MECOOL BB2 Media Player

In my previous review, I mentioned that I’d also be reviewing a second TV box based on Amlogic’s new S912 processor.
Performance is almost identical, but the design and software are different, so today I’m reviewing the second TV box.
Teardown, tests, and conclusions are all below.

Actually, I bought this box before ordering the previous one, but it was coming «on foot», so it arrived second. That’s why this review is being published second, too.

There isn’t much new to say, especially since there’s already a review of this TV box on the site, so mine will mostly be a supplement. I’ll try to keep it brief.

First, the manufacturer’s claimed specifications:
CPU — Amlogic S912
Number of cores — 8
Graphics — Mali-T820MP3
RAM — 2 GB
Flash memory — 16 GB
WiFi: 2.4 / 5 GHz (5 GHz is still uncertain; more on that in the review)
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.0
LAN — Gigabit Ethernet
Connectors: 2x USB 2.0, SPDIF, HDMI, RJ45, AV, micro SD card
H.265 support
4K resolution support
Operating system — Android 6.0
Dimensions — 109 x 109 x 21 mm

The box comes in a neat white package, with a sticker on the bottom listing the main specifications.


The packaging looks pretty good. The box and manual are on the «upper floor», with everything else underneath.


The package includes:
1. TV box
2. Power supply
3. HDMI cable
4. IR remote control
5. Manual


As with most devices, the manual is mostly there to complete the package: it’s brief and in English.
The HDMI cable is budget-grade; you could say it’s just there.
The power supply, on the other hand, is quite good. It reminded me a bit of the PSU from one of my Beelink computers. It has a universal plug with flat pins and an adapter for our mains sockets. The PSU outputs 5 V at up to 2 A.


The included remote is quite convenient. I’ve already written in detail about this kind of remote in this review. Its special feature is that you can program it to control another device’s power, volume, and video input.


The box looks pretty good, with a «metal-look» finish and a protective film on top.


It’s not very large, although I’ve seen even smaller boxes.


1. The front has an IR receiver window and a power button. Lately, I’d almost forgotten that a box could have a button on the front panel.
2. The right side has a socket for connecting the WiFi antenna.
3. The left side has 2 USB 2.0 ports and a memory card slot.
4. All the remaining connectors are on the back:
Ethernet port
Optical digital audio output
Analog audio and video are carried over a 3.5 mm jack, but the adapter cable isn’t included.
HDMI port for connecting a monitor or TV
Power input.


The bottom of the box is metal and has four rubber feet. They’re soft, and the box doesn’t slide around on the table.
There are also quite a lot of ventilation holes on the bottom.


Since the box doesn't have a built-in antenna, an external one is included.
The antenna is small; I expected it to be longer.
It has a male connector, although antennas with the opposite-gender connector are also available. It turned out that one of my computers has an antenna with exactly the same connector, so I tested it with that one too.

Installed, it looks something like this: the original one is on the left, and the one I already had is on the right.


When I turned it on, I found that in addition to the LED on the front panel, the lettering on the top cover lights up too: blue during operation and red in standby.


I think my readers are already used to the mandatory teardown in my reviews, and this box will be no exception.

The set-top box interface is very simple; it even reminded me of some devices from the Android 4.x era.


Last time, the box was literally packed with all kinds of software. This time, only the essentials are installed, which is actually a good thing—there's nothing to distract you.


Information about the TV box from its menu.


Since not many apps are installed, the user has a little more free space. Last time, about 1.2 GB was occupied; this time, it's 750 MB.

What's strange is that the device's RAM information shows 2 GB, whereas the previous box had 1.7 GB.
In any case, even after extensive testing with a bunch of different apps, the average amount of memory in use was only about 650 MB.


Since the box has an external antenna (in fact, that was one of the reasons I chose this particular model), I was especially interested in testing its Wi-Fi.


This time, I was able to run SpeedTest without any problems and got these results.
First, I tested it with the stock antenna under poor signal conditions. Reception was still relatively decent, but transmission was a problem—the test simply reported a lost connection.
Then I installed a different antenna. With that setup, I completed the test without any problems, although the speed wasn't very high.
The next test shows the speed with the stock antenna and the router in the same room as the box.
The penultimate test: the router was one meter from the box. Strangely, the speed actually dropped.
The last test shows the data transfer speed over a wired connection to my ISP.


I repeated the tests with Iperf.
First, a comparison of the stock antenna with the one I had on hand (it's a little larger).
The router is 12 m away, with a bunch of reinforced concrete walls in between.


And now a test with the stock antenna: on the left, the distance is about 5 meters, with a few obstacles; on the right, it's one meter, with a clear line of sight.
As you can see, speeds are quite good when the box is in the same room as the router, but at a greater distance they become comparable to those of TV boxes with an internal antenna.

It's a slightly odd situation, but one advantage is that you can simply replace the antenna and noticeably improve the connection speed. I used two antennas that were almost identical, but you could use one with higher gain.


The settings menu is standard for Android 6.0.


I'll highlight a few options for display output and control.
By the way, unlike the previous model, this box doesn't let you choose what the power button does; it simply turns the TV box on or off.


Information from CPU-Z, just like last time.


The box also has root access.


Pretty much the same information, but from Aida64.


I'll spend a little more time on this screenshot.
The network properties say that the box doesn't support the 5 GHz band, even though the store page claims that it does.
I could simply say it isn't there and move on, but while testing the next box, I discovered something interesting.
When I tested the previous box, I wrote that I couldn't run AIDA in the connectivity-module test mode because the app crashed with an error. But since I had a datasheet for the module that clearly listed 5 GHz support, I concluded that the band was supported, and I think that was the right call because the datasheet takes precedence.
Here, AIDA explicitly says that 5 GHz isn't supported. But when I ran the test on another box with the same module as the previous one and AIDA also said that 5 GHz wasn't supported, I started wondering whether this was just a bug in AIDA and I was unfairly criticizing a good box.

The problem is that there are no 5 GHz access points at home or anywhere around me, so my tests showed no 5 GHz support. I went further: I set up an access point on one of the boxes and tried connecting to it, but got the same result: 2.4 GHz. I tried different combinations, but still couldn't see 5 GHz.
I won't claim that it isn't supported, but I can't confirm that it is either, especially since I don't know what wireless module is used here. If anyone can suggest a way to test it, I'd be very grateful.


The AnTuTu 4 and 5 results are almost the same as last time.


Version 6.2.1 scored a little lower. Last time it was around 40,000. But that's probably just a quirk of the test, since there was no overheating and I ran it several times.


AnTuTu Video: same result and the same list of unsupported formats.


3DMark and PCMark: exactly the same story. Though that's hardly surprising, since the boxes are very similar hardware-wise.


Epic Citadel shows a little variation: 54 versus 55 last time at medium quality, and 31.5 versus 28.3 at high quality.


And the same issue with some polygons periodically disappearing, so this is definitely a problem with the new processor's GPU.


Asphalt 8 runs without any problems; everything looks great.


Geekbench test.
First version 3, then version 4.
I also ran the Compute test from version 4; I forgot to do that last time.


Read/write speeds for the microSD card, built-in flash storage, and RAM.


There aren't many apps installed, so this section will be short too.
The classic YouTube app. It clearly differs from the one installed on the previous box.


I played a 4K video. It was output to a Full HD monitor, but it still looked really good—I even got caught up watching it.


Kodi 17 Krypton comes preinstalled on the TV box.


I tried to figure it out so I could watch a movie online, but either it's awkward to use or I couldn't work it out. Either way, I didn't get to watch anything. I'm more used to the previous version.


Standard software for DLNA and Miracast


As a small bonus, a junk-cleaning app is preinstalled.


The box can connect via PPPoE; there’s an app for configuring this connection mode.


There was also an app called AirPkay, which I didn’t know and probably wouldn’t need, though it might be useful to someone.


While exploring the installed software, I found an app for updating Kodi—or so it claimed.


When I tried to launch it, it downloaded an update, but then said the service had stopped and refused to update.


After that, I opened the box’s own software update app, which had the same interface.
It offered me an update too.


What happened next was a little surprising: the update size matched the one offered by the Kodi update app.
But there was nothing else to do, so I accepted. Then came the download, the update, and a reboot.


The firmware version changed, but all my files and installed apps were still there, which was nice.


As for visible changes, the only thing I noticed was the addition of a status bar and a menu item to enable it. The status bar is colored and can be seen at the top of this screenshot.


By now you’re probably wondering: what about the video tests? That’s usually the whole reason for buying a box like this.
Of course I didn’t forget, and I tested the box in various modes as well.
First, I tested whether it outputs Full HD video correctly. Just like last time, the result was excellent: all the installed players output video correctly. 5 points.


As last time, I tested video files in various formats and resolutions. Unfortunately, the author of the collection has since deleted it from Yandex Disk, so this is an image from the archive.

1024x768_h265_AC3.mkv
2560x1600_AAC .mp4
3840x2160_AAC .mp4
4096x2160_AAC .mp4
gopro-hero-3-be-avc-high@l5.1-4096x2160-12p-aac-2ch.mp4
GraysPeak8HDR_Dolby AC3.mp4
LG 4K Paris_AAC.mp4
LG 4K Story-of-Earth_AAC.mp4
LG_Chess_HDR.mp4
Philips_UHD_supershopdemo_1.mp4
samsung-note-3-3840x2160-high@l5.1-AAC-2ch-2.mp4

4K HD.Club Changhong-Furano-100mbps.mp4

ALL the files played correctly, and there was even sound in the videos with the AC3 codec. I didn’t install any additional players. Another 5 points.

However, the Sony_4K_HDR_Camp.mp4 test file wouldn’t play in the stock players, and for some reason MX_Player_Pro_1.8.3 wouldn’t install either, displaying “App not installed.”


That wraps up the general part of this short review. Now let's move on to the conclusions.

First, an overall assessment.
Pros
Decent design and build quality, with a neat appearance.
An external WiFi antenna that can be replaced.
A power button on the box itself (I never thought I'd list that as a plus).
AC3 audio decoding support out of the box.
WiFi works reasonably well at short and medium range.
Gigabit Ethernet.
A decent power supply.
Analog video output.

Cons
An undersized processor heatsink.
In poor conditions, WiFi performance is no better than on devices with a built-in antenna.

My take: we're seeing the same results as with the previous box based on the 912 processor: a small boost in 3D performance and roughly the same results in synthetic benchmarks.
The box has a pretty decent design, good build quality, and components from reputable manufacturers, so there are no concerns on that front. I was a little surprised, though, that the developers used a smaller heatsink. There was no sign of overheating, but the thermal headroom is lower than on the previous version.
The 5 GHz band is a bit of a mystery. It should be supported, judging by indirect evidence, but I couldn't confirm it in practice, and I can no longer trust the information from Aida. Maybe someone can suggest other programs for checking whether this mode is available; my search came up empty.

Otherwise, I have no complaints about the TV box. Video works, and there was no «green screen» issue, although as far as I understand, that depends more on the TV box and TV working together, and I may simply not have noticed it on my monitor. I was also pleased that the box plays AC3 audio without any fiddling.

The comments confirmed that the 5 GHz band is supported.

That's all for now. As always, I look forward to your comments.

Some time after buying it, while the box was still in transit and the order could no longer be canceled, I found a coupon for it, GBCNA, which brings the price down to $60.70. I paid $67.26, even after using my points :(