Looking for faster device than the 4K Amazon Fire Cube 2nd Gen

by Fun_Transportation_5

Hey everyone, new here so forgive me If I am in the wrong place. I have been using the 4K Amazon FireTV Cube Gen 2 (one upstairs and one downstairs) with Kodi 19.1 with Seren as my primary add-on of choice for TV and movies. I am also using Arctic Zephyr Reloaded at this time but have tried skins like Cosmic, Arctic Zephyr, and similar. I find that upon opening Kodi, no matter what skin, there is about 2 minutes of wait time for all the AutoWidget widgets to load and such. I experience no lag with playback but the interface usage is like a 3/5 in terms of smoothness and ease for mostly all skins with configured widgets. Loading universal searches and things takes about 1-2 min regardless of skin choice too. (obviously with my PC this is all nearly instant). I see for benchmarks that the Amazon Fire Cube 2nd gen and the Shield 2 are reeeeally close in performance .

Is there any off brand device, recommendations for devices, or anything of the sort that you guys recommend for a smoother, faster user interface experience particularly for Kodi? Looking to keep it in the realm of a portable box/stick/device of the sort (laptop / desktop to go isn't as idea).

Thanks.

513

More powerful than the Cube2, only the Shield TV so far.

8bitPete

Just get a sheild and be done with it

Kodi_Fan_Omicron

If you want PC performance while using Kodi, then get a PC; though the Cube handles Kodi admittedly well for being a low powered ARM device. Switching from the Cube to ShieldTV is still not going to be some revolutionary upgrade like other comments in this thread suggest. More of a lateral improvement by switching the OS from the bloated FireTV to AndroidTV.

Alternative would be a Mini-PC. Minisforum offers some low wattage mini-PC's, like the GK41 and GK50, which are available from Amazon at a decent price that could be used as an HTPC. The form factor is small enough to be considered portable.

alainreid

For 1, the "Shield 2" is just smaller. It doesn't have better hardware, in fact, there are some downgrades. It does have some better software features like AI upscaling.

My Kodi on Shield takes about 30 seconds to a minute to load in. I've always considered that too long, so I don't use it much.

je1992

Leave kodi in the dust, and use android apks that use real debrid etc. I can dm you links if you want