According to Android Central the Chromecast with GoogleTV is the best Android TV box. Nvidia Shield was #2 and Shield Pro was #3. Do you agree?
According to Android Central the Chromecast with GoogleTV is the best Android TV box. Nvidia Shield was #2 and Shield Pro was #3. Do you agree?
Bang-for-buck, the Onn from Walmart is pretty great.
The Shield's are concidered to be the best but the hardware can be old and the price is too high. Chromecast w/Google TV is OK but it too has some problems with the remotes. Android Central has a problem to sway their opinions toward those who advertise & support the site so I take their views with very little. There are other boxes that are good including the MI box s & Walmart's Onn box.
i've owned them all, and in 2022 none of them are really fast enough, even my shield tv pro. I hope nvidia launches as successor product soon.
Development seems to have stalled considerably. I guess people are fine with what they now have. As long as it can stream their movies, that's all they're asking of it.
I would have hoped more bet on stronger devices like Shield which could help android TV gaming become a thing. For some odd reason it never took off.
But now I'm waiting for Google IO next month. Hopefully they announce a new device, but probably it's more likely they'll announce it in the autumn.
For most people the Shield is more than they need. Chromecast w Google TV needs some help to come close but of course it's not as good of a device. If you add a USB-C hub with a USB drive for ethernet, and get rid of that over heavy Google TV UI it can be a very good. I don't think "most people" would care to venture into any of this stuff so left to out of the box experience the Chromecast w Google TV is just an OK device. I would recommend the $20 Onn UHD to a lot of the "most people" demographic.
It appears that everyone thinks that these Android boxes are to be used connected directly to a TV. What about those people that have expensive sound systems and state of the art TVs.
Some people consider the capabilities to play Dolby Vision video codecs, and the HD audio codecs.... Most of the lower cost devices do not provide those attributes.
So, it all depends on what the users setup is.
Ive got a Shield with a 64gb SSD as extra storage . 4TB SSD NAS run by a Pi4 . 1GB CAT6 NW.
After having a X96 1gb to a X96 and finally a X88 and doing numerous ROMS ,int.d scripts ..etc in the 10 yrs or so ...🥴
The Shield , IMO is the best as it supports Dolby Vision, HDR and has good support.
It's responsive and stable . Has never failed from a factory reset ,even after I tried to root it ..🙃
I run the ATV launcher and have disabled PS ,Android launcher and also removed all the pointless apps ..Works very well with kodi ..👍😁
Most people only have one device so its hard to compare, so I can't vote.
I have the shield. The latest updates were terrible, not tested, and broke my access to the external drive. Took them about a month to fix it.
Plex is similar, every update is buggy and something always breaks. I don't understand why Nvidia doesn't have its own proper player, and we need to settle on a 3rd party.
As for streaming I would guess all the devices are similar. But some are not 4k approved by Netflix.
Android TV - don't get me started. They show 'ads' lately, which is unacceptable in my opinion. The Playstore removed some apps that are available on other streamers, especially in the IPTV category... also many times when I turn it on, it opens directly into an Ad in the Youtube app. Its inconsistent and I am not sure if it's deliberate or maybe someone left the YouTube app on. But I also find it completely unacceptable.
Pricewise - Nvidia is the most expensive by far (x4-5) and I am totally not sure its worth it.
I have the amazon fire stick 4K max (on my old Philips Ambilight Full HD) and it works great. (39,90€) I sideload apps i need (smartube Next, sound TV ect...)
As people already said, it depends of your expectations.
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It depends what you do with your device. Are you mostly just streaming content from a service? The CCwGTV is more than enough but if want to play local content from a external drive and/or from a Plex server the SHIELD TV will be worth the money.
I got the shield pro only because it's slightly better at handling my media server than ccwgtv and the HD upscale is nice. Otherwise they're about the same. With the exception that YouTube on the ccwgtv gets HDR and shield pro doesn't support it
I had no idea my Shield Pro has a lost remote finder.
Onn from Walmart is great but there are a couple things that I did not like:
I am using ATV Pro launcher.
The Xiaomi box is the best in the market imo. I got it recently and it just works flawlessly, gives me apple vibes for android (and much cheaper lol)
edit: just make sure you looking at their latest version, it's the number 4 here: https://toowired.com/best-android-tv-box/