Azurill Smart TV S400 (Cozyswan) Review

[emptybee]

Wow, I was expecting to have problems with this device but things started to look bad even as I unboxed it...

Bought from Azurill on amazon.co.uk for just shy of £60 and came in a tatty box with wrong plug (2 pin not 3 pin UK).

Does it get better when you plug it in? No. Not at all. Tried two 2A chargers (Nexus 7 charger and a spare I had bought) and it gets hot really quickly. Decided to run stock rom for a bit and see if there were any other issues before I flashed it as didn't want to needlessly invalidate my warranty. Thank godness I did! Firstly the wifi connection showed full bars but internet browsing and using google play store was painfully slow. Ran a speed test app to see what was going on and got a ping in the 900ms area and download speeds of under 0.3mb/s. Ran the same app on my Samsung phone at the same distance from the router and got 62ms ping and 30mb/s. Not only this but whenever it was trying to do something over the wifi it seemed to massively negatively impact the wifi connection of other devices (such as PC and mobile).

Tried to play several films from my samba share using BSplayer and MXplayer and they failed. Tried playing it over minidlna without luck too. Not as in jitters or stutters but as in never even started playing... Tried Netflix and the quality looked like it was filmed with a mobile phone camera from 2005 from a dodgy pirate copy played in a underground cinema in China. I am utterly disappointed with this stick. Had reasonably low expectations after reading about the movie jitters etc but this device is just plain unusable! £60 should buy you a workable device. Decided against flashing roms etc. in case it prevented me returning it under warranty and will be shipping it back to Amazon tomorrow.

Unfortunately (and this is the biggest problem so far) I have caught the android stick bug. I've had a (well two actually) raspberry pi for a while (whacked one in a zx spectrum case with pretty much every zx spectrum game ever made in it and even using the rubber keyboard, the other sits upstairs being my print server and media server) and played with that a fair amount but the idea of a more powerful stick device that I can use apps bought from the google store intrigues me. Want to be able to watch Netflix and stream movies in web browser. Also means I can use it to learn how to build kernels and roms without buggering up my phone.

Can anyone recommend me a device which might suit this without breaking the bank? Are the new RK3188 sticks using AP6210 wifi chips better or do you still need a USB to ethernet dongle?

Any suggestions will be gratefully received and much appreciated

empty

[emptybee]

Mods please delete this as I have re-posted it in the product review section. Thanks

[sam321]

lol. that just about sums up the problem with these sticks. For a better experience I would get rk3066 stick however they are still not perfect. I have got a raspberry pi, however the arm processor does suck, in all honesty the only reason the raspberry pi has got the support it has is because it is cheap, and why is it cheap, it is because the foundation is so far up broadcoms butt that they cant see daylight, it is about as open sorce as the xbox, they said they released the gpu drivers sorce code but in truth it is just a lotof jibberish as all the stuff that is needed is inside the main binary blob, I would like to see them release that sorce code but you have got more chance of winning the lottery 1000 times in a row

[emptybee]

Haha, love the post Sam! You're right in every way Why release a device to encourage people, and in particular students, to get excited in programming etc. but not make it completely opensource?! Odd and delusional but I think in general their intentions are right.

Honestly appreciate the hard work that is being put into improving these devices by the likes of you, Finless, Neomode, Strauzo (mmmm...I'll get to that later) and of course phjanderson but why the **** should you guys have to put in this work to make useable devices? I really don't get it! I couldn't work out why more developers weren't working on these devices but so many build (and continue to build despite being 2+ years old) roms and kernels for phones such as the Galaxy S2. I think the reason is that the phones are pretty bloody excellent to begin with and their happy to try and improve them as oppose to these were the manufacturers turn out garbage and rely on people to do the work for them (similar to the RPi scenario). Then you have the likes of Geekbuying sending out free devices to people to build stuff on because they realise that they will sell more if they can make a sh**y device better and the chances of actually getting the manufacturer to do the work is slim to none (Rockchip withholding sources and all).

Either way, it is you lot who are the reason these devices are selling at all and you should stop until either you get paid properly for it or the manufacturers release products that work. Which brings me onto Strauzo. I wasn't convinced you were doing the right thing by preventing the release of the fix until I got my stick and realised just how appalling these things are.

Rant over. Sorry if I have offended anyone. However what annoys me most is when these get good reviews on sites like amazon. It's not up to the reviewer to give the caveats (such as flash rom, kernel, change this and that = works!). The descriptions themselves should be: "1080P* android stick that will do anything android can*, wifi*, Great for streaming videos* and no noisy fans!*"

(*Not 1080P. *You will have to spend a few hours and then it might work if you can find some kind soul whose made a ROM/kernel for this particular component arrangement, *but please ignore this and buy an ethernet to usb dongle (Ah, and if you do that, be sure to buy a powered USB hub so that you can still plug in a mouse and hard drive etc.) *We meant from a connected hard drive, not from a media centre or online video service as you would expect. *Don't worry it'll get hot and shut off before it gets dangerous.)

[sam321]

the thing is with these sticks is they cut too many corners to save money. If you buy a tablet they are ok. When I bought this stick I expected to put workk into it, as for the raspberry pi intentions I do not think they are right. The day they release the gpu driver sorce code is the day they lost a lot of respect from the developing comunity as they tried to pass it off as the first open sorce arm chip. I and a lot of others will not work on it for that reason. Eben wonders why he has to hire students to do work that he thought the comunity would do LOL

[emptybee]

the thing is with these sticks is they cut too many corners to save money. If you buy a tablet they are ok. When I bought this stick I expected to put workk into it, as for the raspberry pi intentions I do not think they are right. The day they release the gpu driver sorce code is the day they lost a lot of respect from the developing comunity as they tried to pass it off as the first open sorce arm chip. I and a lot of others will not work on it for that reason. Eben wonders why he has to hire students to do work that he thought the comunity would do LOL

They cut corners but the devices aren't cheap enough for the number of corners they cut. If someone could do it I would happily spend £100 on a nexus 7 (2012) repackaged without screen or battery as a dongle device. Surely that is financially viable? If nothing of any quality comes out soon I think I'll get a new phone and recommission my Galaxy S2 (with MHL dongle) as an android TV device. That way I have loads of ROMs and kernels to choose from (they'll have to be based on Samsung Stock Roms to utilise the MHL port).

As for Eben, he could have done so much better with the RPi I think a lot of people are hugely disappointed. Maybe he'll learn from it and do better arranging deals on the IP sharing for components if there is a next time.

I will look into these dongles further and see if I can find something for around £35-40 that will do what I want. However, think it's going to be a waiting game until these products get to a stage where they are usable out of the box.

[Finless]

Closing this thread per OP request.

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Bob