We used to have a 1gb box & it was always buffering. I bought an MX3 box on Ebay for £20 which is 2gb Amlogic S802, quad core & it never buffers & has played everything we've thrown at it. Bear in mind that you need a minimum internet speed of 15mbps to stream 4K.

in a perfect world you'd have 2gb of ram, but for this price you certainly can't complain so heat from me.

Bought this yesterday as a punt. Heat too.

I use acestream on tablet and pc. could I install acestream on this connected direct to TV?

ordered one. thanks

I ordered something similar about 3 weeks ago, still waiting for it to arrive from China. There are thousands of adds on ebay/amazon, a , i think i paid about £23 for a 2gb version, model m8s+ - the extra is bound to be money well spent imv. Just need a 4k tv now! Also added on a small remote keyboard for a fiver.

We used to have a 1gb box & it was always buffering. I bought an MX3 box on Ebay for £20 which is 2gb Amlogic S802, quad core & it never buffers & has played everything we've thrown at it. Bear in mind that you need a minimum internet speed of 15mbps to stream 4K.

Yeah, fibre is necessary for 4k. we waited for a decent offer and got it for an extra fiver a month, so cheap and getting cheaper and faster, By the time there's reasonable 4k content they'll be giving fast fibre away. Played around with kodi and playon (which seem to be what's required to drive these boxes?), i must say, they are very impressive.

Can you play mkv files from USB with this box?

Yup, I've got Acestream installed and running on all my boxes. Especially useful for the Torrent Stream app for handling HD streams.

does this have access to the playstore? can you install mobile apps on it?

Will this come with the KODI add-on channels included or would you have to load these on yourself?

Just about OK, but the Amazon Firestick is really hard to beat for the price. These MXQ boxes really are what you'd call cheap Chinese crap. The user interface is poor, the Android implementation is poor.

I have the M8s and have had it now for about 6 months. Bought it to watch movies from hard drive and to stream sports from the internet. Installed Kodi and paid £50 for a years subscription to all UK most US sports channels. Can't fault it. Best money i've spent.

Serious Q - Would this comfortably play the Android Grand Theft Autos?
I have a bluetooth controller and might try it if it will handle the games

​nop, just stick with Plex. its the best streaming aplication available, unless like me you need subtitles and you need the server to transcode. In that case plex is crap because it requires a powerful machine to transcode the files, or at least the files i stream which are 1080 mkvs averaging between 8 and 12gbs. I use Kodi, but should they improve the Plex's transcoding capabilities then I will be back on it again!

Good value. Most Kodi buffering issues relate to servers and Internet connection, not the ram

​True, the same for Amazon Instant video.You dont get 1080p. These boxes are good to have around as Kodi clients, but some of them won't even let you install addons on Kodi for some reason.
At the end of the day, if you want the best all around option available for the price just go with Amazon Fire Tv (not the stick).

Thanks OP was looking for one of these ever since I gave the last one I had away.

4K too, just need to get a 4K Telly now.

Get a decent remote for it, otherwise you'll be disappointed.

​The problem may not with Netflix. I guess it has to do with hdcp 2.2 to prevent piracy. If both TV box like nvidia shield TV and 4k TV have hdcp 2.2, Netflix works fine.

​4k TV won't work at 4k with this box for not having hdcp 2.2. Better get one with hdcp 2.2 or watch in low resolution only.

I got this not long ago. Majority of play store apps aren't compatible with it. The ones installed work okay but they are alpha versions. I think known firmware issue.. otherwise hardware specs looks okay

A couple of months ago, I bought a Beelink Mini from gearbest, 2GB ram, 16GB storage. It had addons already installed, but after playing a movie for a few minutes, an advert came up telling me to watch movies, I needed to go to Primewire, I used a kodi addon called fresh start & added addons manually.
Streaming addons works fine, but mine won't wirelessly stream from my NAS in the same room.
I suspect this particular box might not be powerful enough.
http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-c_11262/

heat

HDCP 2.2 is part of the story. Netflix physically tests and pre approves each device they approve for Full HD streaming, generally under 7 categories. These include any TV running the Android TV or Roku Smart TV platforms.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/why-android-and-other-devices-cant-stream-hd-netflix/

i found zero caching helped and plugged an external hdd and all i had to do was pause what ever i was about to watch for 5 mins then play, didnt need fast internet, since then i have a pipox8 dual op sys with win 10. i love it. no limit to what it can do.

I second that about the m8s box. Really good piece of kit and the 2gb ram really made a difference from my 1gb mx3

MX boxes are poor & still have heating issues.

We've had a MX3 box for nearly a year now, 8GB 2GB Ram brilliant piece of kit for the £26 I paid with a Air remote with keyboard.
Pre-installed with ShowBox along with other things, have to say ShowBox allowed us to watch anything.
About due an upgrade now though to be honest definitely a need for more memory.

SportsMania. There are quite a few IPTV claiming to show all games in HD but i opted for SportsMania. i watched most of last seasons premier league and champion league games through SportsMania and there were a few games which didn't stream perfectly but most streamed perfectly. Overall i'm extremely happy and I'll definitely be extending my subscription for next season.

Thanks for that, I will check them out.

​Maybe it is to protect the quality of the 4k reception and protect them from providing free technical support for all the pseudo 4k devices out there which claim to be 4k compatible but actually cannot play 4k. Apple TV and Amazon claim to have 4k quality but only come with hdmi 1.4 and not hdmi 2.0 which has the bandwidth to show 4K. But soon we will have BT and Sky 4k boxes. Also playstation and xbox have already announced boxes with hdmi 2.0 and ability to play 4k blue rays as they have 4k blue ray player built it saving lots of money on buying stand alone 4k blue ray player from the likes of Sony and Samsung.

Aren't you better off using a cheap/old PC or Laptop?

​Have you used windows version of Netflix?

Cheap but certainly old machines generally can't output 4k, will struggle with x265/HEVC content, will fall over with 10bit x265, and consume considerably more power than a typical Android box. A Z8300-based tablet may perform similary to this Android box, but cost minimum 3-4 times more.

Does it come with a uk plug?

I'm looking to get either this or the Beelink X2 TV Box. Despite having my Plex server wired through power adaptors to my router, my Fire TV stick had some stuttering issues last night requiring me unplugging it and restarting. Ideally I'd like something that I have a USB drive plugged into it and will work without the router. Just like my old OG XBOX with XMBC (but a nicer interface would be nice...)

I would still use Fire stick for Netflix etc.

​Not in the long run from a power consumption point of view.

Also there's the noise......

Is Kodi already installed on MXQ? And to play it, I just need to connect it to my internet? Is that right? But I don't have fibre optical.

It has HDMI, & just install SPMC from the play store, this is Kodi for android.