Welcome viewers, on today's video, We have the review of the MX9 Pro Rockchip RK3328,
quad core Android 7.1 4K TV box.
The MX9 Pro comes with some good hardware, so stay tuned, we have more in a moment.
So I'm back, and here we have the box that the device comes in.
There's some information here at the bottom which says that the CPU is the RK3328 quad
core 64bit Cortex A53.
The GPU is the Penta core Mali 450.
Its got 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and 32GB of internal storage.
It also has 802.11 AC dual band WiFi.
So that's some decent specs for you right there , and I'll just take a moment to do
a quick unboxing.
So what you have in the box is the MX9 Pro TV box itself.
You have this remote control.
The remote uses an infrared signal an I always recommend a wireless mini touchpad keyboard
or a Bluetooth air mouse for a better navigation experience.
You get your micro HDMI cable.
A 5 volts 2.5 amps universal DC power adapter.
And your users setup guide.
Let's take a look at what ports there are on this box.
Well first of all the housing is made of plastic, with the MX9 Pro logo printed to the top,
along with a LED power button.
To the back, you have one micro HDMI port, 1 3.0 USB port, there's 1 RJ45 Ethernet LAN
port, 1 optical audio port, 1 audio video jack, a DC power input, and an external antenna.
To the side, you have 1 2.0 USB port, alongside a standard size SD card slot.
To the front, you have an LED power light, and I believe it's also an infrared receiver
for the remote control.
And to the bottom, there are some ventilation holes.
So I'll now connect this box to my TV, an when I return I'll continue.
So I've connected the box, and you can choose to run the box on normal room temperature,
or you can purchase a universal passive cooling device like this one.
If the environment in which it is operating is a bit heated, this cooling fan keeps it
cool and prolongs the life of the box.
See the link in the description area for this cooling device.
So here we are at first start and as you can see it starts with a short animation and then
you're taken to this setup wizard.
Once this is completed, you are then taken to the launcher.
The launcher is clear with large buttons, but one thing I noticed is that the launcher
doesn't have a navigation bar and status bar for easy navigation and multitasking.
However, it does have multitasking by holding down the home button on the remote, but this
feature is not available when using a mouse to control the box.
Another issue with this launcher is that there is no easy way to add or remove shortcuts
to this launcher, there is no add shortcuts button below here, and the menu button on
the remote doesn't provide this feature.
I found a firmware update that is supposed to address this issue, so wait till the end
of the video and I'll test the firmware and give you the results.
In the apps section, you have a few Google apps like Chrome browser, YouTube and the
Google Play Store, and you have some video and movie streaming apps like Cloud TV, Film
On Live, Media center, Mobdro, Netflix, and a custom Kodi version called the KK player.
So to move on to the next segment, I'll install some system information and benchmarking apps,
and then I'll continue.
So I've installed all my apps, and I'm running an application that monitors the CPU temperature
in the background to test the performance of the cooling fans.
And first let's check to see if the box is rooted.
It shows that the box is not rooted, running on Android 7.1.2 Nougat operating system.
This means that the box is restricted to those apps that don't require root access to work.
If the firmware update is successful, I'll check it again to see if root is granted.
I'll now have a look at the DRM information.
Well the results are the same, the box only has support for Google Widevine and CENC Clear
key, which only allows Netflix to show in standard quality.
And now some system and hardware information.
It shows that the manufacturer is Rockchip, and the model here is the MX9 Pro as we already
know.
The box has 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage; What is shown here is the remaining
RAM and internal storage after the Android installation and apps installed on the box.
The CPU is a 64bit quad core ARM cortex A53 processor, with a CPU clock range of up to
1.5 GHz.
It also shows that the box has support for 32 and 64bit ABIs, allowing it to run both
32 and 64bit applications.
The display is powered by the ARM penta core Mali 450 GPU, with a refresh rate of 60hz.
It has support for dual band WiFi, and WiFi direct is supported.
The version of Android is 7.1.2 Nougat.
The box runs a bit hot around 60 to 70° Celsius on normal room temperature, and cool around
44 to 50° on passive cooling.
The box comes with codecs like H.264 HEVC and VP9 Decoding, codecs needed to play 4K
videos.
That's all for system and hardware information, an I now move on to the benchmarks.
First I have the results of the memory read and write speeds.
The MX9 Pro has a RAM copy speed of 2983 MB/s, the internal storage has a read speed of 97
MB/s and a write speed of 66, and the SD card reader has a read speed of 19 MB/s and a write
speed of 13, These scores are higher than usual, but I'm seeing a similar trend in other
RK3328 models.
I now have the Wifi speed results.
The results show that on the 5.8 GHz band, the speeds fell a bit below my maximum Internet
connection of 40MB.
However, the Ethernet LAN connection hit the maximum speed with every try, which means
that this box runs faster on Ethernet connection
I now show the results of the Antutu benchmark.
And it shows that the MX9 Pro got a score of 34617 and over, which is not as high, but
in range with other Rockchip models in it's class.
Now the results of the GeekBench 4 CPU benchmark.
The MX9 Pro has a GeekBench 4 score of 546 single core, and 1429 multi core.
These scores are OK, but they're not very high at the same time.
And last I have the results of the Ice storm extreme GPU benchmark.
And it shows that the box got a score of 2190, which is a bit disappointing given the hardware
specs for this box.
That's it for the benchmarks.
I now turn to the streaming applications and the many ways to stream free movies and TV
I'll now test the box's 4K playback capabilities.
I am surprised that the box played the 4K video samples so well given the benchmark
scores.
Keep in mind the video samples were loaded onto the internal storage due to the high
read and write speeds.
They didn't play so well off my USB drive.
Next I'll play a 4K YouTube video sample.
this is to test the highest resolution we can get.
Well it shows that the highest YouTube quality is up to 1080p resolution.
For my final test, I'll run a game that's compatible with Gamepads due to the box not
being rooted.
The game ran OK, but the graphics had some slowing down here and there, however, it was
pretty responsive to my gamepad.
So as promised, I tried to update the firmware but was unsuccessful, in fact, I recommend
that you refrain from trying to update the firmware, as it is quite buggy, and you can
end up with a bricked TV box, that's what happened to mine.
So in summary, the MX9 Pro is a TV Box that streams movies and TV shows quite well, the
4K videos played without issues, and the gameplay was average but playable.
On the flip side, the box is not rooted, there is no navigation bar or status bar, and there
are some issues with the firmware up dates.
I have come to the end of my review of the MX9 Pro.
If you are interested in this Box, see the link in the description area.
Thanks for watching, remember to like this video if the information presented here was
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