Android Tv Box Benchmark Tests
AnTuTu System Benchmark tests an Android device's CPU, GPU, memory and storage performance. AnTuTu System Benchmark is an all-in-one benchmark designed to run tests on your device's CPU, GPU.
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While many of the latest televisions ship with smart features for watching online content, you don't have to buy an expensive new TV just to get a better streaming experience. Many manufacturers have taken advantage of Google's open-source Android operating system to build set-top boxes of all shapes and sizes. As a result, it's never been easier to access services like Netflix or Hulu or watch your own video content on the big screen.
The Rundown
- Best Overall:Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K at Amazon, 'Offers over half a million TV episodes and movies with support for 4K HDR 10+ and Dolby Atmos sound.'
- Best for Gaming:Nvidia Shield TV at Amazon, 'Supports Dolby Atmos and DTS-X surround-sound passthrough to let your movies sound as good as they look.'
- Best Value:EASYTONE Android TV Box at Amazon, 'Has better specifications and features than most Android TV boxes in this price range.'
- Best Budget:Amazon Fire TV Stick at Amazon, 'The easiest and cheapest way to get Netflix, Prime Video, and most other streaming content.'
- Best for On-the-Go Entertainment:Pendoo X8 Minia at Amazon, 'Measures just 3.2 x 3.2 x 0.7 inches and weighs just 3.5 ounces.'
- Best Extras: MXQ Pro at Amazon, 'Includes a remote control plus a wireless mini-keyboard that makes entering text significantly easier.'
- Best Customer Support:MINIX NEO U9-H+ at Amazon, 'The company regularly updates the firmware...so you'll likely be able to use the U9-H+ for several years.'
Our Top Picks
Best Overall: Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K
Looking for a way of streaming 4K HDR content on your fancy new television, but don't need all the other bells and whistles of an Android TV box? The latest model of Amazon's Fire TV Stick fits the bill perfectly.
Plugging into the back of your television, this budget device offers a lot for the price. Over half a million TV episodes and movies are available across Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, and other sources, with support for 4K HDR 10+ and Dolby Atmos sound.
Content from sites like Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube is also available on the Fire TV stick via their respective apps, and with a bit of work, you can browse other websites as well.
Unsurprisingly for an Amazon product, Alexa support is built-in and lets you search for content using your voice as well as accessing the large library of Alexa skills.
The small remote has volume, navigation, and other basic buttons, and can also control connected accessories like a soundbar.
Best for Gaming: Nvidia Shield TV
When it comes to premium Android TV boxes, there's one that stands out above the rest. The Nvidia Shield TV is a high-end device, with quality components that offer an unmatched set of features.
As well as streaming high-definition 4K HDR content from the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, the box supports Dolby Atmos and DTS-X surround-sound passthrough to let your movies sound as good as they look.
The fun doesn't stop with just watching your favorite movies and shows, however. There's also a high-end computer graphics card in the Shield TV box, which lets you play many video games without needing to connect a console or computer. A good Bluetooth controller comes in the box.
Titles like Fortnite, Assassin's Creed, and Grand Theft Auto are available using Nvidia's GeForce Now game streaming platform, as are a variety of Android, Wii, and Gamecube games (the latter two via an emulator).
The Nvidia Shield also has full Kodi and Plex support, so you can play your own library of audio and video content just as easily as streaming it. To that end, it's also possible to connect a USB stick or hard drive to the box to add extra storage.
Best Value: EASYTONE Android TV Box
Many smaller manufacturers produce inexpensive Android TV boxes, and there often isn't much difference between them. But this Easytone model has a few features that lift it above the rest.
Running the latest version of Android (8.1), the box uses a four-core RK3328 processor combined with 4GB of RAM to deliver speedy performance even when streaming 4K video. 32GB of inbuilt storage provides plenty of space for whichever set of Android apps you prefer. There's support for both Ethernet and 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi to connect it to your home network and the Internet, but no 5Ghz wireless support.
In addition to the standard ⅛' audio jack that connects the box to your TV, speakers, or headphones, the Easytone device also has Bluetooth capability. This allows you to listen in private with Bluetooth headphones, or stream audio to a Bluetooth speaker without worrying about messy cables. There's also a bundled remote control for controlling most functions.
With better specifications and features than most Android TV boxes in this price range, the Easytone is a solid value option.
Best Budget: Amazon Fire TV Stick
If you just want to add basic streaming capabilities to an old TV and really don't want to spend much money doing it, check out the Amazon Fire TV Stick. For just $40, it's the easiest and cheapest way to get Netflix, Prime Video, and most other streaming content.
Setup is about as easy as it gets: simply plug the stick into an HDMI port on the back of your TV, hit the power button on the remote, connect to the Internet, and you're good to go. Browsing the web can be done via the Silk and Firefox browsers. Using the remote and on-screen keyboard to navigate and enter text can be a bit cumbersome, but Alexa voice support is included. You can say something like 'Launch Netflix' or 'Play Game of Thrones' and it will do exactly that.
Best for On-the-Go Entertainment: Pendoo X8 Mini
Don't want to miss out on your favorite shows just because you're away from home? Sure, you could just download an app for your phone or tablet, but if you know you'll have access to television, this little Pendoo X8 Mini is an inexpensive alternative.
Measuring just 3.2 x 3.2 x 0.7 inches and weighing just 3.5 ounces, it's small enough toss into your luggage or even a small overnight bag.
Despite its petite dimensions, it's powerful enough to stream HD video. Both audio and video content can be sent over either its HDMI port or via the Miracast and Airplay wireless technologies built into many modern televisions or speakers.
Other specifications are standard for inexpensive Android TV boxes like this, with a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of inbuilt storage. It has both Ethernet and 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi support, and having a card reader and USB-A slots built into the device means you can expand the available storage via an SD card, memory stick, or hard drive.
Best Extras: MXQ Pro
The MXQ Pro ticks all of the usual boxes when it comes to an entry-level Android TV box—quad-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage—but it's the flexibility and bundled extras that make it more interesting than similarly-priced competitors.
In addition to the unit, you'll get a remote control in the box for controlling all of the standard functions, plus a wireless mini-keyboard that makes entering text significantly easier. That's especially useful when using the MXQ Pro to browse the web, a feature that some other streaming TV boxes don't offer (or don't make easy to use).
Unless you plan to stream everything you watch over the Internet, you'll likely want to upgrade the inbuilt storage. Fortunately, that's easy to do via the SD card reader or one of the three USB-A ports.
Connectivity is handled by either Ethernet or 2.4Ghz Wi-fi, and the device comes preloaded with several useful apps, including Kodi, YouTube, Netflix, and others.
Best Customer Support: MINIX NEO U9-H+
You'll pay a bit more for the Minix Neo U9-H+, but it's not hard to see why. This high-end Android TV box bills itself as 'the ultimate home theater experience.' Unlike the makers of many cheaper boxes, the company regularly updates the firmware for its home theater devices. Coupled with solid build quality and reliability, this means you'll likely be able to keep using the U9-H+ for several years, which certainly justifies the higher initial cost.
The box has support for both Ethernet and dual-band Wi-Fi networking. On the audio-visual side, there's an HDMI 2.0 port, plus SPDIF and a pair of ⅛' sockets. Three USB-A ports and an SD card reader let you expand the storage from a relatively paltry 16GB, and there's support for both 4k and HDR10 content.
One of the best features of the MINIX NEO U9-H+ is the bundled 'air mouse', a gyroscopic wireless remote that lets you control the on-screen pointer simply by moving it around. A QWERTY keyboard on the back of the remote allows you to easily enter text when searching for content.
Our writers spent 10 hours researching the most popular Android TV boxes on the market. Before making their final recommendations, they considered 11 different TV boxes overall, screened options from 8 different brands and manufacturers, read over 110 user reviews (both positive and negative) and tested 1 of the TV boxes themselves. All of this research adds up to recommendations you can trust.
How powerful is your phone? The question would have been nonsensical a decade ago, but as we increasingly depend on smartphones and tablets for some of our everyday computing needs, paying more attention to their performance makes sense. Until recently, choosing a smartphone was mainly a matter of aesthetic taste and mobile OS preference. Today, however, most of the devices available prioritize their display and use similar slate or candy-bar designs. As a result, performance has become a much more prominent differentiator.
Unfortunately, many mobile device owners are falling into the same trap that desktop PC consumers did years ago: They look at a list of specifications, see that a smartphone's processor is clocked higher or has more cores, and assume that the device is faster than one that has what appear to be lower specs. It's as though the MHz myth of the 1990s is back to confuse buyers in a totally new market segment.
The standard SoC (system on a chip) powering one of today's mobile devices, however, is advancing at a rapid pace. A device produced just a few months ago may have the same numbers of processor cores and be clocked at the same frequency as a brand new device, but its underlying architecture may be far less efficient. In addition, the two devices' SoCs may be outfitted with different GPUs, different amounts of memory, and different versions of the mobile OS. Because of these hidden variables, a vendor's list of specs doesn't reveal the whole story. As is true with desktop and laptop PCs, establishing the relative performance of mobile devices requires testing.
Getting Started
Best Cheap Android Tv Box
Since Android's ecosystem is far more diverse than its mobile OS rivals', we'll focus on testing an Android-based device here. A handful of the tests that we'll be covering here are cross-platform or run within a Web browser, meaning that they'll work on iOS or Windows Phones-based devices--or even on desktops and notebooks--as well.
In evaluating the performance of an Android-based smartphone or tablet (or any other modern smartphone or tablet), it's best to think of the device as a tiny PC. When benchmarking a full-fledged desktop PC, we don't declare that system faster or slower than another after running a single test that stresses a particular component. Instead, we run a host of different tests to gauge how well various individual components work, then we weigh the results, and finally we reach a judgment about overall performance. The same approach is appropriate for Android-based devices.
A number of benchmark tools are available online and in the Google Play market for testing device performance. We'll discuss a handful of free tools here, but many other benchmarking tools are available, too. Some (like Vellamo from Qualcomm) are offered by hardware manufacturers; others are created by students. We recommend using established tools whose makers have demonstrated a capacity and willingness to issue updates; ultimately, however, you should tailor your benchmark suite to your unique usage habits. If Web browsing is your highest priority, use apps that test browser and JavaScript performance. If you spend most of your time on mobile devices playing games, be sure to run graphics/GPU-centric tests.
Benchmarking Procedures
As with PC performance testing, there are some standard procedures to follow when running benchmark tests on Android-based devices. Apps or utilities running in the background on an Android-based device can sap system resources and interfere with the benchmarks, resulting in inconsistent or misleading scores that don't accurately reflect real-world performance. To eliminate this variable, your best course is to shut the background apps down. Many Android-based devices include built-in Task Managers that will turn off unnecessary background apps, thereby freeing up memory and processor resources. Restart your device, wait a few minutes to ensure that everything has loaded completely and then use the task manager to kill unneeded apps and maximize available memory. Wait a few moments longer, and then begin a fresh test.
Processor, Memory, Storage, and Overall Performance Tests
Linpack for Android (available at Google Play store, free)
Linpack for Android is a quick and easy-to-run benchmark that measures how fast an Android device can solve a dense N by N system of linear equations. Linpack is purely a CPU benchmark, and it can run in either single-thread mode (to assess the performance of a single CPU core) or multithread mode (to tax all of the available processing cores in a device). To start running the tests, you simply launch the app, choose the single-thread or multithread test, and then click the appropriate button in the main menu.
Android Tv Box Benchmark Tests 2017
AnTuTu System Benchmark (available at Google Play store, free)
AnTuTu System Benchmark is an all-in-one benchmark designed to run tests on your device's CPU, GPU, memory, and storage. The CPU benchmark evaluates both integer and floating-point performance. The GPU tests assess 2D and 3D performance. The memory test measures available memory bandwidth and latency. And the storage tests gauge the read and write speeds of a device's flash memory. To run AnTuTu, swipe to the Test tab, select the tests that you'd like to run, and then click the Start button. When the tests are complete, the results will appear on the Scores tab.
CF-Bench (available at Google Play store, free)
CF-Bench is another all-in-one benchmark, created by respected Android developer Chainfire (hence the CF). Chainfire originally built the tool for his own use, but a couple of years ago he released it to the public. CF-Bench is a CPU, memory, and storage benchmark tool that can exploit the additional computing resources of multicore SoCs; and it produces consistent, repeatable scores, while testing both native and managed Java code performance. To run CF-Bench, launch the app and click the Full benchmark button. Results will appear at the bottom of the screen, along with a handy comparison to other popular devices.
Next: GPU/graphics, network, and browser performance