It's great. I have both the mibox 3 and S and both run great with the latest update. Go for it.

And shield has somewhat better hardware but are those stuff even necessary for just streaming and my use case?

No. It's not necessary.

Android TV has a more specific purpose than Android on a phone or tablet, or a general purpose OS. It's for playing movies and TV. The Mi Box S does that no problem.

Maybe it's not powerful enough to play some games or stream games ... ? I have no idea because I do not do that. It's just there for us to watch video from.

I gave one to my 90 year old grandmother for Christmas, because she wanted to stream things, but didn't know how. Every. Single. Time. I've spoken to her since she's made a point of telling me how much she absolutely loves it, and uses it every day. Yesterday she told me that her friends at the retirement home were jealous, and wanted to know where I got it and for how much.

For the price it does everything I want and more. Buy shield if you want the gaming.

It's really great for streaming movies & TV shows and it has a shortcut on your to Netflix. I played it a lot that didn't touch my sky q 😂. it's good for gaming too. I recommend Asphalt 8 with the keyboard 😉

I don't know about the S but I have the prior one with the same cpu/ram combination and even though it was my main box for a while i never really liked it, it felt very buggy and an update actually broke DTS audio for me causing it to transcode on Plex. I moved on to an Nvidia shield and couldn't be happier though there's quite a steep price difference.

Edit: a bug that was downright annoying: constant micro stuttering that would start after the box was on for a few hours and would happen in any video streaming app. I don't know if they ever fixed that but that was even worse than transcoding DTS since at least I had a workaround for that (AC3 audio or use Kodi). The stuttering just destroyed the media watching experience...on a box made for watching media. Don't know if the S had that problem.

I love my Mi Box S. I run Plex, Prime Video, Steam Link, and a handful of other video streaming services with no problems over WiFi.

Netflix and casting both work fine on the mi box. You dont need the shield unless you play with a lot of 4k 60fps stuff.

I have a Mibox and a shield. For watching TV, there is very little difference. Shield is good for gaming, otherwise stick with the shield.

For the price it's a great option. If you consume a lot of media through a local server the wifi speed on the 5GHz is limited to 433Mpbs, and it sometimes lag with 4k 60fps videos. If you have the money the buy the Shield I would recommend it 100% because it will last you a long time. Otherwise if you budget is short the Mi Box S is a great option.

For Netflix and Google casting? It's great. Same for the non-S, which has essentially the same hardware.

But please note that Google casting wasn't really made for mirroring your phone/computer to the TV. It will do that, through the results might not be of the quality you expect. Actually not even sure you can mirror your computer... What exactly do you want to use it for?

I have 2 shields and 1 mi box. My mi box is working fine now, but the one I gifted my parents half a year ago was a total piece of shit that would freeze up when playing netflix and generally would become unresponsive or the sound would suddenly cut out. I ended up returning that one as it was a major frustration for my parents. (this was later patched) If you want a box that just works and works reliably for a long time get a shield. If it's for yourself and you want to deal with some issues that could pop up with an update then the Mi box is a very cheap but nice device when it works.

Been using a mi box s for about a month. Just one minor issue. The remote stops working once in a while. Happened twice so far. But restarting the mi box resolves the issue. Other than that it's awesome.

I have one and works great. Just make sure to use a Ethernet adapter for streaming 4k or Kodi.

For what you want it to do, it's not worth waiting out for a "better" device than the Mi Box. For devices in its price-range, it's more capable than a standalone Chromecast, a bit more flexible than a Roku, and has a less tedious user experience compared to a Fire Stick, because of the the close-to-stock Android TV experience, relative ease sideloading apps and supporting VPN. And for basic streaming purposes and not heavy gaming or remote media, its as capable as a Shield, at much less cost.

It goes on sale frequently enough (aside from Prime Days unlike Fire Sticks) that you are likely to find one at a good deal.