Welcome friends once again to another TV box stop review.
This time the developers of X96 is taking their best shot at the Allwinner H616 CPU
in their latest model the X96Q Max.
This is the 4GB 32GB model and there is a 64GB model for those interested in more storage.
We have seen X96 release some great models, and they are one of the more trusted brands
when it comes to quality and hardware performance.
Given the track record of the Allwinner H616 CPU, could X96 be the difference and fix its
overheating issues, and at the same time deliver a great performing TV box, or is it just going
to be more of the same.
There is only one way to find out stay tuned that’s up next.
In the box, you have the TV box itself.
You get a blue IR remote.
One HDMI cable.
A 5V 2A DC power adapter.
And your user’s manual.
The body is made of plastic with the X96Q branding printed to the top.
To the rear of the box.
You have one HDMI 2.0 a port.
One RJ45 Ethernet LAN port.
One optical audio SPDIF port.
One USB 2.0 port.
One audio video port.
And your DC power input.
To one side you have two more USB 2.0 ports, and a micro SD card reader.
To the opposite side is blank.
To the front you have an LED clock display.
And below the box I don’t know why but there are no ventilation holes.
So it’s time to set it up on my 4K TV and capture card and continue.
So I’m back, and this is what you’ll see each time you start the box.
You have an X96Q splash screen for a few seconds followed by an android startup animation.
Then you are taken directly to the launcher.
So here we are at the launcher, and it is nice to see the developers making an effort
to change the appearance of these launchers to present something new to their users.
However the layout of this launcher is basically the same, consisting of these large main icons
that cannot be changed and the shortcuts bar here to the bottom.
This launcher does not have a navigation bar or status bar for easy navigating with most
pointers.
As soon as I connected the box to the Internet I was prompted with a firmware update.
So I’ll completed the update and continue.
So the update completed successfully and the features of this firmware include.
4K display up to 2160p at 60Hz.
HDR settings.
Mouse pointer settings.
CEC options.
Audio output options.
And audio passthrough options.
There is no root switch, hardware monitor settings, built-in screen rotation settings,
that I completed successfully which is a good sign, however none of the updates added any
of the missing features I highlighted a while ago.
Another thing I would like to bring to your attention is that the operating system used
in this box is Android TV OS with a custom launcher skin.
Here you can see the Android TV OS version of the Google play store, and I’ve checked
all of the other features and they are consistent with Android TV OS.
So first let’s take a look at its system and hardware information.
Under system information shows that the model is the X96Q Max Pro, and here you can see
the model of the main-board used in this box.
It comes with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and 32GB of internal storage with Bluetooth 5.0 support,
and all this is according to the product description.
The CPU is the Allwinner H616 which is a 64bit Cortex A53 processor with the CPU clock speed
of 1.5GHz configured in 32bit mode.
It only has support for 32bit ABIs, which limits it to only 32bit applications.
Its display is powered by the Mali G 31 graphics processor with a refresh rate of 60Hz and
open GL ES version 3.2 which is good for gaming.
The box has dual band Wi-Fi support and the 5 GHz band is supported.
The operating system is android 10 Q, and below here it shows that the box is rooted
but that is incorrect as you will see when I run as the root checker app.
The box runs around 70°C under normal activities which is one of the features of the Allwinner
H616, but I will monitor it during 3D gaming to see how high it increases.
The box comes with long list of decoders for the playback of HD and of 4K media, but there
is no Dolby decoders in this list.
And that’s it for system and hardware information, and now let’s take a look at some benchmarks.
First the results of its RAM copy speed and its internal storage read and write speeds.
The X96Q Max has a RAM copy speed of 2818 MB/s.
Its internal storage has a read speed of 121 MB/s and the write speed it did not give a
reading.
These scores signal that it falls within the budget category, but I’ll wait for the rest
of results before making a determination.
In the Wi-Fi and Ethernet LAN speed tests the results show that the X96Q Max has maximum
bandwidth on the 5 GHz band and on the LAN port.
The 2.4 GHz band fell below by 47%, so for maximum bandwidth use the 5 GHz band and the
LAN port.
But that doesn’t mean the 2.4 GHz band won’t perform well if your network is 50Mbps or
lower.
Next I show the results of the Antutu benchmark.
In this test the box got a score of 55,978.
This is surely not the lowest score have seen, and will see in a moment where it places on
the chart.
Next is the results of the Geekbench 4 CPU benchmark.
In this test the box got a score of 540 single-core, and 1184 multi-core.
These are not very high scores, they are consistent with boxes that fall within the budget category.
The final scores are the results of the 3D Mark gamers bench GPU benchmark.
In this test the box got a score of 3894 in the ice storm extreme test, and 388 in the
slingshot test.
These are some low scores and combined with the scores it confirms that this box falls
within the budget category.
And with that said let’s now see where it places on the rankings chart.
So the scores are in and the X96Q Max is at position number 27 in reference to Antutu
benchmarks scores, and it falls right alongside the rest of Allwinner boxes in the budget
category.
The one thing I see they got correct is the price.
So if you’re on a budget and need a TV box for basic streaming of movies and TV shows,
you can get the X96Q Max for as low as $29.99.
You can view this chart on my website in full spreadsheet format where you can interact
with it and compare various scores see the link in the description below this video.
So to begin testing its features I first installed an alternative launcher and it works.
But you have to be mindful that this is android TV OS which means that you will have the sideload
most of the apps that you would usually use on the mobile version.
This is the ADW launcher 2 and it works with all the features working such as long click
menu pop-ups and drag and drop shortcuts.
You can also install a custom wallpaper, but you would also have to sideload one of your
choice.
I installed the root checker app and it shows that the box is not rooted, also there is
no root switch feature in this box.
The DRM information shows that you have Google Widevine level 3 with no HDCP protection.
This means that Netflix, Amazon prime video and other premium streaming services will
only play in basic 480p quality.
Next I installed a screen rotation app and attempted to rotate the launcher to portrait
mode and it did not work.
So this box does not have screen rotation.
As mentioned earlier this box does not come with a navigation bar or status bar, so I
installed the menu button navigation bar and it works however the multitasking function
on the bar does not seem to work on this box.
If you have a TV box that it lacks a navigation bar and you would like to learn how to install
this one, I placed a link to a tutorial in the description directly below this video.
For watching movies and TV shows the box comes preinstalled with Netflix, but it shows in
basic 480p quality only due to the lack of DRM support weather you have premium subscription
The android TV version of YouTube which is the official version of YouTube for this operating
system can only play up to 1080p quality on this box.
I will now play some 4K video in HDR format, but please take note that these videos will
not play in the VLC player.
The built-in media player that comes with this firmware somehow manages to play the
So the 4K video samples played okay with the exception of the jellyfish video, and remember
that this box does not have HDR display support.
The VLC player did however play my Dolby Atmos and DTS audio videos, and this test
confirms what was shown in the firmware features that this box does not have Dolby Atmos and
DTS audio output capability.
For my final demonstration, I connected my Bluetooth gamepad to the box and I installed
the game Real Racing 3 and a temperature monitor app, to test its graphics rendering performance
and to monitor for overheating at the same time.
The game managed to play, however the graphics was not smooth and of a high quality, and
surprisingly the box did not overheat.
There is no way to apply an active cooling fan because there are no ventilation holes
below the box.
In summary X96 gave it the best shot and tried to strike the right balance between performance
features and heat management.
They managed to do a better job at curtailing the overheating of H616 CPU, but it appears
that the Allwinner H616 chipset is a difficult chipset to yield high-performance from.
So though they managed to deliver some great features in this box, there are some essential
features that are missing.