Sub £30 Android TV boxes - any good?

martyp

Hi all,

With things like the NVidia Shield being well beyond my budget I'm looking at the many Android TV boxes available on eBay and Aliexpress with the hope of decent enough speed and Kodi etc.
I'm seeing many have the S905X Amlogic processor and generally 1G/8G on RAM and storage. Are they much a muchness and generally ok as a wide range of clones of the same thing or a waste of money?
Just interested if anyone has any experiences or recommendations possibly?

Cheers

Bogalot

I've got this one. I don't know much about the technical spec but it does everything I need.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01I6JMNLA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Buy from somewhere with a good returns policy in case it's not what you want.

DoaM

I know it's more than your stated budget, but I recently bought this one. (Albeit was £41.99 a couple of weeks ago). I had heard it was better to get a box with more RAM as this helps with performance.

This box is working great for me.

martyp

Excellent, many thanks both. They seem to have lots of good reviews so will check them out.

forgotmyname

Raspberry Pi

Slot in a micro SD card and make it whatever you want. This morning my Pi 2 is an arcade games system. Later on it will be a media center. And after that it may replace my desktop PC running Linux.

The Pi 3 is probably the one you want though with built in wifi.

harleq1962

these boxes are fine , kodi runs well on https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M015MHQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1them,

Lumstorm

harleq1962 wrote: »

these boxes are fine , kodi runs well on https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M015MHQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1them,

That box says it has Android 4.2.2 Kodi 17 requires Android 5.0 or higher.

Mr_Toad

This thread seems like a good opportunity to ask a question.

Are the boxes recommended above, or others, better for Kodi than the Amazon TV Firestick?

Someone told me about Kodi a year or so ago and because the Firestick was so cheap I bought one to play with. I set it up and use it mainly for accessing my NAS based music.

It spent a long time used only for the music but I had a load of photos someone wanted to see and it was great for that too. Lately I've been watching some stuff on Kodi, I don't normally watch much TV but during the winter I tend watch more and the more I've used it the more I like it, hence the question.

At around £40-£50 I'd be happy to upgrade the Firestick if these boxes offer an improvement.

JJ_Egan

Some say Kodi 17 does not work as well as 15/16 .

DoaM

If the Firestick is working well for you, the noted boxes won't give you any significant improvement.

Mr_Toad

DoaM wrote: »

If the Firestick is working well for you, the noted boxes won't give you any significant improvement.

Thanks, that's what I was wondering.

My only problem with the Firestick is the remote is a bit of a faf when it comes to navigating and especially when it comes to entering text for searches.

I have downloaded a remote app onto my Samsung tablet which gives me a keyboard as there isn't a spare USB port of the Firestick to plug in a wireless keyboard dongle.