Best Android TV OS Box Australia (non-Shield)

by DomoVla

Hi All, I am helping out a friend with setting up a streaming box. He has seen my Shield TV Pro (2019), and absolutely loves that, but is not in a position to spend that much money on a box at the moment.

Is there anything out there in terms of a half decent box running Android TV OS that performs well and is non-laggy? It will mainly be used for Syncler and an IPTV (tivimate) setup.

Things we are looking/hoping for are:

  • Must run on Android TV OS, so not stock Android. Version 10 or 11 both fine.
  • Ideally 3 or 4 GB of RAM and at least 16 GB ROM.
  • Must be able to cope with a VPN server. Have tried several cheap rockchip boxes before and they couldn't handle my vpn encryption (no problems with that on the Shield).
  • Have a snappy and non-laggy performance.
  • Does NOT have to be Netflix, Amazon, etc. certified.
  • Not too worried about future OS or firmware updates as long as the box performs well from the first setup.
  • Won't be playing any games on it etc.

We are based in Australia so limited with regards to which boxes are available. We were looking at Mecool and then possibly the MK7 but I am seeing a lot of mixed reviews on that 😬. Other option would be the Mecool KM2 Plus but that only has 2GB of RAM? Not sure of anything else out there for the Australian market that performs well 🤷🏼?

TIA for the advice!

denisryan72

Google TV with Chromecast is the simple answer for what you need, more than adequate at a good price point too.

clarkss12

Mecool KM6 Deluxe is what you are looking for.

_ZinDer_

Ie have been testing Homatics Box R 4K Plus for a week , it is quite powerful but even though it is below the Shield is still more expensive than most Android TV 150$ (4 GB and 32GB internal) In apps there must be no problems

denisryan72

What I don't understand is, alot of people (not all of course) that say they can't justify the price of a shield, will go through several different devices (Firesticks, boxes etc) which soon add up to the equivalent price of the shield over the years. Nothing really comes close to the shield .To be fair I bought my shield in 2017 and it's still fantastic and still supported by Nvidia, for nearly 6 years that's incredible value for money in the android landscape!

Usual_frank

formuler z11 pro max

RubyPrune9771

Hako Mini 2022 4K Box (4GB/32GB ROM variant).

dariohanon

Does it have to be a box? Does it have to be stock android TV or would fire TV work? I'm assuming you're relatively tech savvy because you mentioned iptv, so fire TV stick 4k max is a really solid choice imo, specially because of wifi 6. You can get it for like 40 usd. Xiaomi mi stick 4k is another solid choice.

Both of these have only 8gb rom, 2gb of ram (in my experience, that's perfectly fine), no ethernet or usb A, but you can get an otg dongle, maybe with a micro sd slot and raise the storage.

I would've personally gone for the fire stick 4k max if I didn't need my shield tv as a plex server.

ECKoBASE

Mi Box S from Amazon

wewewi

I would not recommend Android TV to anyone at this point.

Way too many issues even Google seems powerless or doesn't care to fix. Ads, storage, framerate, display modes, audio passthrough; everything is broken, every solution is half-assed.. ; it is an utter mess.

Extremely hard to deal with for newcomers looking for a top notch experience.

Shield is still good high-end if you know what you're doing; CCwGTV is good value for the price... Everything else is direct-to-landfill garbage.

Btw Shield is practically the only device with 3gb; almost everything else is still maxing out at 2gb.