Hello guys,
This time i'm gonna review a very affordable yet capable Android TV Box from Beelink, the Mini M8S II which i got from Gearbest
What's in the Box
The device came in a rather small package which is blue from the outside with red sides indicating ,the best features and the TV Box's specs
Opening the box we get
The M8S II itself
A User's Manual
The AC Adapter rated at 5V 2A
The HDMI Cable
The IR Remote
Looks & Ports
The Beelink Mini M8S II feels very solid in the hand and is consisted of matte plastic for the top and bottom as well as glossy plastic for the sides
On the top left corner we also see the Mini M8S logo printed on the device which is a very nice and elegant touch
On the bottom we only have the reset hole
Looking at the right side we see the MicroSD Card Slot along with a USB 2.0 Port
On the left side we have nothing
On the back we have a second USB 2.0 Port, the SPDIF Optical Audio Output, the Ethernet Port, the HDMI Output, the DC input
And on the front we have a blue Operation LED and the IR Blaster
So to sum it up the devices ports are
A MicroSD Card Slot
2 x USB 2.0 Ports
An SPDIF Optical Audio Output
The Ethernet Port
The HDMI Output
The DC input
Software
Beelink, just like with the Mini MX, has installed the standard custom tv launcher on the device which looks great and is consisted of tile like folders, which you can't edit but you can add the apps you like inside each one of them, an app drawer, and a favourite apps taskbar on the bottom
If we go into the settings we can see that the Mini M8S is running Android 6.0 with a 1080p resolution
HDMI CEC is present as well as HDMI framerate adaptation which is perfect for watching movies with cinematic feel
You can of course install your favourite launcher instead of using the stock one and i prefer Nova Launcher because it's fluid, very smooth and has many settings and options to play with
You can also add widgets, homescreens and use your favourite live wallpaper as a background, something you can't do with the stock launcher
One critical feature the Mini M8S II has which the MXV+ i reviewed a few days ago didn't, is the ability to have the android taskbar visible on the bottom of the screen and of course to hide it whenever you like. This unlocks the multitasking ability of the Android OS and it's something that in my opinion every Android machine should have
The bottom taskbar also has a screenshot button, volume Up/Down and Back, Home, Multitasking buttons
Specs
According to CPU-Z the device's specs are
CPU: Quad Core Cortex A53 Amlogic S905X at 2.0 Ghz Max
GPU: Mali-450 MP
RAM: 2 GB
ROM: 8 GB
OS: Android 5.1.1
The Mini M8S ΙΙ like the Mini MX has a temperature sensor which helps you monitor the CPU temps at all times. A feature i haven't seen on previous TV Boxes i' ve reviewed before
Benchmarks
In order to show you the device's performance i ran some benchmarks and got these results
Antutu Benchmark: 35626
3D Mark: 4272
GFX Bench: 601,9
Throughout the tests the Mini M8S ΙΙ was a little bit warmer to the touch than the Mini MX but not much, which means that the heat dissipation of this device is very good and you' ll never have a problem with high temperatures
Kodi and Video Playback
Before i ran the usual test videos on Kodi i executed Antutu Video Tester and the results it gave me where identical to the Mini MX's results
Now on to Kodi, it runs very smooth with absolutely no problems but some of the test videos i tried playbacked with minimal stutter from time to time
This might be due to the fact that they playbacked from an external 2.5'' 1TB HDD with no extra power supply
I had to use an external player to playback the H.265 videos though because Kodi couldn't handle them
WiFi Reception
The WiFi reception of this device even though it has an internal antenna is absolutely excellent.
The router and the Mini M8S ΙΙ were at about 12 meters apart and between them there were 2 concrete walls
As you can see the signal strength was great and i never experienced connection issues or slowdowns
Gaming
Although this device doesn't natively support external USB Gamepads you can download the Moonlight app from the Google Play Store and play your PC games on your TV using for example an XBOX 360 Controller
This app streams your PC games using your home's wifi network and due to the fact that the Mini MX has an excellent WiFi reception i personally didn't encounter any disconnections or slowdowns during gaming
I tried several games and they all played great. Of course you have to have a good gaming PC to play these games on ultra settings but you get the idea
Conclusion
I absolutely give a thumbs up and recommend this TV Box to everyone who wants a very descent and budget friendly entertainment system
It has a good performance, small size, great wifi reception and it's price is unbeatable
Pros
Small Size
Great Build Quality
Looks
Excellent WiFi Reception
Good Performance
Very Good Video Playback even for H.265 4k Videos
Great heat dissipation
Excellent Kodi support
Frequent Updates
SPDIF Optical Audio Output
Price
Cons
Only 2 x USB Ports
Only 8 GB of Internal Storage from which 4.8 are available for the user but you can overcome it with a MicroSD
Watch my Video Review
Review English
Review Greek
Read the full review with pictures HERE
Related
Does anyone or has anyone ever used the HDMI cable with their X2 and noticed lag when playing a movie on a tv? I'm trying to watch a 720p HD movie and its lagging on my LCD tv but looks just fine on the phone. I bought the cable with the phone when it first came out and honestly this is the first time i've actually used it.
I got cable from Amazon though it would
be cool to see on big screen.
I connected it once to my 23" LG LED monitor.
The thrill was short lived no lag, picture not
that Impressive. Now I have a $10 shoelace lol.
like video lagging behind the audio? jittery video? wtf do you mean by "lag"?
let's say you run HDMI from the phone to the TV and then plug audio from the headphone jack into a stereo receiver, your audio will be getting to your ears anywhere from 55ms to 500ms before the video hits the screen, that's kinda the nature of all these newfangled flatpanel HDTVs (especially LCDs) there is an inherent delay between the video signal going into the TV vs. when it is actually displayed on the panel.
here's a good test for your TV's "lag" get one of those cheap battery operated atari games (the ones built into a joystick w/ the yellow red and white cables coming out) hook that up to your TV, you'll IMMEDIATELY notice the amount of latency present in your TV.
I think this is probably one case where the phone is not the problem, it's your TV. you can go into the TV's setup menu and look for a "game mode" which basically bypasses extra picture features and filters that for the most part make your picture look like crap.
but, you really need to define what you mean by "lag" 'cause I could be way off in left field here, but mine looks just fine on my panasonic plasma or my samsung LCD monitor when I use an HDMI to DVI adapter, and I've plugged it into all kinds of other displays (I use it as an HDMI signal generator almost everyday at work) granted I rarely watch video on it using the other displays (usually test patterns for projector alignment and calibrating video walls) but whenever I'm in a hotel with a TV that has HDMI, I use it, and it works just as good as my computer does. (but I do always set the TV up properly)
oh, and if you have any of that 120hz/240hz smoothmotion garbage enabled on your TV, turn that crap off.
I have the same problem!
But I have got another mobile i9105p, I know isn't the correct site, but, when I plug my MHL to the TV, the image shows a bit of DELAY, and when I run an application, is more like 500ms to 600ms...
I don't know if the problem is the mobile Broadcom Video core IV, or the MHL adaptar I bought from china.
Greetings.
The Beelink X2 is an affordable TV box. It does have some limitations, but considering the low price it is a decent device.
The box is made out of plastic and it is slim enough to look good sitting somewhere next to tv set. It has a LED on the front that turns either blue or red depending if the box is on or off.
It has an HDMI and an optical audio output on the back along two usb ports. It takes an sd card but i only find that useful for increasing it's limited 8gb storage capacity. It can be connected to the Internet through a network cable or through wifi. The wifi has a good range and i didn't encounter any issues with it.
The box comes pre-installed with Android 4.4. Scrolling through screens is smooth but playing large mkv files doesn't go that smooth. Watching youtube videos at 1080p is not smooth at all. Changing the resolution to 720p improves the smoothness while watching youtube videos. Kodi works fairly well with watching different streams.
Even though it has some limitations while watching large files, at $36 USD it makes an excellent and affordable media centre. Check out the link in the video's description if you are interested in this device.
Mod Edit: Link leading to affiliate sales links removed
What's the cheapest box that can stream YouTube 1080p videos smoothly?
Who faced the problem of a weak signal wai faille home? Phone / tablet at the same point apartment is okay, but not the box (
For the rest, more or less happy with everything, but the signal ..
Firmware 106, the device came with her, root
10basetom said:
What's the cheapest box that can stream YouTube 1080p videos smoothly?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
MyGica ATV1900AC can stream YouTube 1080p videos smoothly
my x2 stock on kodi....even if i power out the plug and replug......when turning on again it is still in kodi and stock there
any idea to solve this problem?
Is it possible to connect a Xbox 360 controller to this? Using the xbox wireless receiver?
I've tried on mine and the light just flashes
I got a new media player called Mini MX. This device will be interested for many people because the price is around $40,
so in other words it is really cheap media player.
Packaging
Except the device you will also get user manual, remote control, power adapter and HDMI cable.
Design and build
For me it is not too much important because 90% of all media player the design is more or less the same.
Anyway the case is made of plastic in black color, the case is also very thin. It has all ports on both sides like HDMI, USB 2.0, RJ45 and DC 5V.
Performance
For this price range which is actually around $40 it has really solid hardware, so it is based on quad core processor Amlogic S905
with maximum speed up to 2GHz. From other hardware information I can say that it has 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB memory
for storage which can also be upgraded using microSD card up to 32GB. The hardware is not maybe the strongest one but it is enough strong for every purpose like KODI.
Software
If you read everyday tech news you already know that mostly this kind of devices and other similar like smartphones from China
comes with Android 5.1. In my opinion the operating system is almost stock, it has just several installed applications like KODI,
Movie Player and Google Play Store. So you don't need to waste your time for deleting unwanted apps. It's self the operating system
is fast and fluid and during use I did not find any problems because all apps worked as they should to work including of course KODI.
For KODI I have tried several different add-ons and they all worked really nice without lags.
Connectivity
The Mini MX has all ports you'll need. It has 1 x HDMI, 1 x LAN port, 2 x USB and 1 x SPDIF. So you can connect your
media player with lan cable or by wireless, this is up to. It has also buetooth 4.0 and I have normally connected my
Bluetooth keyboard which works perfectly normal. The Wi-Fi connection is stable and it has good range for connectivity.
This media player also supports H.265 video code and thanks to that you don't need to have high speed Internet connection.
Conclusion
In my personal opinion if you are looking for cheap media player with Android OS, then you should definitely consider the Mini MX.
Because it has very low price around $40 depending on the web shop. It comes with KODI, it has a very good hardware for this price range
and it works really nice. For more information please visit this official website.
Also for more information about this cheap media player if you want.
How does this perform while screen mirroring to a Chromecast?
HopelesRomantc91 said:
How does this perform while screen mirroring to a Chromecast?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no problems at all with the chromecast. Even videos with a rather high bitrate dont stutter!
Kampfgans said:
I have no problems at all with the chromecast. Even videos with a rather high bitrate dont stutter!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You mean streaming? I mean full screen mirroring, like during a graphic-intensive game.
HopelesRomantc91 said:
You mean streaming? I mean full screen mirroring, like during a graphic-intensive game.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Didnt tried with graphic intensive games, but screen mirroring works fine for me!
Kampfgans said:
Didnt tried with graphic intensive games, but screen mirroring works fine for me!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool, thanks!
Miracast works surprisingly well but latency
I'm very sorry that HDMI and MHL are gone from today's smartphones, now that they have power enough to rival consoles and PCs.
But I haven't entirely given up on the console use case yet and tried the wireless variants.
First I went and installed AirServer, which emulates Apple's AirPlay, ChromeCast and Miracast protocols on Windows 10 PCs.
I tried first using a Braswell four core Atom as server (Intel N3700), because I thought it was a good match and has way more power than hardware dongles.
Turns out AirServer is evidently so badly programmed, the Braswell Atom just drowns (display latency can reach several seconds) and gets stuck.
Can't use Ethernet desktops with Mira-/Chromecast so I tried a Skywell notebook as AirServer next, a rare 28W TDP Core i5-6267U beast with Iris 550 Graphics and a hyperthreading CPU with 2.8GHz base clock (=tons of power).
That one at least didn't die with the software server, but lags and quality weren't really acceptable with both the Chromecast and Miracast protocols (little difference between them).
Bit the bullet and tried a Microsoft Mircast Dongle v2 ($60, not cheap and certainly far less power than those Intel CPUs, but highly optimized software).
The most positive surprise was that graphics performance didn't seem to suffer: 3D Mark with or without a Miracast clone display yielded idential FPS. That is especially astonishing, because it renders 1920x1080 on the external monitor and 2560x1440 on the internal display in parallel.
The negative aspect: Even if Microsoft's Miracast dongle doesn't drown, die or cost performance, there is noticeable latency, not compatible with most games.
It's ok for surfing, desktop apps or for playing movies on the big screen, but it's no replacement for a hardware video port (HDMI/MHL or similar).
Miracast has quality issues with pixel depth, I believe it's effectively using something like 16-bit graphics and my Android desktop background (a green Jungle) causes horrible compression artifacts on Miracast (noticed the same with Chromcast on AirServer).
I also tried using a DisplayLink adapter capable of USB 3 and 4K displays (on the PC at least), and that delivered far less latency, but the one I have is really designed for notebooks and a power hog: It will drain le Max in no time at all. A variant which acts as an externally powered USB-C docking station, may be able to do much better.
I was surprised to see that games work w/o issues with Displaylink on Android (on PCs Display Displaylink doesn't have 3D support, but the Android 3D frame buffer seems to always share main memory so sharing it is less problematic), can't quite remember if there was a huge performance drop. It also doesn't have reduced color depth nor the compression artifacts the wireless protocols have.
Summary: Using le Max 2 as VR headset, as PC desktop replacment, or as game console seems logical, given the power of the CPU, the GPU its abundance of RAM (6GB in mine) and its really fast storage (rivals "real" SSDs).
But in practice something always comes up short: Google has drawn a new VR baseline beyond le Max 2, latency free physical display ports are not available and the wireless alternatives add inacceptible latencies and reduce display quality.
Evidently vendors hate making consumers happy...
Hello everybody,
In this review i'm gonna present you the latest Android TV Box from Shenzen Tomato
It is the One Nuts 1 and let's get to it
In the.... Bag......?
The packaging of this TV Box is unique because it doesn't come in a box but in a small suitcase-like bag
I haven't seen this before and it's certainly a very nice addition to the overall package because you can use it for other purposes too
Opening the bag we get
The One Nuts 1 itself
The AC Adapter rated at 5V 2A
The HDMI Cable
An IR Remote Controller
A User's Manual
So all the basic components to get you started are here but i suggest you get a flymouse too
Looks & Ports
Remember when i told you in my previews review of the Sunvell T95U-Pro that it was perhaps the most beautiful TV Box you'll ever see?
Well count the One Nuts 1 in too because this thing is STUNNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!
It has an aluminum construction with the top edge being chamfered and a very very beautiful irridescent blue colour
The feel on the hand is very nice and the device is very robust with very good build quality
On the top we see the OneNuts logo printed with silver letters
On the front we have the Status and Net LEDS as well as the IR receiver
Looking at the left side we see 2 USB 2.0 ports and the MicroSD card slot
The right side is plain
And on the back we have the remaining ports which are
An Optical SPDIF Audio Output
An AV Output
An HDMI Output
The Ethernet Port
The DC Input
We also have an external WiFi antenna giving us great and hassle-free wifi reception
Heat is not a problem with this TV box because on the bottom there a lot of vents to keep the temperature in normal levels
Hardware & Specs
In the heart of the One Nuts 1 there is an Octa Core Amlogic S912 CPU running at 2.0 Ghz max providing more than enough power to run even the most intensive tasks and apps Android has to offer
Other specs include
A Mali-T820 MP3 GPU
2 GB of DDR3 Ram
16 GB of Internal Storage
Android 6.0.1
HDMI 2.0
The device also has a thermal sensor so that we can always keep track of our temps
Software
Shenzen Tomato has equipped the device with the Mediabox Launcher which is consisted of tiles for all the and basic functions and apps like Kodi, File Explorer, Goole Play Store, Youtube, Netflix, Settings and Games
We also have a task killer and an app drawer and at the bottom we get a favourites bar for us to add the apps we use the most
The Games Tile is a long and fun story which i'll analyze later in depth
If we go into the settings which have a very user friendly UI we see that the device is running Android 6.0.1 and the native resolution goes up to 4k
Also some cool wallpapers are preinstalled and if we press on the "more settings" option we go to the stock android settings
Tomato have equipped the One Nuts 1 with Youtube for TVs giving you a much better user experience in comparison with the ordinary youtube app
Surfing the web using the stock browser is a breeze and just like Sunvell T95U-Pro Showbox is already preinstalled for you to watch your favourite movies and tv series with the press of a button
Benchmarks
To show you the device's performance i ran the usual benchmarks and got these results
The scores i got where better than the ones Sunvell T95U-Pro which has the same CPU gave me so i think that given that both of them have exactly the same specs, the One Nuts 1 has a little bit better hardware and software optimization
Wifi Reception
Due to the external antenna, the One Nuts 1 is giving us excellent WiFi reception without disconnections and slowdowns
Kodi & Video Playback
I ran the usual Antutu Video Tester to see if there was any difference with the Sunvell but the results where exactly the same
From the 30 video formats this app is testing, 27 where fully supported and 3 were partially supported by Android giving us choppy playback
Kodi runs perfectly smooth and the videos i tested gave me no problems at all except from one 4k 60 fps .mp4 which had a lot of frameskipping
H.265 videos were able to play through kodi just fine which is very good and only devices with the Amlogic S912 are able to do that for now
Other Android TV Boxes with different cpus can playback H.265 videos too but not through kodi
Gaming
When it comes to gaming this is where this device shines
Shenzen Tomato has equipped the One Nuts 1 with a gaming platform never seen before on an Android TV Box and is is just AMAZING!!!!!!!!
The effort they have put to make this platform is unique and i have to congratulate them for that
So opening the Games tile we see some featured games and at the bottom we tabs for game categories
Let me explain how it works
Tomato has preinstalled emulators on the One Nuts 1 and when you download a game it recognizes which emulator to open to run it
In order to download a game you press Search Game and the platform automatically searches download locations for the current game through sites with roms such as emuparadise etc
All this is created and designed excellently and you will be thrilled by how many titles you can find and play
There are games for PSP, SNES, NES, Mega Drive including great ones like Monster Hunter, Kingdom Hearts, Tomb Raider and many more
In the settings of the KO Gamebox we have a Game Manager where we see our Downloaded Games, a Gamepad Configurator, Storage Management and Update Utility
Of course you can download and play more games for PSP or other platforms if you can't find them in the available ones as well as Android games from the Google Play Store
And the best part is that you can play all those game using an external USB Gamepad
Conclusion
I have to say that i am very impressed not oly by this TV Box but from the amount work the have put in it too
The launcher looks great, the KO Gamebox is incredibly awesome and polished, Kodi runs perfectly fine, it has no heat issues, it is very beautiful with great build quality and excellent WiFi reception
I mean... what more do you need from an Android TV Box
I definitely recommend it and i think that i'll keep using it as my daily driver
Pros
Great build quality
Looks
Very Good Performance
Excellent WiFi reception
No heat issues
Great video playback
Amazing gaming experience
Size
HDMI 2.0
HDR Display
HDMI Framerate Adaptation
Dual Band WiFi
Carrying Bag
Cons
Price
Could have more than 2 USB 2.0 slots
Little bit hard to get
For more info visit the Official Shenzen Tomato Product Page
Watch my Video Review
Review English
Review Greek
For the full review with pictures go HERE