Peacock Review: Who’s it Best For in 2024?

Being the streaming platform of the country’s first major television broadcast network, NBC, the arrival of Peacock in 2020 didn’t really come as a surprise. And in the ever-expanding world of streaming services, Peacock has quickly established itself as a serious contender.

Our Peacock review dives into the price plans, content library, user interface, and more to help you determine if Peacock is the right streaming platform for you.

How much does Peacock cost in 2024?

Peacock initially had a completely free tier with around 10,000 hours of content, but it scrapped the offering in early 2023. It had ads and a movie library stocked with mostly older, straight-to-video, or low-budget films. And most TV shows only had the first episode available for free—which is essentially a preview.

While it’s hard to complain about free, it was mainly designed to nudge you toward a paid plan.

And it keeps things simple with 2 paid plans to choose from. While the plans increased in price in August 2023—one by a dollar and one by two—both are still among the most affordable on-demand streaming plans available today.

Premium: $5.99/month

• 80,000+ hours of TV, movies, and sports
• 50+ linear channels
• Live sports and events, and current NBC and Bravo shows
• Ads: Yes
• User profiles: 6
• Downloads: No
• Simultaneous screens: 3
• Quality: Up to 4K, HDR10, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, Dolby 5.1
• Annual Plan: $59.99/year

Premium Plus: $11.99/month

• Everything in Premium
• Local NBC channel live 24/7
• Ads: No
• User profiles: 6
• Downloads: Yes (select content)
• Simultaneous screens: 3
• Quality: Up to 4K, HDR10, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, Dolby 5.1
• Annual Plan: $119.99/year

Peacock vs. the alternatives

Prices and features mean little with nothing to compare them to, so here’s how Peacock stacks up against the most popular on-demand streaming services in its general competitive vicinity.

Looking at the above, it’s clear that Peacock is still one of the most affordable streaming services around. The ad-supported plan is the same as Paramount+ and cheaper than Netflix’s newish plan with ads.

But price isn’t everything. Things like content variety, original programming, and user experience are all important factors when choosing a streaming service.

What kind of content does Peacock have?

Offering one of the most well-rounded content platforms around, Peacock boasts a diverse content library, made up of original shows, movies, live TV, kids’ content, and sports. Let’s explore each one of these in more detail.

Original content on Peacock

Does Peacock have original content? That’s a silly question to ask about the country’s leading television network. Peacock has had a slate of original shows in all genres and formats, from comedy to drama to reality TV and beyond.

Like all TV networks, it’s had some duds, most notably its attempted revivals of Saved By the Bell and Punky Brewster. Although its revival (and dramatic reworking) of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air—now just Bel-Air—has been a success. It also lost one of its treasures, Girls5Eva, which moved to Netflix for its third season. And some well-received shows—like The Resort—were canceled after a single season.

However, the caliber and selection of Peacock originals are a long way from the quality of established heavy hitters like Max and Netflix and relative newcomer Apple TV+. While some shows—like Poker Face—live up to NBC’s long-time slogan, most Peacock originals don’t really fall under the Must See TV banner.

Here are some of the best Peacock originals so far: 

• Dr. Death (since 2021)
• Bel-Air (since 2022)
• Killing It (since 2022)
• Twisted Metal (since 2023)
• Poker Face (since 2023)
• Bupkis (since 2023)
• Based on a True Story (since 2023)
• The Traitors (since 2023)

Movies on Peacock

Comcast has plenty of third-party content deals, such as with Lionsgate and Paramount, which bolsters its massive in-house library from Universal Pictures. This means you can count on a wide selection of movies, from blockbusters to straight-to-video and made-for-TV movies.

Comcast also gets its feathered streamer plenty of exclusive first streaming right, or Pay 1 windows, as they’re called in the biz. Here are some of the movies that Peacock started the year with:

• Fight Club (streaming exclusive)
• Five Nights at Freddy’s (simultaneous with theatrical release)
• The Holdovers (exclusive)
• Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie (original exclusive)
• Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (original exclusive)
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes (streaming exclusive)
• Ted (streaming exclusive)
• They/Them (original exclusive)

TV shows on Peacock

Peacock is the streaming platform of NBC, the first and biggest television broadcast network in the US. So it’s got TV covered. For starters, if you want to stream current-season episodes of NBC shows—such as anything from the Law & Order universe—you’ll either need a live TV streaming service or Peacock.

You’ll also find forgotten (and not-forgotten), short-lived TV shows like Stingray and The Greatest American Hero, as well as classics like The Carol Burnett Show, The Munsters, and Good Times.

You’ll be able to find a lot of favorites like Psych, The Office, and That 70s Show, but don’t expect the entire NBC library. Remington Steele is currently only streaming on Prime Video while Family Ties is on Paramount+, the streaming platform of NBC’s mortal enemy CBS.

Some of the network’s biggest hit shows are elsewhere—The West Wing and Friends are both on Max—while the original Will & Grace is on Prime Video and Hulu.

However, Peacock is one of only 2 places (the other being DirecTV Stream) that you can stream Paramount+’s hit show Yellowstone.

In addition to all of this, Peacock became the official streaming home for Bravo in September 2023.

Here are some of the TV shows on Peacock not mentioned above:

• 30 Rock
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine (streaming exclusive)
• Everybody Hates Chris
• Mohawk Girls (streaming exclusive)
• Modern Family
• The Office (streaming exclusive)
• Ted (exclusive original miniseries)
• Weeds

Live TV on Peacock

While the majority of Peacock’s content is on-demand, it has plenty of live sports as well as live news.

There are 50+ linear channels to watch, but these should not be confused with live TV. They’re just like Amazon Channels or the linear channels on Roku, Paramount+, and others. Linear channels have scheduled content that you can’t pause or rewind, but they’re not a live broadcast feed.

However, a lot of the shows on Peacock’s channels are on-demand, which you watch from the start, regardless of when you click on it. A channel’s info overlay will either have an On Demand badge or indicate the start and end times of the the current show.

And the same way that Paramount+ includes your local CBS affiliate with its premium plan, Peacock Premium Plus gives you a live feed of your local NBC channel. (Of course, you can always change your “local” channel with the help of a VPN.)

Kids content on Peacock

Peacock offers a range of kid-friendly content for families, including animated series, movies, and educational programming. Parents can feel confident in letting their children explore the dedicated Kids section, which provides age-appropriate and entertaining content according to 3 maturity ratings you can set in parental controls.

You’ll find plenty of DreamWorks shows and movies, as the animation studio is also owned by Comcast. There are also a number of original kid shows made exclusively for the platform.

Some popular TV shows and movies for kids currently on Peacock are:

• Shrek
• Boss Baby
• Madagascar
• The Secret Life of Pets
• The Kids Tonight Show (original)
• Caillou (original)
• The Makery (original)
• Where’s Waldo (original)

Sports on Peacock

Sports fans should definitely take a look and see what Peacock has to offer. There’s everything from SuperMotocross and INDYCAR to MLB and Tennis. It’s also the best deal around for soccer fans looking to watch the English Premier League.

NBC Sports Group has exclusive rights to all Premier League matches in the States – which means a whopping 380 games. NBC splits the games up and airs them across its 4 platforms: CNBC, NBC, Peacock, and USA Network. So, you won’t get all the matches live, but just under half of them stream live on Peacock. However, you will get every match on-demand, if you don’t mind waiting—and can avoid checking scores until 9 pm ET.

At its comparatively low price, sports is one thing that’s set Peacock apart from other on-demand streaming services that haven’t really prioritized live sports content.

Granted, competitor’s are slowly catching on, with Apple TV+ adding Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer and Prime Video dropping billions for NFL Thursday Night Football. Even Netflix shelled out $5 billion for 10 years of select WWE wrestling events—a “sport” that Peacock still has most of the streaming rights for.

Peacock interface and usability

Navigation

Peacock’s navigation menu is well-organized, with a main navigation menu consisting of Home, Movies, TV Shows, Sports, WWE, My Stuff, and Channels. If you want the kids’ content hub, you can either launch a Kids Profile or scroll down to the genre menu and select Kids.

The pages for Movies and TV Shows have a first row showing new content, followed by a row to Browse by Genre. We like this right at the start rather than being buried beneath rows of categories curated by somebody else (or an algorithm). However, we also like to see a Continue Watching row near the top, which is completely missing from Peacock on the Fire TV app and 4th down in browsers.

You can usually browse to what you’re looking for without much hassle, and if you can’t then there’s always the search bar. You can search by title, event, or genre, but unfortunately not by 4K content, director, actor, country, or any other terms.

Playback

There are 3 speeds of fast-forward and rewind on media devices, but there is no 10-second skip control like with most other streamers. However, there are 10-second skip buttons to go either direction when watching a browser, but no fast-forward.

We also found that pausing a show only stops it for a short time, after which it begins playing again. And if you rewind to where you were watching before, you have to re-watch all the ads you’ve already seen.

Language settings

Peacock hasn’t caught on yet to the idea of a multilingual audience. Most shows are available in English and Spanish audio and/or subtitles. If you’re looking for more than that, you’re out of luck unless you’re watching a movie with an original language in something other than English or Spanish. 

We found most of the newer shows and movies are available in AD (audio descriptions), which scores points for accessibility. However, many movies from 2015 and earlier did not have the AD option.

Parental controls

As a family-friendly platform—it comes from network TV, after all—the parental controls are decent enough. Parents can set up profiles for their children and apply appropriate content restrictions, ensuring that kids only access age-appropriate material.

There are 3 settings for maturity ratings:

• Little Kids: Rated TVY, which is appropriate for all children
• Older Kids: Rated TVY7, TVY7-FV, TVG, and G, which is content designed for children ages 7+. May contain some fantasy violence.
• Family: Rated TVPG and PG, which means the content may contain material that parents find unsuitable for younger children.

Kid profiles can be locked behind a PIN, so they can navigate to another profile and you can disable autoplay previews. For some reason, the options are not offered when you create the profile, so you need to create a Kid profile first, then go in and edit it. It’s not a huge deal, but an element of the UX that could be improved.

For families with older kids or sensitive viewers, there are also Maturity Ratings available for regular profiles, which are Family, Teen, and Adult.

Peacock account sharing and simultaneous screens

When it comes to sharing your streaming account, Peacock doesn’t stand in your way like some streamers – cough cough Netflix. However, it’s not the best for huge families who don’t like watching TV together. 

How many people can watch Peacock at once?

You can watch up to 3 screens simultaneously on Peacock, regardless of which plan you have. Free, Premium, or Premium Plus – it doesn’t matter. They’re all equal when it comes to concurrent viewing. 

Also, there’s no option to upgrade, so if you want NBC on more than 3 screens, you’re going to need 2 plans.

How many profiles can you make on Peacock?

You can make up to 6 profiles on your account, and they can be either Kids or regular profiles. (Obviously, the main account cannot be a Kids profile.) Each profile can choose an avatar from a selection of actors from NBC TV shows (such as The Office, Psych, or Law & Order), WWE wrestlers, or animated characters, like Minions, Trolls, Boss Baby, and so on.

Peacock supported devices

NBS’s streaming service can be watched on all major devices, but it doesn’t have the widest range of support. If you’ve got something older or less popular, you’ll want to confirm you use it first. One big omission for us is that there’s no native app for the Echo Show.

• Streaming devices: Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, NVIDIA Shield, Roku, Xumo
• Phones & tablets: Android, iOS, Fire Tablet
• Cable & satellite boxes: Cox, Xfinity, Spectrum
• Smart TVs: Android TV, Google TV, Hisense, LG, Samsung, Sony, Vizio
• Smart home devices: None
• Game consoles: PlayStation, Xbox, Meta VR
• Desktops & laptops: All major browsers
• Blu-ray players: None

Check Peacock’s website for specific models and the most up-to-date list of devices compatible with Peacock.

Peacock streaming quality

Peacock doesn’t lock 4K content behind higher tiers (like Netflix and Paramount+ do). Both plans let you watch 4K UHD, HDR10, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos when available. Otherwise, nearly every show and movie is available in Dolby 5.1.

The downside is that you need to hunt for 4K content. While it’s identified by a 4K UHD badge in the show’s information section, there’s no way to filter or even search for it.

The streaming quality with the on-demand library is typically good, although loading times at the start of shows can be very slow. The Channels section is a different story altogether. The quality we’ve seen for some linear (not on-demand) shows is well below 720p and almost unwatchable at times. The on-demand content watched through Channels is better and around 720p or even 1080p HD.

Is there a Peacock free trial?

Joining the ranks of Netflix, Max, and Disney+, Peacock is one of the on-demand streaming services that does not offer a free trial. Peacock’s free trial came to an end in November 2021.

The best you can do is sign up for the monthly Premium plan for $6 and see if you like it. If you do, it’s best to switch over to the annual plan, which saves money and works out to about 2 months free over the course of a year.

Verdict: Who is Peacock good for in 2023?

Soccer fans. Specifically, fans of the English Premier League. They are without a doubt, first and foremost, who Peacock is best for. It’s also great for sports fans in general, with SuperMotocross, tennis, cycling, golf, MLB, INDYCAR, and more.

Wrestling fans. It’s the streaming home of the WWE. What more can you ask for?

Peacock is obviously great for fans of NBC television shows like the Law & Order franchise and its late-night TV lineup of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and Saturday Night Live. 

Families should take a look at Peacock because it offers a well-rounded selection of family-friendly content, as well as sports, movies, and TV shows for all interests and age groups at one of the lowest prices around.

Budget-conscious streamers can’t go wrong with Peacock’s ad-supported Premium plan, especially if combining it with another affordable streamer like Paramount+ or Apple TV+.

Finally, Peacock is also a safe choice for movie fans who like general theatrical releases and are not looking for art house flicks, classics, foreign films, or indies.