Jump to content

Best TV box under $50?


msacco

Recommended Posts

Hey guys, I'm looking for a pretty budget TV box under $50, I really don't need much from it but here are a few things that are very important for me:

Speed - I've had experience with super slow smart TV devices in the past, generally a cheap smart TV is simply pure sh*t.

So I don't really need anything that should be capable of gaming, I'll probably never use that, but I do want the TV box to operate fast.

 

Outer storage ability - Probably the most important thing for me is a device that will be able to hold up external storages(flash drive, SD card, HDD(?)). I believe I've seen some TV boxes that only support up to 64GB of SD card, I would really love to have the ability to use more than that so I won't have to mess with it too frequently.

 

Flexibility - I have a fair bit of knowledge about android devices, I don't like being limited, I know that most TV boxes come with root access, but that's very important for me to have the freedom to do whatever I wish in case I need it.

 

Things that aren't important for me:

My TV screen is 50 inch and only supports 1080P, I have no need for 4K/8K streaming whatsoever.

I probably won't use netflix with it, so 1080P/4K netflix support is not important.

I probably won't use the TV box for gaming at all, but could be a nice plus.

My usual internet speed is around 100MB, so 1000MB might not be necessary, it would be a nice to have on the way though.

 

So far I believe my best options are either the A95X F3 or X96 AIR with the A95X F3 looks a bit better to me. There's also the MAGICSEE N5 PLUS which looks ok, it also has the ability to connect an HDD which is fairly amazing, but the drawbacks are worse performance, no miracast and the price which is a bit higher.

 

I've also seen the new X96 max plus which looks really really good overall, but haven't seen much reviews of it yet, so I can't judge about that yet.

 

Anyway, would love you hear some recommendations, thanks! :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have you considered an sbc? There's plenty with hdmi output and decent enough graphics to h/w encode most videos, specially when running something like LE. The upside of a tv box is that you got it all in a small box ready to go but it's not always worth it and greatly depends on what you will be running on it. If you need good Linux support I would go the sbc route.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/27/2020 at 12:29 AM, stut said:

Have you considered an sbc? There's plenty with hdmi output and decent enough graphics to h/w encode most videos, specially when running something like LE. The upside of a tv box is that you got it all in a small box ready to go but it's not always worth it and greatly depends on what you will be running on it. If you need good Linux support I would go the sbc route.

 

I'm sorry, but I couldn't really understand your answer, not really sure what a SBC or LE is? In case I somehow understood, you were referring to something like using rasphberry PI to install something that will let me achieve what I want?

If not, could you please elaborate a bit? :)

 

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, sorry that is what I meant. But def. don't go for Raspberry Pi. It's not worth the money and they cut annoying corners in the h/w design. LE are the Kodi distro's LibreElec. The latter focuses solely on tv boxes. both just run Kodi and not much more though you can install a Docker add-on or stuff like that. In your scenario a tv box might be best suited, it's how I started but it left me wanting more. Like better Linux support so I ended up buying sbc (single board computers). I like what FriendlyElec has to offer. They have a board to match any budget. For example I use one of their cheapest board for OpenWrt and the more expensive/faster ones for NAS and some light desktop usage.

 

As for which tv box you should buy for your $50 I would try and find something thats a real brand with their own website and some decent update support. Many of the really tv boxes won't get updated much and you'll end up having an out of date Android running on there. Unless you of course replace the OS (if its supported). Get something with at least 2-4gb ram and 5ghz wifi and a nice 4-8 core cpu in there.

 

If you want go full budget and don't mind tinkering with it yourself you can gram something cheap but it probably won't be fast enough for frustration free Kodi. Opening it up to solder/connect a serial/uart interface is almost always a good idea unless you get a tv box thats well supported by Armbian already. I don't use tv boxes as tv box so I'm not in the know of which of the newer and faster tv boxes are supported. something with a support Rockchip should be a safe bet though. I hope others here will have some good suggestions as which specific box gives the most bang for your budget. I'm interested in seeing those suggestions as well. As a brand suggestion look into Tanix. They had some decent boxes with good updates and support but not sure what they have now. I'm out of the loop :ph34r:

 

Edit: Looked at Tanix and found this box. Looks good to me, but I'm biased towards the brand. It is about $50 though (50 euro on Amazon for 64gb storage version). Dunno about Armbian support, it has H6 so should be possible to run it. Plenty of ram and speed methinks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/27/2020 at 12:52 AM, stut said:

Yes, sorry that is what I meant. But def. don't go for Raspberry Pi. It's not worth the money and they cut annoying corners in the h/w design. LE are the Kodi distro's LibreElec. The latter focuses solely on tv boxes. both just run Kodi and not much more though you can install a Docker add-on or stuff like that. In your scenario a tv box might be best suited, it's how I started but it left me wanting more. Like better Linux support so I ended up buying sbc (single board computers). I like what FriendlyElec has to offer. They have a board to match any budget. For example I use one of their cheapest board for OpenWrt and the more expensive/faster ones for NAS and some light desktop usage.

 

As for which tv box you should buy for your $50 I would try and find something thats a real brand with their own website and some decent update support. Many of the really tv boxes won't get updated much and you'll end up having an out of date Android running on there. Unless you of course replace the OS (if its supported). Get something with at least 2-4gb ram and 5ghz wifi and a nice 4-8 core cpu in there.

 

If you want go full budget and don't mind tinkering with it yourself you can gram something cheap but it probably won't be fast enough for frustration free Kodi. Opening it up to solder/connect a serial/uart interface is almost always a good idea unless you get a tv box thats well supported by Armbian already. I don't use tv boxes as tv box so I'm not in the know of which of the newer and faster tv boxes are supported. something with a support Rockchip should be a safe bet though. I hope others here will have some good suggestions as which specific box gives the most bang for your budget. I'm interested in seeing those suggestions as well. As a brand suggestion look into Tanix. They had some decent boxes with good updates and support but not sure what they have now. I'm out of the loop :ph34r:

 

Edit: Looked at Tanix and found this box. Looks good to me, but I'm biased towards the brand. It is about $50 though (50 euro on Amazon for 64gb storage version). Dunno about Armbian support, it has H6 so should be possible to run it. Plenty of ram and speed methinks.

Thanks a lot for the detailed comment! I'll start with the Tanix, it looks fairly good, it has some old hardware compared to the A95X F3 or X96 AIR though?

But having an official site does count so I might need to consider that as well in my purchase, even though I believe I could just get private firmware updates as the root is usually open.

 

I'll need to read more about that, thanks :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Tanix box I linked has the H6 which should be plenty. I couldn't find many benchmarks between S905X3 and H6 but the ones I found are pretty much on par. Differences could be explained by cpu frequency, ram, speed of the disk it runs on and the OS it runs on. Personally I would lean towards H6 but thats because my NanoPi's all have Allwinner chips too and they're very reliable for me. Allwinner has pretty decent Linux support as well. For me that weights heavier than anything else, but for multimedia they should both be fine. Pretty much all codecs one would need are supported by the chipsets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, stut said:

The Tanix box I linked has the H6 which should be plenty. I couldn't find many benchmarks between S905X3 and H6 but the ones I found are pretty much on par. Differences could be explained by cpu frequency, ram, speed of the disk it runs on and the OS it runs on. Personally I would lean towards H6 but thats because my NanoPi's all have Allwinner chips too and they're very reliable for me. Allwinner has pretty decent Linux support as well. For me that weights heavier than anything else, but for multimedia they should both be fine. Pretty much all codecs one would need are supported by the chipsets.

I don't think benchmark is everything, but it seems to be around the 55k mask compared to the 67-74k mark of the A95X F3 or X96 AIR.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed. Benchmarks are an indication at best. Software and good drivers and very important too. I've gotten some cheap S905 boxes and they vary a lot in actual speed despite them all having same amount of ram and storage. If your cheap box has crappy nand/emmc there's not much you can if it also doesn't have usb 3. Even worse if it has slow ram. Sometimes things get better in updates, but if you run Android you're depended on updates from the seller with these tv boxes. Not many sell actual brands like Tanix. The sell whatever is cheap, rebadge it and sell it. I managed to get a clean Android TV to work on one of these S905 boxes and it helped a lot but the slow onboard storage is holding it back a lot.

 

What do you plan on running on it? Android or Linux?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, stut said:

Agreed. Benchmarks are an indication at best. Software and good drivers and very important too. I've gotten some cheap S905 boxes and they vary a lot in actual speed despite them all having same amount of ram and storage. If your cheap box has crappy nand/emmc there's not much you can if it also doesn't have usb 3. Even worse if it has slow ram. Sometimes things get better in updates, but if you run Android you're depended on updates from the seller with these tv boxes. Not many sell actual brands like Tanix. The sell whatever is cheap, rebadge it and sell it. I managed to get a clean Android TV to work on one of these S905 boxes and it helped a lot but the slow onboard storage is holding it back a lot.

 

What do you plan on running on it? Android or Linux?

 

I believe that I'll probably run android since I'm not sure I need to much flexibility for my simple use cases, I did saw that in a few reviews of the A95X F3 there are OTA updates, which should be very good.

For example here:

https://forum.freaktab.com/forum/frealktab-team-reviews/tv-boxes/791573-a95x-f3-amlogic-s905x3-tv-box-review

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi guys! I need a linux-based device (armbian) to replace my desktop. On which chips will I get good performance for office tasks? I have a choice for the cost of $ 35 and consider S905X2 (scares the incompatibility of the console hardware), RK3228 (scares the small amount of RAM 2 GB). I also consider allwinner. What can you recommend to choose?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/10/2020 at 6:32 AM, reqneed said:

Hi guys! I need a linux-based device (armbian) to replace my desktop. On which chips will I get good performance for office tasks? I have a choice for the cost of $ 35 and consider S905X2 (scares the incompatibility of the console hardware), RK3228 (scares the small amount of RAM 2 GB). I also consider allwinner. What can you recommend to choose?

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/8434-the-list-of-models-that-are-running-armbian-amlogic-rockchip-allwinner-etc/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Tanix box I linked has the H6 which should be plenty. I couldn't find many benchmarks between S905X3 and H6 but the ones I found are pretty much on par. Differences could be explained by cpu frequency, ram, speed of the disk it runs on and the OS it runs on. Personally I would lean towards H6 but thats because my NanoPi's all have Allwinner chips too and they're very reliable for me. Allwinner has pretty decent Linux support as well. For me that weights heavier than anything else, but for multimedia they should both be fine. Pretty much all codecs one would need are supported by the chipsets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Werner locked this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use - Privacy Policy - Guidelines