What’s happening everyone welcome to TV Box stop and today
Mecool has released another new device to stream your favorite movies and TV shows.
This is the Mecool KD3 TV stick and it said that in this model they have
gotten past their Achilles’ heel which is the ability to play Netflix in HD and 4K.
This model is designed primarily for streaming premium movie services
as well as from Kodi and other streaming APKs. So we’ll take a look at this feature as well as
what else Mecool has to offer in this model. So stay tuned you have that right after this.
Okay so I’m back and what we have here is the TV stick itself you get a Bluetooth
wireless voice remote with Google assistance feature a 5½ HDMI female to HDMI male flexible
extension cable one micro USB charging cable a 5V 1A 9Watts power adapter and a user manual.
Its design consists of the Mecool logo and an LED power Light to its surface. To the top is
where you will find the male HDMI connector and to the side it has the micro USB charging port.
There is no USB ports or Ethernet LAN port. So the way you set this up on your TV is by
connecting the TV stick directly to one of your HDMI ports and connecting the
power cable to a USB port on your TV or you can use the included power adapter.
The other way is by using the extension cable so that it gives you some flexibility in the
event that the TV stick cannot fit into the space allocated.
Starting up for the first time on the new Google TV interface is a similar to your
regular Android TV but with some improvements. First it starts with pairing the included voice
remote via Bluetooth by pressing the home button and the back button until the LED starts flashing
and it will pair automatically to the stick. You are then required to login to your
Wi-Fi network. If you don’t have Wi-Fi you can connect via ethernet cable using a micro USB hub
such as this one that I bought on Amazon see the link in the description below.
You’ll then be required to login to your Google account and complete rest of the wizard
that includes selecting which premium movie services you would like to install it doesn’t
matter because you can always add them later. And you also have to set up Google assistant.
Once completed you are taken to the new Google TV launcher.
So this is the new Google TV launcher and although it may appear similar to the Android TV launcher
it’s different in certain ways. The first thing you’ll notice is that they
have done away with the left navigation panel but have maintained the horizontal scrolling feature.
They have also maintained the shortcuts bar to the top here but unlike the regular Android
TV option where you can add and remove apps instead every time you install an app it is
added to the list here. You can rearrange them and you can also uninstall them from the list.
To access the Google play store there is no dedicated app shortcut
instead you either use the Google assistance voice search feature on the remote
or you can navigate to the apps section where you will find a search bar or you
can navigate the various app categories to find your app in the play store.
With this firmware you are running on Android 11 TV OS and here is the firmware build information.
Just below here it shows that this TV stick does indeed have the Netflix ESN certification
required to officially play their movies in HD and 4K quality
and we’ll have a look at it in just a moment. You get 4K display up to 60hz but it’s actually
59.94 Hz as displayed here by my capture card. It has HDR display with the option to select
between HDR and SDR depending on which type of TV you have.
It also shows that it has a Dolby vision. It has HDMI CEC options.
It has the shutdown option when you press and hold the power button on the remote and there is the
restart option in the settings area. Also from an off position the remote works to power on the box.
Surround sound audio passthrough options.
And it has built-in Google cast and Google assistance feature.
And now a quick look at its system and hardware information.
It shows that the manufacturer is SkyWorthDigital and it runs on 2GB of DDR4 RAM
and 8GB of internal storage. From which there is very little remainder
after the Android installation and apps installed. Its Bluetooth version is 5.0.
Its CPU is the Amlogic S905Y4 and it’s a quad-core cortex A35 CPU with a maximum CPU clock speed
of 2.0 GHz configured in 32bit mode. Its GPU is the Mali G31 with open GL ES
version 3.2 support. It’s network adapter delivers 2.4GHz + 5GHz Wi-Fi support.
Its operating system as we already know is Android 11 code named red velvet cake and it’s not rooted.
Under devices it shows that it has Vulkan version 1.1 support. Under temperature
they have disabled the temperature sensor.
And under codecs according to one of my loyal viewers Richard Gabriel who was kind to correct me
about Dolby and DTS decoders after doing some research based on his advice I can confirm
that this TV stick as Dolby Atmos and Dolby Digital plus decoders
provided by the AC3 and the EACE decoders. You also have DTS HD and your AV1 one decoders.
So the selling point of this TV stick is the fact that it has the digital rights
and Google certification along with Netflix ESN to play premium movie services such as
Netflix prime video Disney+ HBO Max the recent Apple TV Peacock and many others
in HD and 4K quality with surround sound audio. This means you can draw a direct
comparison with this model and the ever-famous Android fire TV stick.
We have already seen that it has Netflix ESN and here are the other two main components
needed to achieve this task. First it has Google Widevine L1 with the new HDCP 2.3 protection.
This feature protects various movie services from piracy by encrypting the outgoing signal via HDMI.
The other component is root access. The root checker app shows that this firmware is not
rooted which means anyone attempting to hack the root file system to get around
the security restrictions not be able to do so. Out of all these services I’m only in possession
of a Netflix and Amazon prime video subscription. And here it shows that in Netflix you have
4K UHD resolution with Dolby Atmos. The same applies to Amazon prime video.
Don’t have any premium movie services? That’s not the problem. With the Mecool KD3 you can play all
your favorite alternative streaming applications such as Kodi and all other streaming APKs. These
aren’t available on the Google TV play store and you would have to sideload them via APKs.
Another thing to note is that the included Mecool
Bluetooth air-mouse can navigate your APKs with the direction pad.
For watching YouTube videos you can use the default Google TV version of YouTube that
can play 4K videos in HDR quality or you can sideload the smart YouTube TV version
and watch videos not only in 4K HDR but also in AV1 format.
By now we have all grown accustomed to Google assistant and it’s now a standard
in all devices running on an official version of Android TV or Google TV OS.
On this TV stick with the included the Bluetooth voice remote Google assistance works perfectly
and recognizes all of your commands. What’s the weather in Miami Florida.
Another great feature of an official version of Google TV
is its built-in Chromecast or what is now called Google cast.
To test its 4K HDR video playback capabilities I will now play a list of 4K HDR videos
in various formats and see how the stick handles the playback.
I’m using the VLC player with hardware acceleration
access to full and audio passthrough enabled in the settings area.
The
stick also has AV1 decoding so here’s an AV1 video. For this demonstration am using the MX
player instead of the VLC video player as it cannot play AV1 videos smoothly.
So the 4K HDR videos and AV1 videos played smoothly without issues. So I’ll now connect
it to my seven point one audio receiver and test for surround sound audio formats.
What I’m looking for is the Dolby Atmos DTS X DTS HD-MA Dolby surround and Dolby TrueHD.
From this test it reveals that it has Dolby Atmos Dolby surround and basic DTS.
I did not get DTS X DTS HD-MA or Dolby TrueHD.
This TV stick was not designed for gaming however if you would like
to play a game you can pair your gamepad to the stick via Bluetooth
as well as you can convert a flash drive to shared internal storage and install your Android games.
So surprisingly the games played really well with smooth graphics handling.
I couldn’t check for overheating because it temperature sensor is disabled.
Let’s now look at its benchmarks and where it places on my rankings chart.
First in the benchmark performed on its RAM copy speed and internal storage read and write
speed shows that it has a RAM copy speed of 3617 MB/s. Its internal storage has a read
speed of 46MB/s and a write speed of 19. The tests performed on its Wi-Fi bands
resulted in the 5 GHz band achievement 100% of my bandwidth. The 2.4GHz band achieved 32%.
And I connected and Ethernet LAN cable via the micro USB hub and it also achieved 32%.
The benchmark performed on its Amlogic S905Y4 CPU clocked at 2.0GHz resulted in a score of 670
single-core and 1669 multicore. These scores are consistent with other CPU models in this class.
Next in its graphics performance benchmark this TV stick has Vulkan support
and it scored 5868 in the ice storm extreme test 578 in the slingshot test and 366 in the
slingshot extreme test with Vulkan support. These are some great scores compared to some TV boxes.
And the final benchmark is the Antutu benchmark where it scored 71931.
This is the score that I use to rank boxes on my chart so let’s now see where it placed.
So after entering the scores on my chart the new Mecool KD3 TV stick is at position
61 in reference to Antutu benchmark scores which is right among the S905W2 and S905X4 models.
It received a four-star rating for its Google certification latest Android operating system
its hardware performance with CPU clocked at 2.0 GHz its GPU with Vulkan support
its Google TV interface and 4K video playback with surround sound audio options.
I also gave it the hot selling icon as it’s currently available on various online stores
at competitive prices. You can compare these prices on my price comparison page
using these links right here.
A link to this chart can be found in the description below.
In summary Mecool did a pretty good job at delivering a certified Android TV stick can
play premium movie services in HD and 4K and this one has Netflix ESN certification.
I like that it’s CPU is clocked at 2.0 GHz and that it has Vulkan support
and it has the option to turn off HDR. Even though its performance is pretty good
they should have provided more RAM at least 4GB and at least 32GB of internal storage.
Not being able to output DTS X DTS HD-MA and Dolby TrueHD may not be a big issue for most
users but is an issue for those who really take an interest in surround sound formats.
So that about sums up my review of the Mecool a KD3 TV stick.
If you are interested in this stick and looking for the lowest price you can get a
10% discount coupon directly from Mecool and when used reduces the price to only $86.99.
So take advantage use the link and the coupon in the description directly below this video.
So give this video the thumbs up if you like this one. If you are new to my channel and
like the reviews that you see here be sure to hit the subscribe button along with the notifications
bell next to it to keep in the loop as to when I release new videos or decide to do a giveaway.
Thanks for watching stay tuned and look forward to the next one.