Recommended android box

After buying a x96 max plus, and unable to install coreelac I’ll be donating this to my brother and buying a new box.

Any recommendations for specific boxes and sellers, that are guaranteed to work with coreelac, and not have a locked bootloader making microsd booting impossible?

Video playback in corelac is more compatible than android/Kodi, ie on a few files I get audio but no video in android/Kodi, but the same files work fine with corelac kodi

I have a X96 Max + working with Coreelec

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N2 is the obvious go to, but also the Odroid C4, Khadas VIM3 and the VIM3L.
Of the cheap boxes the X96Air has worked for everyone who has tried it and it performs well.

Shoog

I would need hdmi and optical out, and it remote control

Beelink GT-King. Officially supported by CoreElec, and Beelink.

If I were to buy another one I would go Odroid.
Fantastic box and great support.

No optical out on any of the odroids. I would go for the x96air which is not as good as the odroid but ticks all the boxes.

Shoog

GPIO pin at J7 does not count?

Not really unless you are handy.

The X96 Air is the one to buy. But get at least the 4/32 one. It has everything and everythings works nicely without any problems. Install to emmc also works without any issue.

This is completely different from:

Btw, “not handy” buy PnP boxes not Odroid SBCs.

I am very handy but wouldn’t go down the route of adding an optical port and the associated case modifications. The tone of the questioner suggestsnhe is even less handy.

Shoog

where you guys got the x96 air with 1 Gbit lan?

I only see this 3 versions on any site i check. Those are:

A: 2GB+16GB+2.4G Wifi+100M(No Bluetooth)

B: 4GB+32GB+2.4G&5GHz Dual Wifi+BT4.1+100M

C: 4GB+64GB+2.4G&5GHz Dual Wifi+BT4.1+100M

I bought two 4/32 X96 Air and both have gigabit. From a seller on Aliexpress with a German warehouse.

First of all, sorry for another thread like this, I’m sure there are many. I will try to be as specific as I can.

My requirements -

  • will be connected via HDMI to receiver
  • need lossless audio passthru
  • good cooling
  • oem regular updates for firmware and support
  • known to be stable

good to have -

  • if firmware provided also enables audio passthru in Android
  • easy dual boot (e.g. as found in Ugoos)

I’m new to CoreElec and I’m having difficulty in understanding which to pick from the huge number of boxes all based on same SOC.

I have narrowed down to box based on S905X3 or S922X. Both seem to have same decoding capabilities. There also seem to be many variants of above as well as S905X4 etc which I don’t know if they are supported.

The other question I have is how to find which device is supported. The device tree doesn’t seem to have everything or I don’t know how to look.

e.g. I am looking at this - www.amazon.com/X88-PRO-X3-Quad-core-Cortex-A55/dp/B0894RZJQ3/

But X88 Pro X3 is not listed on device tree page which only has X88 king. There is a thread on it (X88 PRO X3, Choose DTB and Install to EMMC) which says to use generic image but after reading the thread its still not clear if the device is supported or not?

I also looked for Transpeed as I considered this - www_amazon_com/Android-32GB-Streaming-Media-Player/dp/B0815T4B38, but again cannot find them in device tree page.

My questions -

  • is S905X3 vs S922X a big difference when using heavy skins and large libraries? Is the S922 much snappier in daily use? Is it worth the almost $80 premium?

  • does CE allow changing partition size to allocate more space to it, vs Android. e.g. most of these have 32GB RAM which can be used for addon, cache etc since I wont be using the Android partition much

  • who makes a reliable hardware with good cooling etc and support, besides Odroid, since its out of stock, plus after adding needed parts the cost works out same as other Android boxes

  • I am in US and prefer to buy from Amazon if possible due to better return policy and short shipping times. I know Aliexpress has much larger variety so I don’t mind that if needed.

  • can someone recommend a good choice for S905X3 based box (see many choices like X96, H96, Transpeed, X88 and many other brands its hard to tell if they are supported by CE) as well as S922X (Ugoos looks good to me but is close to $160 and not sold by Amazon), or anything else I should be looking at

Thanks

Discard X88 Pro X3. It has an encrypted bootloader, so you cannot use bl_301 features and it detects only 2Gb of RAM in bootloader. I changed them in favour of H96

Your requirements will be met by purchasing a supported CE device.
Android support for Chinese branded boxes will be ZERO
Narrow your choice to the hardware below.
Khadas Vim3 or Vim3L
Odroid N2+ or the C4

Good factory and community support for Firmware.

Going to repeat this again - as far as I can see none of the Android boxes are adequately cooled - none. If you want to squeeze the maximum performance out them then this is an issue.
The only AMLogic devices which provide adequate cooling are the Odroids, the Khadas have pathetic cooling solutions which are totally unsuitable for a media player.

And for CE use there is no practical difference between the performance of the S905x3(running performance governor) and the S922.

Shoog

Hmm, is Ugos AM6 Plus not an Android Box?

Same procedure as every year ?

There are two options

  1. buy cheap and earn trouble
  2. buy Khadas or Odroid and be lucky

Many people pay a lot of money for the TV, why save a few euros and having a lot of trouble with a piece of crap ?