Sling TV Review 2026: I Used This Budget Service for Two Weeks and Actually Liked It

It’s tempting to jump for joy over Sling’s most basic service, Sling Select. The package costs just under $20 a month—making it one of the cheapest streaming TV options on the market. But Sling Select doesn’t offer a whole lot of actually good TV, and most users are better off choosing one of the higher-tier packages or for a Day Pass (which I discuss further in the next section).

Select only comes with 10 channels, including Fox News as the only news channel. Local channels are only available in select markets, and the other channels mostly center around nostalgic brainrot like the Game Show Network. You do get a couple of sports channels: Fox Sports 1 and NFL Network. But Sling Select doesn’t strike me as a crucial service when there is such a dire limit to the channel surfing possibilities. There are plenty of other ways to veg on the couch for free, including scrolling Instagram and TikTok.

One of the best things about Sling TV is the fact that it offers short-term “Day Passes” without requiring a monthly subscription. Sling TV currently offers the Orange plan as a 1 Day, 3 Day, or 7 Day Pass—perfect for a day, a weekend, or a week’s worth of TV.

The service comes with 34+ live channels (including ESPN and ESPN2) along with thousands of movies and shows available on demand. Prices start at just $4.99 and it automatically shuts off when the time is up, so no need to worry about auto-renewal.

1 Day Pass

$4.99

3 Day Pass

$9.99

7 Day Pass

$14.99

The genius of this day-pass service is that it lets you use TV for more of an on-demand purpose. Rather than sign on for a monthly package, you can sign up short-term to watch a specific sports game—or election coverage, an awards ceremony, or anything else available on Sling. The passes are mainly geared towards sports events, available only with the Orange plan, so just make sure to look up what you’re about to watch to check if it’s on Sling before signing up.

Sling TV has a simple but useful app for smart TV sets. The home screen includes multiple carousels to direct you to popular content, and you can easily jump to different programming without having to scroll through the channel list. One of the coolest features is a Recommended For You carousel on the home screen that features programming based on your most watched content. It lets you skip the channel guide and hop directly into Home Alone or a live news report from the White House, with a status bar showing how far along each program is.

I have a fiber-optic connection and gigabit speeds from Google Fiber at home, but Sling TV’s app tended to be slow and clunky even on my hyperfast internet connection. The screen would sometimes freeze as I surfed between channels. When I pulled up the channel guide, my current channel would keep broadcasting in a thumbnail on the bottom right corner of the screen. But sometimes the thumbnail would disappear as the app struggled to load.

Still, I found the app to be intuitive to use. The channel guide that you can access via the home screen sorts channels into relevant categories, making shows easy to get to with minimal scrolling. I also like that Sling gives you channels that you actually have access to—I never found myself teased or upsold with long lists of unavailable channels, as I’ve experienced using DIRECTV.

Sling’s HD video quality was consistent whatever channel I was on, and the DVR works well. When I pulled up a few prerecorded episodes of Rubble & Crew—a Paw Patrol offshoot from Nick Jr.—the CGI animation maintained a glossy sheen in playback while the sound stayed consistent and cued up with the video. There wasn’t any lag or glitching that made rewatching those shows a bummer.

Sling TV’s website can be a little too confusing for my tastes: It takes some digging to find all the add-ons and other features and see how much they cost. But it was no big deal for me to pull up account information, figure out how much I was paying, and generally manage my subscription. 

If you’re a true TV buff, you will invariably end up disappointed with the limited channel selections on Sling TV. Most of Sling’s packages are geared towards specific audiences, and what you end up with is a list of plans that give you some great channels but not others.

Figuring out what I can get required some sleuthing as I looked up channel guides for all of the plans. But generally speaking, it all shakes out like this:

• Sling Orange includes popular sports channels and entertainment options
• Sling Blue is oriented towards news, dramas, and reality TV
• Sling Orange & Blue combines both, making it the best bet overall
• Sling Select has 10 channels only, so it’s the most bare-bones package
• Freestream is a free service that includes 600+ channels and doesn’t require an account

Thankfully, Sling fills out its offerings with all the channels on Freestream, and it also sells a handful of bundle options to let you bulk up on better-known cable TV programming. I had access to Sports Extra, which gave me a lot more options to choose from, including a British darts competition that kept me entertained for a couple hours.

Still, the bundle prices add up quickly, and it’s more practical to get YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV for boob-tube viewers who want lots of channels with minimal fuss.

It’s a little tricky to figure out how to get local programming over Sling TV. My Orange & Blue package included local Fox and CBS TV news stations in major cities including Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia. However, there were no local channels based out of Salt Lake City, where I actually live. Sling only offers local channels in a limited number of markets (you’ll have to look on its website to see which ones), but some can be accessed via over-the-air antenna.

That said, I’m big into news coverage and I was blown away by the sheer number of international news channels on Sling—available along with lots of other international channels through Sling’s Freestream service.

Of course, my package gave me the usual American slate of news channels like CNN, Fox, and MS NOW (formerly MSNBC). But I was also able to watch news shows based out of Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East. I follow the Middle East closely and I was particularly happy to find Al Jazeera in both Arabic and English—along with other Arabic-language channels covering the genocide in Gaza, developments in Saudi Arabia and Iran, and other current affairs in the region.

I’m not a huge sports fan myself, but sports lovers on Reddit report that Sling TV offers a solid selection of channels. The Sports Extra add-on seems to be a must have, providing a full platter of programming from NFL Network, RedZone, Big Ten Network, SEC Network, and more. As I mentioned before, Sling has limited access to local and regional channels, which may impede some viewers’ ability to watch local games. Also, ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer service is shaping up to be a serious Sling competitor, with low pricing that could make for a better option.

Sling TV comes at a lower price than all the other major streaming TV options—even with a bundle add-on like Sports Extra, you end up saving money compared to what you get with YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV. The drawback is that Sling comes with fewer channels and includes the potential for more headaches, with the price tag going up through its multiple add-on and bundle options.

As far as bang for your buck, YouTube TV may be the better pick because it comes with 100 channels right off the bat and also lets you watch out-of-market Sunday afternoon football games through the premium NFL Sunday Ticket. Hulu + Live TV also has way more channels, as well as ad-supported versions of Hulu and Disney+. However, both of these services come at a steeper price, making them better for diehard TV watchers.