- The 3rd-gen Xiaomi TV Box S has just quietly landed
- There are several under-the-hood upgrades for the Google TV streamer rival
- These include a storage boost to 32GB, but RAM remains the same at 2GB
Google has its own Google TV Streamer for showing off the capabilities of Google TV, but there are now several alternative boxes available making use of Google’s big screen software – and Xiaomi’s offering just got a couple of welcome upgrades.
The 3rd-gen Xiaomi TV Box S is now official (via FlatPanelsHD), and there are some noticeable upgrades to talk about. Firstly there’s a new chipset on board: Xiaomi hasn’t said what it is, but it apparently offers a 25% CPU/130% GPU boost over the previous generation (it’s most probably the Amlogic S905X5M).
While RAM stays the same at 2GB, there’s also a very welcome storage boost from 8GB to 32GB – with the triple-fold increase meaning more room for your apps and games (new Google TV devices have to have at least 16GB of storage, as per Google’s guidelines).
There’s also Wi-Fi 6 for the first time, while the 3.5 mm audio port has been removed. The box again supports Dolby Audio, Dolby Vision, and HDR10+ as before, while video over HDMI can get up to 4K at 60 frames per second. We’re still waiting on availability and pricing details from XIaomi.
Can we have some more, please?
Xiaomi’s streaming box is now more on a par with the Google TV Streamer, though the latter’s 4GB of RAM rather than 2GB is likely to mean a smoother and snappier experience overall – even with the processor boost on the Xiaomi.
And irrespective of the relative specs, it’s good to see more Google TV devices on the market. Walmart has its own 4K streaming box running Google TV, and it also comes as standard on numerous TVs, including flagship Sony models.
More choice is always good, giving us a range of form factors to get our Google TV fix from – unlike offerings from Amazon, Roku, and Apple, where the hardware and software experience are very much tied together.
We can only hope that Nvidia takes some time out from pushing forward AI and GPU technology to build a new Nvidia Shield powered by Google TV. We haven’t had a new Nvidia Shield streamer since 2019, but it remains a brilliant device for streaming, gaming, and general tech tinkering.
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