Originally Posted by
martin_paris
The Nvidia Shield is a great Android TV box but it's way to overpowered to do only that. The "cheap" alternative would be the international version of the Xiaomi Mi Android TV Box. It was recently updated to Android 8 Oreo :
https://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-pc/pp_426056.html
As a word of caution : the MX10 Box you bought is NOT running Android TV. As many of these Chinese boxes it runs a heavily skinned Android version initially designed for phones. The experience is nowhere the same as the one you would be getting from the Nvidia Shield or the Xiami Mi Android TV Box (only talking about the international version as the local chinese runs on a regular version of android).
This is a really good note about Android Phone versus Android TV -- and one I was only vaguely aware of when I ordered. I had some second thoughts, but after research, for my needs, I decided to go for the more powerful (marketing spec-wise at least) generic box. Someday I may regret it, but wanted something to play with and this seems to work great.
Originally Posted by
pseudoswede
Now that I'm a few weeks in, I'll post an update. Funny thing is, I found my notes and originally had my eye on an ABOX A5...which gave me the Android TV Box bug versus side loading my Fire Stick. I stalled for a few months, couldn't remember which one I liked and thought it was the MX10, so that's what I ordered. The MX10 seems really similar to the ABOX stuff and works really well. It was very quick to setup, although when setting it up I had to reboot a few times (which only takes like 15 seconds) because of account errors and such. So far, the only drawback I have is that I leave mine unplugged when not in use for now until I can better isolate it on my network (irrational? fear of some Chinese malware or such running around on my network), and noticed that Nord takes about a minute to connect, so if I boot it up and start using it right away, I'm outside of the VPN. I need to make sure I pause for a minute or manually connect the VPN first.