I would only recommend buying it if you enjoy tinkering with your streaming box. If you do not have a streaming box yet and want something in a similar price range, I'd recommend the new Roku streaming stick.

I'd had quite a few quibbles with the Mi Box:

1. Inconsistency between fast forward / rewind options in several apps (Play Movies does it well, PBS is terrible)

2. Occasional audio sync issues which forces me to reboot. It's driving my wife crazy.

3. Chromecasting seems to be a lower quality than using a native app. Tested this out by playing a movie through Google Play Movies App and casting it from my phone.

4. Chromecasting doesn't bring you in to the app. For the above case, after casting the movie, I could not fully control the movie from the remote; I could only play and pause.

5. When an app gives a notification, I have no idea how to clear that notification. I ended up just disabling notifications from the app in question.

Advantage of the MiBox (AndroidTV, really):

1. The UI is much prettier than Apple TV and Roku.

2. All the basic apps are there (HBO Now, Hulu, Netflix, ESPN)

3. Sideloading works pretty well for those apps without an Android TV interface if you don't mind attaching a mouse. For example, sideloading the AMC app and attaching a mouse allowed my wife to watch Walking Dead on the TV since the AMC app does not support Chromecast.

4. From a developer standpoint, AndroidTV seems extremely easy to code for. The sample app is fantastic and very simple. Really makes me want to develop an app for AndroidTV.

5. Bluetooth headphones worked for private listening. That was a nice touch (though the Roku stick has that feature by using your phone).

As usual, it depends.

it's the fastest media box I've used (never tried sheild)

Its the same price as chromecast ultra but does more than support cast ,and only double cost of normal chromecast

The voice search works really well and can be used for typing

It has no ethernet port and no optical output.

The home screen IMO is a bit clumsy, not terrible, but feels could use a little more organizing

Mine and others report HDMI CEC issues when connected to receiver, wherd it will keep switching the input back to mi box. Hopefully fixed in future update. If you don't use CEC doesn't matter.

If I had to make an suggestion, Nvidia Sheild when money is no object, mibox when you have a budget.

Is it worth the money for someone that wants one? Most likely.

Problems? Maybe 4K playback. I heard it stutters a bit.

If you can afford the Shield, get that.

Mine may be an outlier but it's been pretty buggy since I bought it a week or so ago. Three or four times now it's become unresponsive and the only thing I could do was unplug the power and reboot it. I've also had a window pop up asking me to pair the remote again. The voice search feature on the remote has only worked about 50% of the time so far; a number of times I've simply given up after repeated tries to get it to respond, no matter how loudly or softly I speak. The most recent oddity is the Google Play Store failing to load, telling me to check my internet connection, when I'm clearly online and can stream video in other apps.

Beyond all that, video streaming (all from 1080p and 720p sources, no 4K) has been a bit sub-par relative to my Apple TV 3 and TiVo Roamio; there's an uneven jerkiness I see now and then repeatedly, as if frames are being dropped.

Like other's have said if you want something simple and stable I'd go with a newer Roku. Android TV is a really cool platform that lets you do a lot, but it is pretty buggy. I've owned 2 nexus players and now I have a Mi box and they are both buggy. You have to reboot the thing a lot. If you get past that it's really cool. The interface is nice, the thing is fast and you can install more apps than most streaming boxes allow. And that fact that it has built in google cast is of course an extremely useful feature. For the most part basic features such as netflix work great but even then you run into weird bugs sometimes.

Just to put things in perspective, the mi box is mainly a media box - don't expect high end gaming.

Shield is a do all monster.

So if your thing is just media, get the mi box. If you want to play AAA games as well as media, get the shield.

I've had mine for about a week now. Went from a box running Android to the Mi running Android TV. So much crisper. I love the interface.

It runs smooth. I've been using Kodi and Youtube, HBO, ESPN, etc. and everything runs great. Picture quality and buffering has been great.

LIKES:

Remote feels good. Responsive to the touch, sleek and light feel. Bluetooth so I don't have to poit it at the Mi. The remote has a volume button which is very useful. I downloaded a game to try (Minions Rush). Instructions were tailored to the Mi remote and worked great. I plugged in a Xbox USB controller and all instructions instantly changed to dual-stick instructions.

DISLIKES (possibly need help with):

The voice function doesn't work in apps like Kodi (for searching). It pulls you out of Kodi and does a Google search. It'll also pause and NOT resume music, like when streaming Pandora. Also, I find that it has only 2 feature for powering down: sleep and reboot. I haven't figured out how to power down but perhaps sleep mode suffices.

Still learning all that I can do with this but I am loving it so far. Very responsive, fast, and crisp.

C'mon, you could put a modicum of effort into this.