There’s no shortage of companies producing small Android-powered boxes which let you run apps on your TV. But MINIX has earned a bit of a reputation for delivering models which perform better than most. And now the company’s back with a new model that seems to have best-in-class hardware.
The MINIX Neo X7 is due out in late July or early August, and it’s expected to sell for around $140 or less.
While that price is a little high by Android TV box standards, it makes the device a little cheaper than the Archos TV Connect. The Neo X7 also has better specs than your typical Android TV box, including:
- Rockchip RK3188 ARM Cortex-A9 quad-core processor
- ARM Mali 400 quad-core graphics
- Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
- 2GB RAM
- 16GB storage
- SD card reader
- 802.11n dual-band WiFi
- Bluetooth 4.0
- HDMI
- Ethernet
- 3 USB 2.0 ports
- micro USB OTG port
- Headphone, mic jacks
- IR receiver + a remote control
- External antenna
Basically, the MINIX Neo X7 has the specs of a decent Android tablet, but instead of a display you get a mic jack, remote control, Ethernet jack, extra USB ports, and an external antenna.
One area where many of these Chinese boxes suffer is WiFi performance, and MINIX says it’s addressing that with a dual-band antenna designed for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks.
hope it comes out soon have neo x5 works awsome with amo navi-x love to get my hands on this one and see what it can really do
Looks like it has an optical S/PDIF audio port as well.
this makes ouya look like a competitor if they could get a stock android build for it
for those interested, a similar device is the CS918, i recently ordered one because I definitely gave up on my Odroid X, and the X7 seemed too far away
seems it is also known as kr42
https://liliputing.com/2013/06/kingnovel-k-r42-1-android-tv-box-with-rk3188-cpu-ethernet-jack.html
Its perfect only If it has xbmc support with uncompressed audio out through hdmi. Then “I can show you the money!”
A little steep for what you get, but perhaps we’ll see it discounted to closer to the $100 range. For $140 I’d like to see a bay for a 2.5″ SATA HD. At least it’s a useful form-factor for an RK quad-core device.
I’m not sure a dual-band antenna helps poor WiFi sensitivity, let’s just hope it works better anyway. Right now I’ve resorted to a $30 WiFi AP/router/repeater that can also act as a WiFi client via Ethernet cable. I’m surprised we don’t see this category of device reported here, there are quite a few on the market now.
With a lot of these “TV boxes” you can go in and change the DPI lower (to like 120) and then they work better for 2-foot interface use as a lightweight desktop PC. Text size is smaller, icons are smaller, etc. making better use of screen real-estate.
What AP/router/repeater did you get?