Looking for a box with well supported hardware

General
1

Hello there.

I’m looking for a android box. Just am a bit lost, there’s so many different android boxes. I’d like to get a S905X2 box. But am just wondering if anyone got any recommendations. I’ll be using the Plex addon and maybe YouTube or Pluto tv if it works.

I don’t have any 4K content but probably will in the future when I get better tv. Should a S905X be good enough? I was thinking maybe a 4GB ram S905X2 so I could adjust the cache for buffering and it would have better performance.

Thanks in advance.

2

I’m by no means an expert on the topic, but I’d be going for something that either runs pretty stable (S905X) or is being actively worked on (odroid N2/S922). Just remember a large cache won’t improve or replace a shitty internet connection if streaming Netflix, etc. I have a 2gb device and a good connection and have no buffering issues, I wouldn’t be getting a 4gb device just for a larger cache.

3

That’s right. Better to get a S905X that works well with CE and I see, sounds good. What android box do you have?

4

I’m on the same boat.
I have a Mecool M8S Pro W and i want another box to another room.
What do you recommend?
On budget.

5

S905X or S905X2, or you can wait a little bit for a very nice deal on much better hardware that will be coming up soon.

3 Likes
6

I’d actually disagree with using the S905X boxes from my personal experience, not because of how CoreELEC runs, it runs very well… but if you have a significant amount of movies and tv shows in Plex then you will absolutely experience crashes quite often.

For example, if you select the movies header then it will load all movies into a grid / list, when you go back to the main menu it will crash. Sometimes when loading episode posters on TV shows, it’ll also crash. These crashes are mostly eliminated with a S912 box, however if you have a lot of movies it will still crash when going back from the grid / list view. Haven’t tried an S905X2 box yet but I’ll be receiving one in a few days. Obviously the software isn’t as stable for that box yet (nightlies).

I’m not sure if anyone else has experienced these issues with Plex for Kodi, but I’ve tried it on multiple boxes and multiple version of Kodi (Krypton and Leia, separate builds including LibreELEC and CoreELEC).

If you do experience that crash, you can modify the library.py file in Plex for Kodi and set it to enable chunked view, reduce the chunk size to around 50 and you’ll notice significant improvement in load times and it won’t crash when exiting list / grid view. However you’ll need a S912 or more powerful to avoid the other crashes. Again, from personal experience but I have looked into it a lot.

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I don’t see how this is the fault of the hardware or software. I have a S905X, and it never crashes without a reason. If you experience crashes, it’s much more likely to be a buggy addon than CE or Kodi.

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That’s not a processors fault. Sounds like Plex itself. Never had an issue on my S905X. Has more than enough grunt to handle large libraries.

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Is there any support for S905X2 currently?

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Yes, there is a huge thread on here about the new supported SoCs. Better buy a box that is known to work right (check reports by users), and don’t go around looking for the cheapest one you can find.

1 Like
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Thanks. I was looking at the wrong thread (this one instead this one).