I got my Mi box s. Here's my observationts after 48 hours of owning it

by fckns

Hello, /r/androidTV!

Soo, A little review about my experience from using cheapest(AFAIK) official AndroidTV Box from Xiaomi, Mi Box S.

So, setting it up is straight-forward and dummy proof - you can set it up through phone, and it logs in in minutes, you just need to be on a same WiFi with phone and box itself. Logged in, all set. I did an update to Android 9.0 (which is a lottery in itself judging by Reddit posts and variety of problems from that update), and did a factory reset right away. Then again, I went through the same first-time setup process, all goes well. And here we are, in Android TV! UI is not lagging, havent experienced any glitches or artifacts, or any problems. I feel like I won a lottery!

The first thing I did was set up accounts across all streaming services and tested all 3 of them (Youtube, Netflix and Twitch). With Youtube there were no problems at all, same goes with Netflix. With Twitch, same thing -everything works well and good, didnt experienced any sound delays or lags so far. Did an unknown sources trick, and installed MorpheusTV, that works too.

So far, I feel like I won a lottery after observing subreddits, where 9.0 update brought a lot of pain and suffering for everyone who updated it. I definetly got for what I paid for, which is a good streaming set-up box and potential emulator machine. I plan to buy UGREEN usb hub, and run some PSP and PS1 emulators, and maybe even SNES. I just need to figure out which controller I wanna buy and which works the best for me. If there is anything I should try or any recommendations, go ahead!

just_roc

I know there are others that disagree but I have had no problems with any of the Mi Boxes I have for myself and family.
Like you I do a factory reset after an upgrade and don't see any of the issues everyone else is up in arms about.

Thanks for your detailed positive review for your experience!

koshergoy

tl;dr...

and did a factory reset right away

essential key to success

gordy124

Might be useful to cross post to the /Mibox sub

Fel1sCatus

Hey glad to hear mate.

​

Be mindful of possible input lag with SNES and such. I have not tried those on my mibox, but on my motorola phone with the gamepad mod it's definitely a thing. An emulator like retroarch has got some nice options that mitigate that pretty well.

​

Enjoy.

sv398

You didn't win any lottery. You just did a reset and you saved yourself from all the trouble some people have.

Narcil4

i found the plex app works fairly well. if it's not on the streaming APKs i think it's a great way to get content to the box. You also probably want to sideload a youtube apk to get rid of ads, i use Smart Youtube TV.

the 9.0 update is perfectly fine for me as well without a factory reset. i think the issues are mainly around the chromecast which i never use.

AlexandreF

I also had no problems.

paulie07

You had me at observationts.

RobLowBX

Nice review. I have a Matricom G-Pad. Definitely recommend this controller. I play NES, SNES, Sega, Sega Genesis, Game Boy, Atari and I play games from the Google Play store such as PubG.

JustLikeThat777

I love my box but it's staying on 8.1..Too many nightmare storys Everything works now the way I want it after many hours of tweaking.

The only thing I see it does is stability updates lofl and Prime native. You can sideload Prime if you want. It's on my tv so I didn't even bother

It's good to see a method that works though for some

ericbraven

Thanks for this info.. Much appreciated

nav2014

I have ine for 6 months. What is this PSP emulator? Can u run some playstation games on this ?

exodus_cl

I got my second box this week, everything perfect

hully1981

I upgraded had problems factory reset problems gone. If anyone is scared about upgrading don't be! Just factory reset after update. Back up apps if need be it's worth updating just runs better more stable

gpz1987

Can anyone tell me if the mi box s supports NTFS storage? In my country we have a Vodafone android TV box ($72 currently approx $45-50 US dollars) with RF antenna in built, it just got updated to 9 recently from 7.1 and that took the support for NTFS away. That really bums me out so want to look for alternative. Any suggestions?

tehrzky

for me this machine is great for its price, best for streaming machine for netflix, anime, chrome cast, some unofficial app.. the only complain is internal memory is easily full because every apps these day is huge esp. if you have kodi (2gb+ custom build) and retroarch (beware not all games run great its because the machine is not that powerful)

tsur1

Fuck mi box and fuck xiaomi their official update bricked my box with no way of recovery (this issue seems to be frequent check forums). Now xiaomi support tells me oops too bad we are sorry the update bricked your device but we do not give international warranty. Disgusting!

phattch

DO NOT INSTALL LATEST VERSION 9. It broke my Mi-Box and could not cast anything from my phone to the Mi Box.

Did a reset to factory and all is solved, Just need to reconfigure everything...

How come Xiaomi is not tested before making this one available, ridiculous

Fantastic-Peak

My observations about the Mi Box S 4k: If you are a mainstream user that only wants to stream only through apk then it is OK. But if you are an enthousiast wanting to play games, use VPN, root, update frequently and installing additional high end apps. Then it is absolutely a no go.

Because:

  1. No native VPN support. Even after updating to android 9 pie official, there is no way you can define the build-in VPN (unless you use third party apps, but using those apps is very painfull, very slow speeds and eats memory). I think xiaomi removed the native vpn intentionally.
  2. Forget installing emulators. Practically, the processor is not good enough and lacks memory. These days 2 gb of ram and 8 gb storage and slow processor speeds are simply not enough for smooth experience. We know that the new version of the box is the same ase the previous mi box. They could at least upscale the processor, increase ram and make some changes in the hardware.
  3. Wifi 5g speeds are slower than the 2.4ghz bands
  4. Screen Scaling is terrible
  5. Kodi only works smoothly if you install a light build. Forget Full heavy builds.

Conclusion: if you are a mainstream user that wants to stream using a simple apk, watch some Youtube and Netflix and nothing more or less then Yes. Otherwise go for another box with at least 3gb ram, 1.7ghz procesaor speeds and at least 16gb of storage. This is the first time I see an android box without native VPN support (which should be standard on any android version 7+).

Besides these, upgrading to 9 requires a hard reset afterwards. Otherwise it will give a lots of issues.

Regarding Netflix, Youtube, etc... Just use the native apps on your Smart TV, which are generally generating more qualitative 4k images compared to the mi box, but if your TV has less than 49inch, then you won't see the difference.... (my expereince)

My few cents about the mi box s.

Bodycount9

The reason why the Mi Box gets a bad rap on here is because people only post about it when they have an issue. So it looks like everyone is having issues because the only posts are about issues.

No one posts that they didn't have an issue because it would be a boring post then. I mean why post about a box that you had no issues with? What's the purpose of the post? With your post you posted you had no issues because you saw all the negative posts about it so you had a purpose.

I have two original boxes. Both have been relative error free since I bought them 2.5 years ago. Both are still working great. Both have saved me massive amounts of money over my cable provider leased boxes and I'm happy for that.