Welcome back everyone Nick here from TV Box stop the channel for
the best reviews in TV boxes and accessories. Today we have a first look at the most powerful
64bit Android TV box solution for 2022 in the form of a single board computer from Khadas.
This is the Khadas VIM4 and this is their latest 64bit Amlogic A311D2 octa core SOC
with advanced hardware and firmware features with accessories for a wide range of applications.
With this latest model there are literally dozens of ways you can
use it for very complex and sophisticated tasks but in this video I am only focused
on its Android operating system its performance benchmarks and how we can
apply it as an Android TV box. So that’s up next stay tuned.
Welcome back. So the VIM4 is set to release on May 10th 2022 and the team over at Khadas
was kind enough to send me a first look at this model before the release date.
So what I received is the development board only as they are yet to complete the case as
it’s different from the VIM2 and 3. So this is what it looks like and
comes with a pair of antennas and a user guide for you to get started.
So to take a look at the board itself the first thing you’ll notice is that it has a heatsink
and a cooling fan that occupies almost the entire surface of the board alongside your 40 pin header.
To the front of the board to the left you have one USB 3.0 port
and to the right you have one USB 2.0 port. It has one HDMI 2.1 port
one gigabit ethernet LAN port and one USB type C power delivery and OTG port.
The left side it has power reset and recovery buttons and one RTC header.
To the other side you have your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connector pins for the antennas.
To the rear it has one micro HDMI input only port. And below the board you have one micro SD card
slot one M.2 NVME slot one VIN input and four MIPI Display Serial connectors for connecting
your touchscreen display cameras and even monitors up to 4K 2160p.
So until such time as to when I can get my hands on the official case for this board I modified
the transparent case from the VIM2 as a temporary solution to protect the board during this video.
So this is what it looks like and I’ll now connect it to my 4K TV
and capture card that I’ll be using as my display for this review.
So due to the fact that this is a single board computer that we are going to be
using as a TV Box you also have accept that it does not come with a remote or power adapter
which means you will either have the use a keyboard and mouse or a wireless air-mouse
and you would also have to provide your own USB type C power supply.
So when you startup the first time you will be taken to Khadas’s OOWOW wizard that will guide
you through which operating system you would like to install. In this early release there
are currently only three options starting with Android 11 32bit version for the VIM4 Ubuntu Linux
gnome version 5.4 and Ubuntu Linux server version 5.4. For the majority of this video I’ll be using
the Android 11 operating system and after I’ll briefly show you the Linux operating systems.
So before you proceed I recommend that you connect directly to the Internet using your ethernet LAN
cable but if all you have is Wi-Fi then hit the escape button on your keyboard and you will be
taken to OOWOW’s advanced configuration menu where you can access its Wi-Fi settings. Once
connected to the Internet you can return to the wizard to install your preferred operating system.
Once you have selected your preferred operating system click continue and it will begin
downloading the image. Once the image has been downloaded you’ll be given the option to install.
Click the install button to begin the installation process.
And once the installation is completed you will be prompted to reboot the device. Select reboot
and the VIM4 will reboot into your selected operating system. In this instance Android 11.
So I’m in the Android operating system and it’s using the quickstep launcher
that features a navigation bar and full status bar with system controls.
It has long click menu pop-ups and drag-and-drop shortcuts with horizontal sliding pages.
If you long press anywhere on the screen you get home screen options
and the option to install wallpapers.
If you head over to the settings area under
the about tab here it shows that you are running Android 11 operating system
and if you click rapidly on the build information you have access to the developer options.
In the settings area under Khadas settings you have the option to
switch resolution to 4K 2160p at 59.94 Hz. It has HDR display with the option to set it to
adaptive HDR so it’s not always on by default. It has HDMI CEC options.
And surround sound audio options. Four vertical monitors and projectors
it has screen orientation to portrait mode and flip screen to 180° for projectors.
It has power key definition options. Settings to adjust the behavior of the
cooling fan weather you would like it always on at a particular speed
or set it to automatic to turn on when the chipset crosses the temperature threshold.
It has option to enable and disable the navigation bar or status bar independently.
It has options to control the behavior of the power and activity LEDs.
It has timer options to schedule power on and off times during the day.
And you have options to access media via the micro-HDMI input port.
Here are connected directly to my mobile phone using a USB type C hub
and a micro-HDMI cable adapter from cable creation featured in my previous video.
When connected I can mirror my phone to the input as well as use it in desktop mode.
So with this early release of Android 11 for the VIM4 the technicians over at Khadas stated
that it’s a bare bone operating system which means that it does not have Google play services
nor does it have root access in this prerelease. However it was communicated that they would have
another Android release at the end of May. So that we could expect that in that second release
we should see at least Google play services and hopefully we’ll get root access also.
So seeing that there’s no Google play services I had to sideload all my
apps via APK downloads using a flash drive or from the Aptoide App Store.
So first let’s take a look at its system and hardware information.
The manufacturer of this SOC is Khadas the model is the VIM4 and it comes with 8GB of 64bit LPDDR4X
RAM clocked at 2016MHz. It has 32GB of eMMc 5.1 internal storage and its Bluetooth version is 5.1.
Its CPU which is the Amlogic A311D2 is an octa-core CPU comprising of a quad-core cortex A73
clocked at 2.2GHz and a quad-core cortex A53 clocked at 2.0GHz for a total of 8 cores
with a maximum CPU clock range of 2.2 GHz. It’s a 64bit chipset but this firmware is configured in
32bit mode as it only supports 32bit ABIs. The display component of this SOC is the Mali G52
which is quad-core GPU with a clock speed of up to 800MHz with support for 1080p and 4K at 60hz
and 8K at 24fps. It also has opened GL ES version 3.2 support.
Its network adapter is a dual band Wi-Fi 6 AX Module
that delivers 2.4GHz + 5GHz Wi-Fi connectivity. Its operating system is Android 11 red
velvet cake and even though it says that is rooted it’s actually not I’ll show you in a moment.
Under devices it shows that its GPU has Vulkan support and this is a version 1.1.
With its CPU clocked at 2.2 GHz and its fan speed set to automatic it idles around 56°C. However
if you change the fan speed mode through levels 1 - 3 it will idle around 45°C.
Under codecs it has decoders for the playback of 4K HDR videos such as H.265 HEVC
VP9 decoding and the new AV1 decoder. And it also has surround sound audio decoders such as
Dolby Atmos eac3 DTS HD and the flac decoder. So that’s its system and hardware information.
It’s been a while since we have seen specs this great so let’s see what else It can do.
For root access the app shows that it’s not rooted
and for digital rights management it has Google Widevine L3 with no HDCP protection.
This means that premium streaming movie services will be limited to 480p.
I sideloaded the modified version of Netflix and here it shows that in a movie description it has
HD. But even though it says that it still shows in basic 480p due to the lack of DRM support.
For streaming you also have the use of the Kodi media player where you can install your own
add-ons to stream movies and TV shows or you can restore them all at once using the backup add-on.
To learn how to create a backup and to restore them in one click
see the link to my video tutorial in the description below this video.
You also have the use of streaming APKs and if you connect a wireless Bluetooth remote
or one that uses USB dongle or if you have the Khadas remote you can use the direction
pad to navigate the menu in these APKs. For more information about streaming APKs
see my list on my blog using the link in the description below this video.
For YouTube you would have to use the YouTube smart TV version as the official mobile version
and the Android TV version cannot run the due to the lack of the play services.
The smart TV version works great and you can watch YouTube videos up to 4K
2160p resolution with HDR triggering on your TV and you can also play videos in AV1 HDR format.
It comes with the official version of Miracast however when I attempted to cast my mobile phone
it continuously disconnects from the Internet and
when I attempted to install the Airscreen app it doesn’t install due to the lack
of play services. So this is something Khadas has two fix in their next release.
For launcher customization I installed the nova someone launcher
and interestingly it allowed me to change the wallpaper.
It also changed the wallpaper on the default the launcher. However you cannot run live
wallpapers. So it appears the issue with changing wallpapers is with the default quickstep launcher.
For expandable storage the VIM4 comes with an M.2 NVME slot that supports up to 2280 SSD cards.
Here I installed a 500 GB 2280 SSD with the assistance of my DIY case.
However the LED indicator on the SSD tunes on which indicates that
the board detects it but when I attempt to access it in Android the operating system
does not. So I guess this is another issue under Android they would have to address.
So normally at this point I would play my list of 4K videos and test for surround sound audio
formats but unfortunately the included Exo player the VLC player the Kodi media player
and the MX player cannot play videos due to a problem with them interfacing with the decoders in
the framework so we will have to hold on for the second release before we can test those features.
Gaming on this bare-bones version of Android is literally impossible and any attempts to install
the AetherSX2 PS2 emulator APK fails. So I will just conclude with its performance benchmarks.
So to benchmark its RAM copy speed and its internal storage read and write speeds
the A1 SD bench app delivered a RAM copy speed of 6587 MB/s.
Its internal storage gat a read speed of 144 MB/s and a write speed of 113.
These scores are pretty impressive compared to regular Android boxes.
To test its Wi-Fi and Ethernet LAN speeds the speed test app shows that based on a network of
250 Mbps the 5GHz band and on the LAN port achieved 100% of the speed of my network.
The 2.4GHz band achieved 57%. So Wi-Fi6 and a gigabit LAN working perfectly in this SOC.
To directly benchmark the new Amlogic A311D2 Octa core CPU Geekbench app registered a score
of 1534 single core and the 5589 multicore. These scores are great scores compared to Android boxes.
In the 3DMark gamers bench graphics benchmark it maxed out in the ice storm extreme test
scored 2755 in the slingshot test and 1981 in the slingshot extreme test with Vulkan
support. These scores signify that this SOC is ideal for Android and emulation gaming.
And in the Antutu benchmark it scored 205434.
This is a very high score let’s now see where it places on my rankings chart.
So the scores are in and the new Khadas VIM4 is that position number 2 in reference
to Antutu benchmark scores making it the second most powerful TV Box on my chart.
If you would like to view this chart you can do so on my blog
using the link in the description below this video where you can compare various benchmark scores
and I also provide price comparison pages using these links right here.
So as promised here’s a look at the Ubuntu gnome operating system and this version 42.0.
And it’s a fully operational for users of Linux and Ubuntu desktop interface.
In summary I decided to withhold my pros and cons final assessment because it
would be a premature assessment based on a pre-release of Android that’s obviously not
meant to be their final release to the public. This SOC was sent to me for early assessment
so my analysis would have to be solely based on the performance of its hardware.
I will return in an updated video to fully demonstrate its capabilities once Khadas releases
their update at the end of this month. With that said the power of this SOC
is remarkable compared to other Amlogic models such as the S922X
and the S905X4 so much that its at position number two on my chart just below the Nvidia shield.
So we have a new high-performance chipset on the market that we can look forward to.
So if you are interested in the new Khadas VIM4 you can get it at the introductory price of
$199.99 without a cooling fan and $219.90 with the cooling kit. See the link in the
description below this video along with an exclusive TV Box stop discount coupon.
So viewers have come to the end of a first look of the VIM4 from Khadas and am very excited to do
an updated review where I’ll be testing its 4K video playback surround sound audio test
Android gaming and emulation gaming. So to be updated as soon as I release
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So hit the thumbs up if you like this latest release. Special thanks goes out to the team
over at Khadas for supporting this channel and sending their product for assessment.
Thanks again for watching and see you in the next video.