, which is why we have so many articles dedicated to recommendations.

We’ve also spent time with our eyes affixed to every service available in the UK, leaving us in a position to gauge which of them have excelled themselves this year – and which have fallen short of the mark.

So grab your popcorn and get comfortable, because without further ado here it is: 2023’s best streaming service.


Best streaming service of the year: Apple TV+

Slow Horses Apple TV+
Slow Horses from Apple TV+

Apple TV+ has been quietly excelling itself all year. OK, so it didn’t deliver a big movie hit in 2023 in the same way as 2022’s Oscar-winning Coda, and its library remains tiny compared with the likes of Netflix and Prime Video, but this service has always been about quality over quantity; consistency over chaos. That approach has yielded fantastic shows like Severance, Ted Lasso, Slow Horses, Foundation and Silo – and for a price of $9.99/£8.99 per month after a recent rise. Mind you, many don’t pay for it – Apple is nothing if not generous when it comes to handing out lengthy free trials and it is also bundled with Apple One. While it’s not included in Apple TV+ (and is not cheap), we’ll also give Apple a shout out for its MLS Season Pass add-on. It feels like a technically impressive glimpse at the future of soccer/football coverage.

Read: The best things to watch on Apple TV+

Highly commended: Disney+

Only Murders in the Building Disney+
Only Murders in the Building from Disney+

Our 2022 award winner had a rather more chaotic 2023, with the majority of its ‘main draw’ Disney/Marvel/Star Wars offerings being somewhat underwhelming (with the exception of Andor, which is the best thing to come out of the Star Wars universe in years). On the other hand, some of its ‘grown-up’ non-franchise releases, such as Welcome to Wrexham, Fleischman is in Trouble, Only Murders in the Building and the incredible second season of The Bear, have been utterly brilliant. So it fully deserves our runner-up medal.

Read: What to watch on Disney+

Also shortlisted: Amazon Prime Video, Netflix

While Netflix’s price rise, trigger-happy series cancellation policy and crackdown on password sharing have banished much of the goodwill surrounding the streaming service, it’s still packed full of great stuff, while Prime Video’s huge library and low price mean it’s still the best-value streaming service around.


Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home