Received both the KM6 Deluxe and Homatics Box Q on the same day, and after testing both out I decided to keep the Box Q despite its much lower specs.

The techie part of me still feels like this is a dumb decision, but ultimately the Box Q has enough for my use cases (4K Netflix/Prime Video/Disney+ and Steam Link), and seems more well-built on both the hardware and software sides.

Here's some of my observations after testing both boxes for a couple of hours:

• Box Q comes with almost no pre-installed bloatware, so that's great. KM6 on the other hand has a whole bunch of apps that can't be uninstalled.

• The Box Q remote can detect your TV brand and turn on/off the TV as well (it also seems to automatically switch to the right HDMI source as well), so that's a bonus.

• KM6 had a random hardware scare one time when its ethernet port refused to work after I turned it on, I thought the port was busted but after power cycling the box it started working again. For this to happen on the first day of usage really makes me wonder about the build quality.

• When the KM6 had no connection because of the above, it also left the screen black, and I thought it bricked. It only started working again after I turned it off and on at the mains to get ethernet connectivity back.

• The Netflix mods for KM6 only get you 1080p, not 4K. No idea why though.

• My KM6 came with the updated firmware with the HDR fix.

• Because Netflix isn't officially supported on KM6, it doesn't show up as a recommendations row even if you have the modded apk installed.

• Because it's not Netflix certified, the KM6 remote has no Netflix button as well. I don't quite like the position of the Google voice assistant button on it too.

• The KM6 definitely feels snappier when opening apps (e.g. those times when the streaming app must load a whole lot of thumbnails), but beyond that both boxes feel equally smooth.

• The ethernet port on the Box Q is meaningless, it's much slower than 5GHz Wi-Fi. Still, on Wi-Fi it can stream shows at 4K and Steam Link at 2K (limited by my PC's monitor) without issue.

• The KM6 ethernet port is a little badly designed, it's really, really hard to pull out the LAN cable once it's in. Not that anyone expects to do that often, but still. Could be just my unit being badly assembled though.

• The KM6 has framerate matching, but it's disabled by default in the options. I don't see the option in the Box Q so I assume it doesn't have that.

Homatics Box Q is actually from SEI Robotics, some China Android TV ODM. But despite also ultimately being a "China box", it seems much more polished. So... between the dodgy ethernet port and the weird black screen thing and Netflix mod not having 4K on the KM6 Deluxe, I decided that I much prefer the reliability of the Homatics Box Q.

Hope I don't regret this!