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Monday, April 21, 2014

Unboxing and Review of the CS968 Android TV Box

     What's up guys? CS968 is a very popular android tv box these days and i'm gonna help you decide whether it's worth buying it or not. So let's start with what you get in the box.

What's in the Box:

  •  The Device itself (CS968 Android TV Box)
  •  A suction cup to place it and adjust it on a furniture of your choice
  •  An ir remote control (it doesn't work as a fly mouse, it is used for simple menu navigation) with  battery  included 
  •  An A/C Adapter
  •  An A/V Cable
  •  An HDMI Cable (mine was gold plated)
     I have to say that this is a very generous package. You can watch my unboxing in the video below


 


Next let's move on to the review

Review: 

Hardware 

     The TV Box is powered by a Quad-Core RK3188T running at 1.4 Ghz constructed at 28 nm.
In the graphics department there is the popular Quad-Core Mali-400 MP4 GPU at 533Mhz which does a very good job in 3d games. It has 2 GB of  RAM and 8 GB of NAND Flash. Fortunately 2 are available for apps and 4.5 GB for the user.
     An external wifi antenna is present giving an excellent wifi reception. It supports 802.11 b/g/n and it also has bluetooth 4.0 to connect gamepads, bluetooth headsets e.t.c and transfer files. Wifi Direct is supported too as well as wifi display (Miracast) allowing you to stream your smartphone's or tablet's screen on your TV.
     At the left side of the device there are 2 USB 2.0 ports (one of them is OTG and is used to connect it to the PC and upgrade the firmware along with the reset button), a reset button and a MicroSD card slot.
     At the right side there are another 2 USB 2.0 ports.
     Moving on the back we have the external wifi antenna, an A/V Out port used to connect the CS968 to older TVs that don't  have an HDMI port,  an HDMI port, an optical SPDIF port, an ethernet port and a power port.
     On the front side we see the 2Mpx camera (not very good quality but good enough for Skype, a microphone, the ir sensor and a led lighting blue when the device is powered on and red when it's on hold

Software

     The device is running android 4.2.2 and the original ROM which came with it is snappy and fast. Some Chinese apps are present but you can remove them using titanium backup or similar apps since the device came pre-rooted. The XBMC version installed on the device is Gotham 13 Alpha 6 but i installed the Beta 3 version and now 1080p videos play perfectly fine. Streaming matches from Sopcast at 2000 kbps is a little laggy but watchable. Maybe overclocking the device's CPU, GPU and DDR give better results in that department.
     Skype was preinstalled and you can use it with the onboard camera. If you are not satisfied by the picture quality you can connect an external usb webcam (logitech C170) is reported to work good).
     You can watch my review in the video below

                                          

Conclusion

     This TV Box will serve you well as an entertainment media center and a capable Mini PC. It handles XBMC very good and it's 4 USB ports is a very important asset you should seriously consider. Overall i am very satisfied with this product and at a price range of 80-85 $ and the support it has by the developers on www.freaktab.com it is probably the best choice you can make. 

     I hope you find my review helpful and if you like it follow me. Thank you
    
    

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