Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Sling TV will give you a free Google Nest Hub if you prepay for 3 months

Simon Cohen
By

We love a good freebie, especially right around the holidays, when every penny counts. If you’ve been thinking of buying a Google Nest Hub, Sling TV has a pretty sweet offer for you: Sign up and pay for three months of service — even at the lowest cost of $25 per month for the Sling Orange channel lineup — and you’ll get a free Google Nest Hub.

Why the generosity on Sling’s part? On the one hand, there’s nothing like a freebie to drive up your subscriber numbers. We’ve seen AT&T’s DirecTV do it in the past with Apple TV giveaways, and there’s no doubt it works — at least in the short term. If Sling is looking to show an increase in their fourth-quarter subscriber numbers, this is a good way to do it.

Recommended Videos

However, the freebie serves another purpose. In November, Sling announced that you can watch its service on Google Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max, making it one of the few live TV streaming services that are compatible with these devices. So it follows that (much like with the AT&T promotion) if Sling gives you a device that lets you stream their service, you might be more inclined to stay subscribed even after the mandatory three-month period.

Related

Still, regardless of Sling’s motivations for the offer, it’s a great deal. Not only do you get a Google Nest Hub, but you also gain the ability to control Sling TV with your voice via the Google Assistant. Voice commands such as “Hey, Google, watch HGTV on Sling” or “play,” “pause,” “skip forward 10 seconds,” or “stop.” If you have a Chromecast-enabled TV or streaming device such as a Google Chromecast Ultra or Nvidia Shield TV, you can cast Sling TV to these devices with your voice from the Nest Hub.

The Google Nest Hub giveaway is only for new subscribers and the deal isn’t compatible with Sling’s free-trial periods, so you won’t be getting 30 days free. Still, if you’ve been thinking of cutting the cord, or switching your live TV streaming provider, this is an excellent opportunity to get more for your money.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like…
Google TV gives NFL Sunday Ticket top billing, adds FAST channels
Google TV free channels.

Google announced today that all Android TV and Google TV devices in the U.S. are getting more than 25 new free channels, baked right into the operating systems' Live tabs. That brings the total number of built-in FAST channels to more than 100, meaning that you'll be able to watch all kinds of free content without having to download a single thing. It's all built in.

FAST channels refer to free, ad-supported television and can be individual shows or entire channels of content. Google didn't immediately name the 25-plus channels, but said they include the BBC and Lionsgate. (You can see a big list of them here.) And that's on top of the others that were added in the spring, which brings a ridiculous 800 or so channels (more or less) to the platform. Whether they have what you want to watch? That's completely up to you. But it's free.

Read more
The Roku Channel is now available as a Google TV app
The Roku Channel app on Google TV.

The Roku Channel — one of the major services in the FAST category — is now available as an app on Google TV and Android TV. That's a good thing because The Roku Channel says it already reaches an estimated 100 million people in U.S. households with its wealth of free movies and series.

But it's also still a step removed from competing services like the Paramount-owned Pluto TV, which has direct integration with the Google TV live listings and doesn't require a separate download. Still, it's more free content on a low-cost piece of hardware, and who doesn't like that? The Roku Channel sports more than 350 free live linear channels (as in everyone is watching the same thing at the same time), as well as movies and series, live news, and more.

Read more
Sling TV is at its lowest number of subscribers in 5 years
Sling TV app icon on Apple TV.

We've written about how streaming video isn't a zero-sum game, despite all the headlines declaring that the Streaming Wars are in full swing. But that's not to say that churn — the act of a subscriber bailing — isn't very real. It is, and it's one of the main metrics streaming companies worry about.

This brings us to Sling TV. Parent company Dish just announced its first-quarter 2023 earnings and with it, new subscriber numbers for Sling TV. That gives us five full years of data — 21 total quarters. And that data is interesting for a couple of reasons.

Read more