The hotly anticipated Xiaomi Mi Box Android TV unit was finally released for sale in the USA this week. The advantage of the US model is support for English, as well as a few other languages, and for those who can’t read Mandarin this is a bonus. If you were wanting to grab one of these in Australia your only option was really to buy in the USA and have it reshipped. This is often costly and brings with it warranty issues, but now thanks to Aliexpress you can now get one delivered to your Australian door.
The Mi box Android TV is the only recent addition to the Android TV set top box category, and for those wanting 4K playback and HDR support who don’t want to shell out the extra money for a Nvidia Shield TV it seems to be the best, and only option. If you don’t want to wait the 20 – 41 days there is also a faster shipping option that costs and extra $14.09 AUD and promises delivery in 8 – 16 days.
If you’ve been waiting to try Android TV but wanted something a little more powerful than the Nexus Player, this may be the device for you. Unfortunately, it only comes with 8GB of on board storage and no SD card slot, but it does have a USB port support for up top 128 GB of storage. Despite the leaps forward in Android, installing apps to a SD card remains sub-optimal even assuming it’s supported.
Because of this limited storage we still suggest that if you’re interested in using you Android TV for playing a few casual games that the Nvidia Shield TV is still the best option on the market. However, if you just want to use Android TV, Google Cast and perhaps play the occasion bit of Crossy Roads then the Mi Box should have you covered.
Are you going to get a Xiaomi Mi box? Let us know below.
looks legit but the ” OS : MI BOX UI, Custom ROM,Support OTA update” concerns me. Shouldn’t it just run straight Android TV?
yeah i’m a bit suspect. For a China seller to be selling the US model is very unusual, as you can’t actually buy the US model in china. The China Model ships with the MIUI build on Android 5.0.
Only thing i can think of is they’ve flashed the Android TV ROM from the Mi Box in the US. My understanding is this method won’t allow OTA updates and requires root.