I’m surprised there isn’t a price cut Apple TV “stick”. Drop game support, low local storage, no Ethernet port, but leave 4K support. 4K support lets them charge the magic 2-digit HomePod mini price point of 99$ under the guise of “same video quality as the 130$ one”.
That would juuuuust crossover into the “good enough” zone for me, considering how clean apple tvOS is.
Is that $30 really make-or-break for you?
Apple TV's entry model is already only $129.00 USD, and the hardware is really really nice. Easily the fastest and most fluid interface of any "TV Stick" I've used (nicer than any Chromecast / Roku / Fire TV stick, nicer than any built-in smart stuff from LG/Samsung/Vizio), while also having the least amount of advertisements of anything you can buy.
I don't love Apple's high premium pricing on a lot of their products. But the Apple TV doesn't really have that, it's competitively priced with alternatives (a base Apple TV is only like $30 more than the equivalent Fire TV Cube, and only $5 more than the nVidia Shield TV)
It would just sell better at 99$ IMO, and there’s obvious things to cut to create apple’s usual “price ladder”. I’m not using the games, nor am I using more than 8GB of storage.
You’re paying to have an experience that is about serving you rather than advertisers. If that’s worth money to you, buy it. Otherwise, you get what you pay for: as crappy a device they can get away with, subsidized by ads.