Chinese companies have been cranking out Android-powered set-top-boxes and TV sticks for a few years, with most of the best models in the past year powered by Rockchip RK3188 quad-core processors. But there may be a new performance champ in town.

Amlogic’s new S802 processor is an ARM Cortex-A9 quad-core CPU with Mali 450 graphics. It runs at speeds up to 2 GHz, and early tests suggest it could be noticeably faster than an RK3188 chip.

The processor also handles display resolutions up to 3840 x 2160. And at least two new set top boxes featuring the chip should be available in the coming months.

tronsmart vega s89

Geekbuying plans to sell the Tronsmart Vega S89, a hockey puck-shaped box with an Amlogic S802 processor, Android 4.4 KitKat software, and 2GB of RAM.

The box has 16GB of built-in storage, 2 USB ports, a micro USB port, micro SD card slot, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11n WiFi, HDMI 1.4b, and S/PDIF. There’s an IR sensor for use with a remote control.

While I’m not a fan of relying on benchmarks alone for performance tests, Geekbuying says this machine scores over 30,000 on AnTuTu, which is almost twice as high as the AnTuTu scores I got when testing devices with RK3188 chips.

Meanwhile, CNX Software noticed that the Tronsmart Vega S89 isn’t the only box with an Amlogic S802 chip. The Eny Technology ES8 has similar specs, but a more traditional square-like shape.

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8 replies on “2 GHz Amlogic S802 brings more speed to Android TV boxes”

  1. i bought a S89 Elite. The h265 decoding doesn’t works. DTS/DD does not work.

    I will rather use my old MINIX X5 based on 3066 which can passthrough DTS/DD with no problem.

    The S89 supposely able to do this. but it is ridiculous this day and age DD/DTS is not supported at all. We should be moving to DTS-MA/HD/Dolby True HD standard by now!

  2. My question is simply: when? The M8 or S802 units were announced last year to much fanfare, with people drooling over hardware accelerated XBMC on a sub-$200 device. Yet, it still seems like vaporware so far.

  3. it’s true competitor may be the Rockchip RK3288, the RK3188 is almost 1 year old

  4. Thank god. Someone needs to challenge the ubiquity of the rockchip 3188’s. Rockchip won’t work with XBMC to enable HW acc. playback. Is Amlogic any better in this regard?

    1. It seems so, yes. The standard XBMC builds can properly use HW accelerated decoding of video on the Tronsmart Vega S89 at least and given that the software on it seems pretty generic I’d say it should apply to all Amlogic S802 devices at least.

  6. Out of curiosity, is there any technical issue preventing these from running ChromeOS? I am really really curious about when Google will finally reveal its real deal strategy behind the two platforms, but to be honest I figure that for the moment they are only standing behind Android because it has more functionality than ChromeOS…

    1. Yeah I am kinda curious as to what the end game of the “arm” chrome branch is as well.

      I would imagine the lack of drivers/system images / recovery and such would make running chromeos on this near impossible (from the tinkerer perspective)

      And frankly, as a TV box, android is much better suited since there are scores of great media oriented apps.

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