Software support is still not mature in LE for the Pi4. To be frank LE is in a bit of a mess with anything but PC support and even that has its issues. The Pi4 is not a great design and is easily bettered as a media player by any S905x3 or S922 based AMLogic box. Spending about €120 on a N2 will give you an excellent media player which is future proof for at least 2-4years (unless you absolutely need some of the new media codecs that no one is actually using yet).
Just about all of the cheap AMLogic Android boxes have significant issues with heat unless you take the trouble to add extra cooling measures. Heat means poor reliability and performance issues as throttling becomes a serious issue. Only a few boxes have adequate heatsinking and the N2 is one of the best (mine never gets above 50C and typically sits at 35C - which is half of what a X96Air will do unmodified).
2-4 years for media playing is very little. I had this cheap T95 something that I have had for 4 years and can play x265@4k.
Anyway, 120 euros seems quite expensive. My target is half that. The N2 costs in USA (?) 58 euros, I don’t get why it is so expensive here.
I can put a cooler on top of the X96 and the total would be 30 euros vs 120. I am not saying the N2 is a great machine, apparently it is, but it seems to expensive for my taste.
For 120 I can buy an used XBOX and run kodi from there.
2-4 years is the time it takes for new formats to overtake old and make your shiny new hardware somewhat redundant. I fully expect my N2 to last at least twice that and do everything I need it to for its full life. Many people “need” the shiny new formats so I give it a conservative life.
But hey do what you like and don’t ask peoples advice if you don’t want to accept it.
I have 3 different boxes. All were about 30 euros. Even my 3 years old s905x box still plays everything flawlessly, even 4k HDR. So I don’t see the need to pay 120 euro for a single device.
No one said the N2 was cheap, what everyone who has some experience of it and the cheap boxes says - its the best tool for the job of running CE. There is not a single team member of the Coreelec developers who would tell you anything different. Take that and do with it what you will.
I have 3 Odroid N2/N2+, 2 as daily drivers for CE and one is used exclusively for EmuELEC in their respective rooms.
After years of monkeying around with “best value” media players/space heaters, I’ll never go back. Especially seeing as how the current “best value” players are essentially a crap shoot regarding functionality with CE.
I think the point everyone is making is that the $50 device might work. If you’re willing to gamble $50 on the chance that it might work, might have the actual amount of ram it was advertised as having, and might have working wifi/Bluetooth/ETH - more the power to you.
Thanks, of course the more you spend the better it should be.
But that doesn’t mean that I need to buy a ferrari to get a nice car.
I have not had any problem with my cheapo T95. I paid 40 dollars at the time, and it is still working.
I can try a Xiaomi Mi Box S from Amazon, and if it does not work, I can return it. Costs 58 euros.
I think is way overpriced here in Europe the N2. It costs 58 dollars in USA IIRC. That is less than 50 euros. Here it costs double that. Makes no sense.
And then you have to add a power supply, a remote, and a case.
You just proved that you don’t know what you are talking about. The Xiaomi Mi Box has a locked bootloader and cannot run CE. This is the sort of mistake peoples kind advice is trying to save you from.
Maybe confusion starts because you do not clearly specify the usecase.
If you want to just run Kodi on Android, go with the cheapest box you could get.
If you want to run CE on such a box (and you asked in a CE forum!), you need a reliable & supported HW.
X96 was OK some times ago, but nowadays (due to IC allocations everywhere) it is jeopardy. There are several threads here with Fake RAM, unsupported variations of WIFI, and unknown CPU variants, all sold under the same name. This cannot be supported by CE team, variations & efforts are too high.
Therefore, you got recommendations to spend some more more $ to buy a known vendor.
First box was a mxq pro+ with 2gb ram and 100mbit Lan wit an s905x. Second an x96 mini with 2gb ram, 100mbit Lan and an s905w. And last year I bought a x96 max with 1000mbit Lan 4gb ram and an s905x3. All bought from geekbuying.com. All 3 boxes work without problems. Coreelec is installed on the emmc for all 3 boxes. The x96 mini was the cheapest for about €25
The fact that your 4 year old box has performed suitably for you until now, where it has developed a fault indicates that your uses are not required by bleeding edge technology.
So on the surface, a cheap box would normally work well enough with CE.
Unfortunately, we are not in normal times.
One of the downsides is that boxes with a certain name that would likely have presented little if no problems a couple of years ago are stating to see increases in incompatibility as well as fakes.
No doubt partly due to the chip shortages, meaning that Frankenstein like boxes are cobbled together with whatever is available to make a buck., hence hesitation in recommending anything that is not fully supported and has consistency of component manufacture.
If low price is a must then the second hand market might actually yield more success as older models may have greater quality and compatibility.
But to some extent, there is always gamble with what are essentially no name products. Even those with names recognisable to people on here will have little or no recognition at all in the wider world.
So one aspect of purchase for a cheap box (and perhaps even more so for an expensive one) would be to buy local and buy from a source where returns are easy.
Amazon and eBay do tend to be sites where there are protections available, so I would say spend some time to shop around and ask questions about what you might buy and what happens if it turns out not to bee suitable.
Trading can be a little like the wild wet right now, so caveat emptor is more appropriate than in more normal times of supply and demand.