I’m a fan of Android TV. While I didn’t blog about it, I ran out and bought a Nexus Player on day 1. And I loved it! OK, I loved it more after the upgrade to Android 6.x, but still.

Well, now I’ve upgraded from the Nexus Player to the Mi Box. It’s a bit of a risk, since no one knows the upgrade history for Xiaomi, but I’m OK with that. Especially at a mere $70 for this thing. As much as I loved the Player, I am enjoying this device so much more. It’s stupid fast, the remote is so much better, and I feel like I get a better picture out of it (which is silly, I don’t have a 4k TV so it should be the same 1080p HD picture I got from the Player).

This tiny little box (101 x 101 x 19.5mm) comes with an Amlogic Quad-core Cortex-A53 processor running at 2.0GHz, a Mali 450 GPU running at 750MHz, 2GB of ram, and 8GB of storage. On the back is an HDMI port, a headphone jack (why?), a power adaptor port (sadly, not a standard USB-C or MicroUSB), a single USB 2.0 port. It’s pretty sparse port wise, but really that’s all you need. There’s a subtly white LED on the very front of the device to show you that it’s powered on too. Otherwise, it’s just a sleek little black hockey puck sitting in my entertainment center.

Overall, I’m so pleased with this little thing that I convinced Stephanie to buy one, gave my Player to Tina, and I’m considering buying one of these for Emily when she moves out.

Review: ★★★★☆