Hey guys, need some help.

For Christmas, I setup a Mi Box 4 for my mother as she lives alone and wanted something to do.

Recently she's been having problems with what she called "freezes". She brought the box over to me and I found that occasionally, but especially when the box has been idle, the controller stop responding. The only way to fix it is to restart the box, or take the batteries out of the controller and put them back in, presumably to get the remote to ping the box again.

I've found the box works perfectly fine if I simply use the Android TV remote app on my Oneplus 8 Pro, and she could do the same on her Samsung S20FE, but she'd really rather use a physical remote (she's old school).

I've done some research and this seems to be a relatively common problem. The further problem being that this seems to be a problem just buying an after market remote won't necessarily guarantee a fix for...

I'm wondering if it's sensible to send this back to amazon and pick up a Chromecast instead. My second question is why the hell is a Chromecast so much cheaper than the Mi box 4? What are the restrictions?

I got the Mi Box for her specifically over the Amazon Fire so she could use the box the same as her phone, load apps on it and use her TV like a big phone. She's very technology phobic so anything complex is not a good solution for her (hence why she wouldn't just use the Android TV app for a remote).