Hello everyone, and welcome back to another TV box stop review.
For those of you who follow my channel you may recall that I did a video
on an IPTV TV box called the Superbox S1PRO. This box attracted a lot of comments from
some of my viewers who were very critical of it, saying that the service would not last,
and the price you were playing for it wasn’t worth it, and this was a form of false advertising.
Well since that video I have to admit that I wasn’t much of an IPTV fan because in my opinion
all of them face the same challenges of buffering and low picture quality, but after using the
S1PRO for about 4½ months, it totally changed my perspective and now I use it everyday. Once your
Internet service is up and working properly the IPTV service works with no buffering whatsoever.
With that said, for today’s video I bring to you the latest release in their IPTV
line of boxes called the Superbox S2PRO. This new model features a totally new design
utilizing the latest hardware, with a new interface and the same quality of service.
In this video we take a look at its hardware and features, the quality of the service it provides,
its pros and cons, and you’ll get to decide whether the starting price of
$299 is worth your investment. So stay tuned that’s up next.
Welcome back and let’s get started. In the box you have the usual stuff.
You have the Superbox S2 Pro itself. You get one IR remote and this remote
has an IR learning feature. You get one HDMI cable.
A5 volts 2A DC power adapter. And a user’s guide.
And now a look its design and ports. The body is made of plastic with
the super box logo printed to the top. At the rear of the box you have one HDMI port,
one ethernet LAN port, one optical audio SPDIF port, one AV port, one IR extender port, the DC
power input, and a pair of T2TR external antennas. To the left side of the box you have one USB
3.0 port, one USB 2.0, a reset button, a microSD card reader, and some cooling vents.
To the opposite side you have some more cooling vents.
At the front you have a bright LED display. And below the box you have some cooling vents.
So I’ll now set this up on my 4K TV and capture card and continue.
So connecting the box to my TV was straightforward and simple, and when
you start for the first time you are presented with a Superbox animation for a few seconds,
then you are prompted to complete a startup wizard that you only have to complete once.
Once this is completed you are then taken to the launcher.
So this is the new launcher and its slightly different from the one used in the S1 Pro model,
with the inclusion of a shortcuts bar below here. They relocated the home button and
the apps section to the top here, and the rest of the launcher remains basically the same.
And for those who were wondering about navigation bar and status bar this launcher doesn’t have any,
and I will try to install an alternative in just a moment.
In this firmware you have the following features. 4K display up to 2160p at 60Hz.
HDR display settings. And audio output settings.
It has no root switch, Dolby vision display, hardware monitor, built-in screen rotation,
HDMI CEC control options, or navigation and status bar settings.
In the apps section these are all the apps that come installed.
To install the apps that provide the IPTV and video on demand service,
you have to install them manually from the Superbox app store.
Simply open the app store and install the Blue TV and the Blue VOD apps and you’re good to go.
You can also install any of the other available apps, and you have access
to the full version of the Google play store. So I’ll install the blue TV and the blue VOD apps,
along with some additional apps from the Google play store and continue.
So I’m back and I’ve installed all the apps I need.
And the first let’s have a look at its system and hardware information.
As you can see here the chipset is Allwinner, running on 2GB of DDR3 RAM,
and a 16GB of internal storage from which this is the remainder.
The Bluetooth version is 4.1. The CPU which is the Allwinner H6,
is a quad core Cortex A53 CPU clocked at 1.4 GHz configured in 32bit mode.
It has support for only 32bit ABIs which means it can only run 32bit applications.
The GPU which is the ARM Mali T720 has a refresh rate of 60Hz and OpenGL ES version 3.1.
It has dual band Wi-Fi support, and it shows that the 5GHz band is supported.
The operating system is Android 9 pie and it shows that the box is rooted.
The operating temperature is around 55°C and I will monitor during
this video to see how high it increases. And finally it comes with all the decoders
for the playback of 4K HDR videos but it does not have any Dolby or DTS audio decoders in this list.
And that’s it for system and hardware information and let’s now take a look at its benchmarks.
First the results of its RAM copy speed and its internal storage read and write speeds.
It shows that it has a RAM copy speed of 2794 MB/s.
It’s internal storage as a read speed of 103 MB/s and a write speed of 90.
These scores are not very high scores consistent with budget TV boxes.
Next are the results of the dual Wi-Fi bands and the Ethernet LAN speed tests.
And the results show that you have maximum bandwidth on both Wi-Fi bands achieving 100%
of my bandwidth for both download and upload speeds.
The LAN port however is not a gigabit LAN port achieving only 26% of my bandwidth.
So to achieve 100% bandwidth on networks over 100 Mbps use the both Wi-Fi bands.
Next I have the results of the Antutu benchmark. In this test the S2 Pro got a score of
54,630 this is an average score consistent with other Allwinner models in its class.
And now I show the results of the Geekbench 4 CPU benchmark.
And in this test it got a score of 618 single core
and 1534 multicore. Again an average score consistent with similar models.
My final benchmarks are from the 3D Mark gamers bench GPU benchmark.
The app shows that the box does not have Vulkan support so it only qualified for
the ice storm extreme and the slingshot test. And it shows that the box got a score of 3955
in the ice storm extreme test, and 112 in the slingshot test.
These are some really low scores which signals that this box is not meant for 3D gaming.
So that’s it for the benchmarks and let’s now see where it places on the chart.
So the scores are in and the SuperBox S2PRO is at position 38
in reference to Antutu benchmarks scores which is a slight improvement from its previous model.
You can view this chart on my blog in full spreadsheet format
where you can view all the best TV boxes for 2020 along with price comparison links.
Links can be found in the description below this video.
The SuperBox S2PRO’s primary function and selling point is its IPTV service.
As another YouTuber said the box itself is probably worth around $45
and the remaining cost accounts for the IPTV service itself.
So the question in everyone’s mind who may be watching this video,
is what is there in the world about this service that’s worth $299 from your pocket.
And the answer to that question is, access to unlimited, long-term,
HD IPTV and video on demand streaming, which is exactly what term cutting the cord is all about.
So in other words they are offering you a lifetime quality cord cutting
solution for a one-time payment. And this is where the skepticism
and the critical comments started coming in, because it all sounds too good to be true.
To be quite honest I too if at first glance saw this box offering this service at $299
I wouldn’t even think about paying such a cost.
With that said, what I can tell you is that I have been using the S1Pro for 4 ½ months,
and I’ve also seen other users who have been using it for over a year, and it does exactly
what it says, and the service is still working to date, without any degradation in service.
Please Note, Due to YouTube’s guidelines that governs YouTubers in their advertising program,
I am unable to show any IPTV channel samples in this video.
However if you would like to view its picture quality,
I placed a link to a video on my blog in the description where you can do just that.
If you open the blue VOD application,
here you have a wide selection of the video on demand movies and TV shows at your disposal.
This section also has parental controls to prevent minors from accessing the content of this app.
For those who would like to know what else you can do on this box,
well first off, the box is rooted as shown here in the root checker app.
This means you can install any app from the Google play store without issues.
It has Google Widevine level 3 with no HDCP
protection this means services such as Netflix are limited to basic quality.
Alternative launchers work on this box however you cannot set it as your default launcher.
For those interested in screen rotation that feature does not work on this box.
As mentioned, Netflix and other premium services only shows in basic quality.
You can install Kodi directly from the Google play store, and install your third party addons.
You can install the file linked bulk downloader tool and install your
favorite movie streaming Apks, however the stock remote does not navigate their menus.
So an AirMouse will be required to navigate them efficiently.
When I installed the Android TV version of YouTube from the Aptoide app store, it plays up to 1440p
without issues, when set to 2160p the video freezes. Also it does not trigger HDR display.
4K video playback is not good as it couldn’t play any of my 4K video samples without freezing.
It does not have any digital surround sound audio, so I won’t be testing that feature,
instead I’ll skip directly to an android game and test its graphics handling and for overheating.
Unfortunately the Mali T720 GPU is not supported by many of the latest Android games such as call
of duty mobile, and Player unknown battle grounds. So I’ll simply connect my gamepad via Bluetooth,
and play a compatible game and a check for overheating.
Well for what it can play it plays it very well with borderline overheating.
In summary the IPTV service the Superbox S2 Pro provides is definitely one of the best
IPTV services I have experienced to date, and if you are into this type of streaming, and you
really want a reliable IPTV service than the one available on this box is definitely recommended.
However, for $299 a great IPTV service in my opinion is not enough.
The box itself should at least be a high end model such as from the Amlogic S922X line, giving the
user some real value at that price point. It would also allow the user to do much
more on it than just watch IPTV. For example, 4K video playback, surround sound audio,
and gaming with Vulcan support. So I highly recommend the service,
but I am not pleased with the hardware they decided to provided it on.
And with that said I have come to the end of my review.
If you are interested in this box, I placed a link in the description
directly below this video where you can get it at the price featured in this video.
Using any my links from any of my videos support this channel directly and provides the means for
me to acquire new TV boxes for review. Thanks for watching, give this video
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