Xiaomi Smart TV MiBox2 (New 1.5GHz TV box by one of chinas biggest mobile phone producers for $50)

[chrispersson]

I couldn't find anything about Xiaomi's new Smart TV box, MiBox2 which is a lot faster than version 1.

As I suspect it might be the most high quality Android box on the market I thought it deserves a thread here.

It's also the most popular box in China right now with over 1.7 million sales on Taobao/TMall alone.

Specs are not impressive on paper.
AMLogic chip 1.5GHz
1GB RAM

But AMLogic is considered by some to be better than RK3188, so still be a good buy.

Xiaomi is the company behind the famous Miui and this box comes with a custom Miui launcher that looks great.

Price 299 yuan, which is around $50. Of course you can't buy it for that outside china as the middle man wants to make some money too.

Link to Tmall description page: http://detail.tmall.com/item.htm?spm...3387_555&pos=1

Unboxing video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8ZfysQwH9A
User interface video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsi_w9nJXVk

There are also a few problems with this box that I can see:
1. Only UI in chinese.
2. Own app market with just apps targeting chinese market
3. Not rooted, but should be easy to do according to this article in Spanish (http://androidpc.es/blog/2013/12/23/...iaomi-mibox-2/)
4. No kernel source and encrypted launcher. But hopefully will run better than others out of the box.



I've ordered mine today. Will update when I have received and tested it.

[Finless]

I am going to let this post fly but normally this looks like China SPAM and we get attempts like this all the time! The reason you look fishy is:
1) It's your first post here. 99.9% of first users are here for help NOT to talk about a product!
2) It includes a URL to purchase.

However your post is very knowledgeable sounding and not like China spammers before.
But trust me we will be looking at your future posts.

I am moving this the review forum as this is where it belongs.

Bob

[JDfense]

@chrispersson
Let me know, when you find an international version. It looks nice, but my chinese is a bit rusty at the time.

JDfense

[chrispersson]

@Finless
Thanks for not deleting it. It's not spam but I can see how you could think that as it came out a bit over optimistic. Just excited that a low price brand named Android TV is finally coming. But haven't got mine yet, so can't know if it's any good or not.

@JDfense
Haha, can't read chinese myself. So I'm hoping that if the box is as good as it looks I can with the help of Finless Bob or other smart people on here translate it to English.

[phjanderson]

Darn, I just came back from China. Should have bought one while I was there...

[phjanderson]

Xiaomi is an impressive company though. Not one of those no-name Chinese companies you often see around here. They have high people who came from companies such Google working for them. They use Apple style strategies for production and marketing. I considered buying one of their phones but it's difficult to get, at least not for a low price, demand is very high. I wouldn't be surprised if this TV-box is of relative good quality, but of course having a full Chinese UI is kind of a deal breaker. Xiaomi is a software company too, I suspect they put good effort in the firmware. If you'd flash a firmware from another amlogic based tv box, then you might reduce the "quality" of the box. Would be great if English support would be added.

[chrispersson]

@phjanderson

My thoughts exactly.

I haven't got my box yet but I've read that the stock Android UI beneath the Miui launcher can actually be set to English. Just the Miui that is only in chinese. I'm really hoping this is true.

[ChinaSam]

Xiaomi

The Xiaomi box is great for those that can read the basic menus and navigate the system. Recent UI updates have moved things around quite a bit, but have not seen anything new about the English UI progress.

From what I've read, the new CEO from Google is trying to clean up the Xiaomi service so they CAN launch it as a competitor box in the US against the Roku3 / Apple TV / etc...but the first step was to get rid of the free knock-off movies streams that they were originally offering...that would not go over very well with Hollywood. The good news is that if this is their goal, then an English UI will be their next step...just not until they can make the system legally bullet proof so Hollywood can't sue them into oblivion.

When I originally got my Xiaomi box, you could select all kinds of new movies that were streamed to you free - generally any movies that had come out as illegal DVD in China was suddenly available on the Xiaomi streaming service - just a few weeks after it was released in theaters. Now, you can only get those movies if you sign up for a special account and pay a fee for accessing those movies, but there are 5 min free previews that are still available.

The real price fluctuations come from the way they sell these boxes. Each week Xiaomi only sells so many via their Chinese web portal and if you are lucky enough to get one there then you get the Retail price they have listed. If you DON'T get lucky and you want one right away, you have to buy from someone else (individual) who did get one in the 30 min they were available online - Thus the extra margin.