Welcome friends once again to another TV box stop review.
Every once in a while I stumble across an Android TV box that’s fully Google certified
to play all your premium streaming services in HD and 4K at an affordable price.
Today’s TV box has a unusual name with an unusual chipset.
This is the HIMEDIA S500 fully Google certified Android TV OS TV box.
This box runs on a HiSilicon CPU and a Mali GPU on limited RAM and internal storage, at
a price point of around $60.
This box was primarily designed to play premium streaming services, but in this review we’ll
see what else it can do.
So don’t go anywhere my full review is up next.
And a welcome back.
In the box everything is white starting with the box itself.
They have provided a Bluetooth wireless remote with Google assistant voice control feature.
You get one high quality high-speed HDMI cable.
A 12V 1A DC power adapter.
And a quick start guide.
Its design consists of a plastic housing with no branding to the top.
To the rear consist of one HDMI 2.0b port, one RJ-45 ethernet LAN port, one optical audio
port, one AV port, an IR extender port, a power button, and the DC power input.
To the side you have two USB 2.0 ports and no SD card reader.
At the front you have the HIMEDIA branding and 3 LED indicators.
And below box you have for antiskid rubber feet and a reset button.
So I’ll just take a moment to set this up on my 4K TV and capture card and can continue.
Alright then so the box is connected, and when you startup the box for the first time
you will be presented with the Bluetooth remote pairing wizard, followed by the first startup
Android TV OS wizard.
This is where you’ll connect to your Wi-Fi network and your Google account, then you
will be taken to the launcher.
The launcher is your standard Android TV OS launcher running on a certified version of
Android 9 TV OS with built-in Chromecast and Google assistant feature.
The features of this firmware are presented somewhat slightly different to what we usually
see on other boxes.
Firstly when connected to 4K my TV you have 4K display up to 2160p at 60 Hz.
You have HDR display however there are no settings for it, and it’s always on by default.
Under advanced options you have an HDMI CEC switch, an accessories mode switch, a camera
audio switch, an HDCP switch, and a force 1.4 switch.
At this point I’m unsure as to what the force 1.4 and the accessories mode does, as
there is no information about them found in the user manual.
You have a power key definition option.
You have built-in Chromecast.
Google assistant feature.
And audio output, along with digital surround sound audio output options in the same settings
area.
In the apps section these are the preinstalled apps that you get to select during the startup
wizard.
So I will install some additional apps needed to complete my review and continue.
So as I’ve already mentioned the S500 comes fully Google certified to play premium streaming
services in HD and 4K.
However, you’ll be a little disappointed to know that it does not have the required
ESN certification for Netflix to play in HD and 4K.
The same applies for Amazon prime video.
Disney plus on the other hand is available on the play store and will play in HD and
4K.
But all is not lost if you sideload the right Netflix APK under this certified environment
you will get at least HD 1080p.
This is not an official Netflix release but a modified version that needs Google Widevine
level I and HDCP protection, provided that you are also running Android TV OS for it
to work.
With that said I cannot and will not post any links to this modified version in the
description, if you need it, you first have to subscribe to my channel, then contact me
via tvboxstop@gmail.com to request it.
And now a quick run through of its system and hardware information.
The manufacturer is HIMEDIA, and the mainboard is bigfish.
It runs on 2GB of RAM I believe is of DDR3 memory, and 8GB of internal storage from which
this is the remainder after the Android installation and all the apps I’v installed thus far.
The Bluetooth version is 4.1.
Its CPU is the HiSilicon Hi3798MV200, which is a 64bit quad core cortex A53 CPU clocked
at 1.6 GHz, configured in 32bit mode with support for only 32bit ABIs.
Its GPU is the Mali 450 with open GL ES version 2.0 support which is not recommended for gaming.
Under network you have dual band 2.4+5 GHz Wi-Fi support.
Its operating system is Android 9 pie and it shows that the box is not rooted.
Under devices it shows that it has a couple of missing devices including Vulkan support.
Under temperature it shows that the box runs around 42°C, but this is a snapshot and not
a live feed.
Under codecs you have all the decoders for the playback of HD media with no Dolby and
DTS audio decoders.
So we’ll see how that pans out during the video playback and surround sound audio test.
And that’s its system and hardware information.
For those interested in the KODI media Center, you can install the latest version directly
from the Google play store and it works without issues on this box.
There are other ways you can use this box to stream movies and TV shows, and for more
information first subscribe to my channel then contact me via email for the necessary
information.
The Android TV version of YouTube is the standard on Android TV OS and plays up to 4K 2160p
quality and in HDR on this box.
A popular feature of a certified version of Android TV OS is built-in Chromecast.
With Chromecast you can mirror your mobile device to this box, or you can use the Chromecast
feature that’s built into certain apps that support it.
Here I’m mirroring my mobile phone the box without issues.
And here I am using the official Chromecast feature that supported by YouTube.
And now a quick look at its benchmarks.
In the A1 SD benchmark measures RAM copy speed and its internal storage read and write speeds,
the results show that the S500 has a RAM copy speed of 2043 MB/s.
It’s internal storage as a read speed of 88 MB/s, and write speed of 45.
The scores are low scores, but expected given the limited RAM and internal storage.
The tests performed on its Wi-Fi bands and ethernet LAN speed, resulted in the 5GHz band
achieving 100% of my bandwidth.
The 2.4 GHz band achieved 19%.
And the LAN port achieved 59% These tests were performed on a network of
150 Mbps.
Its Antutu benchmark registered a score of 45,156.
This is also a low score and it’s a direct result of its limited CPU speed of 1.6 GHz
and its Mali 450 GPU with only open GL ES version 2.0 support.
In the Geekbench 4 CPU benchmark it scored 558 single core, and 1529 multicore.
These are also low scores which means that this box was designed primarily for only streaming
movies and TV shows and not for activities such as 3D gaming.
In the 3DMark gamers bench graphics benchmark, it only qualified for the ice storm extreme
test that supports open GL ES version 2.0.
And in this test, it scored 3054.
So this confirms that this box was not recommended for gaming.
I will now test its 4K video playback capability using my list of 4K HDR videos in various
formats.
Surprisingly on limited resources, this box plays 4K videos extremely well in HDR quality.
Seeing that this box has digital surround sound audio options I attempted to connect
it on my 7.1 audio receiver, to test for Dolby and DTS audio output.
Unfortunately after numerous attempts, I could not get any digital audio output.
What this means is that this box does not have any digital surround sound audio features.
For demonstration purposes only, as I connected my Bluetooth gamepad to test its Bluetooth
stability, and I also ran one Android game just to demonstrate that it’s not very good
at gaming.
In summary the S500 may not be the preferred choice among hardware enthusiasts, but may
satisfy the needs of someone looking for a certified Android TV box.
Even so it does not have Netflix ESN and Prime Video certification to play in HD and 4K.
So this raises the question of how useful is this box given its low specs.
I’ll leave that for you to decide let me know what you think in the comments section
b elow.
And if you are interested in this box there is only one link available in the description
below.
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Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to watch this video, stay tuned and
I’ll be seeing you in the next one.