The NVIDIA Shield game console/media streamer may have launched over a year ago, but it’s still one of the most powerful Android TV boxes on the market.
It’s also one of the most expensive, with prices starting at $200 for the Shield console and a game controller.
Now a Chinese company has produced a cheap knockoff… a really cheap one. The M9S Z8 sells for as little as $66 and looks an awful lot like NVIDIA’s console. But under the hood the M9S Z8 is a much less impressive piece of hardware.
As a quick refresher, the NVIDIA Shield features include:
- Tegra X1 octa-core processor with 256-core graphics
- Â 4K/60 Hz output
- HDMI 2.0
- 3GB of RAM
- 16GB of flash storage or 500GB of hard drive storage
- microSD card reader
- 802.11ac WiFi
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Bluetooth 4.1
- Two USB 3.0 ports and a micro USB port
- Wireless game controller
The M9S Z8, meanwhile, has
- Amlogic S905 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor
- 5-core Mali-450 graphics
- 4K/60 Hz output
- HDMI 2.0
- 2GB RAM
- 16GB storage
- microSD card reader
- 802.11b/g/n WiFi
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Bluetooth 4.0
- Two USB 2.0 ports
- IR port
- No game controller included
While the Shield runs Google’s Android TV software and features support for NVIDIA exclusive games and features such as streaming PC games over your home network or over the internet, the Z8 runs a customized version of Android 5.1 with Kodi media center pre-installed.
But hey, I guess if you just want something that looks like a Shield and don’t actually care about the feature set, I suppose it’s nice to have options.
via AndroidPC.es