I am one of the winners of the May 2021 Formuler giveaway and I am writing an honest review based on my opinions and observations of the box. The box I won was the Formuler GTV, prior to that I was running a z7+, and I use an Nvidia Shield so I’m pretty familiar with Android TV.
This is going to be a long review but let's dive right in!
Design:
The box itself feels much more premium than it looks, IMO it's not as good-looking as a CC or Z8pro but it's not bad either, I quite like the simple design.
The remote is phenomenal, its got a premium feeling weight to it and the buttons make a satisfying click, its responsive, has proprietary buttons for MOL2, uses Bluetooth, looks stunning, and feels good in the hand. I like it a lot better than the z7+ remote.
Setup:
My device was shipped with the ATV10 beta, which came as a surprise to me because it was a limited slot beta that was already full and Formuler HQ was nice enough to ship me the box with it, because of this, I did not have to go through the setup process but I can say that from experience setting up Android TV is straightforward to do, especially if you have an android phone, apps are easy to download from the Google Play store and the home screen can be arranged any way you like it. Out of the box I had no issues connecting the internet via ethernet or Wi-Fi, and picture quality was perfect. So far it's on par with the Shield!
MyTvOnline2 was an easy setup, after I entered my portal information it loaded up instantly. I added a few channels to favorites, modified a few groups, and configured all the hotkeys to my liking, no complaints here.
Android TV/Device:
The ATV bets is working well for me so far. The Google certification on this box and Widevine L1 is game-changing, Plex works just as good as it does on my Shield and so does almost every other app except for Netflix. This device doesn't have any Netflix certification so you can’t watch Netflix in 4k but I believe it works in 1080p with a workaround, not a big deal for me because I don’t use Netflix. I expect this device to get a lot of android version upgrades because of the Google certification and that’s a huge plus for longevity.
The device boots surprisingly faster than my Shield, it's snappy, fast, and responsive. I've only had one occasion where MOL2 crashed but keep in mind I am on beta so that could be the cause.
MOL2:
MyTvOnline2 is amazing, I like it much better than other IPTV players because of its beautiful design and rich features. It's much faster than MOL1, I find channels load instantly, the app immediately works when the device wakes from sleep or boots up, the EPG loads instantly, and the portal won’t disconnect even after the app is closed which makes loading it again much faster.
It supports M3U, XC, Stalker portals, and OTA which are the 3 most commonly used IPTV platforms out there so compatibility with services shouldn’t be an issue!
All your live TV gets pulled into an easy-to-use client. The guide feels like a modern cable box, recording works perfectly and you even have the ability to set up record schedules so the box will automatically record the series you want without having to press record every time! Time-shift works really well, it gives you the ability to pause and rewind live TV even if your provider doesn't have catchup! and adding channels to favorites and creating your own groups is simple.
I love the integration with Android TV! you can add favorites and recent channels to the home screen and Google assistant picks it up as a source to watch Live TV from, and you can ask it to tune to a channel in the ATV 10 beta!
Now despite these positive points, I do have a few negative ones and some wishes. My only annoyance with MOL2 is when rewinding and pausing live TV, the dedicated pause/play button is pushed once to pause but it needs to get pushed twice to play and when rewinding with the arrows, sometimes it won’t rewind, best bet is to use the on-screen rewind and play/pause buttons but that has an issue as well and it’s the fact that it's tied to the OSD timeout setting which I like to keep on 3 seconds so it quickly goes away. Apparently, the rewinding issue might be a bug with the Beta so I am not too worried. Now for wishes, I wish you could modify channel numbers, set connections as a hotkey, and download from catchup. I am a picky guy so I bet you most of this won't bother you anyway lol.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, The GTV is IMO the BEST box you can buy for IPTV and Android TV needs. The Formuler brand is highly praised in the IPTV community for a reason, and their three major support platforms which are Telegram, Reddit, and the forum is superb! MOL is the best software you can get in the market and I know some people may disagree with me, but you can’t disagree until you actually try it out first!