Z28, TV box with the new RK3328

First, a note about the box: it comes in two configurations, 1/8 and 2/16 GB of RAM/storage, respectively. I figured the 1/8 version would be a bit too underpowered, so I went with 2/16. In my opinion, they could also have offered a 2/8 option at a mid-range price.

I'll try not to drag this out today and get straight to the specs.

CPU — RK3328
Number of cores — 4 (ARM Cortex-A53 CPU clocked at 1.5 GHz)
Graphics — Mali-450MP2)
RAM — 2 GB
Flash storage — 16 GB
WiFi: 2.4 GHz
LAN — 100 Mb Ethernet
Ports: 1x USB 2.0 + 1x USB 3.0, S/PDIF, HDMI, RJ45, microSD
H.265 support
4K resolution support
Operating system — Android 7.1
Dimensions — 110 x 110 x 20 mm

The packaging really surprised me. The manufacturer decided not to spend money on making a good first impression, which may be for the best. There's no important information on the packaging.


The bundle is also quite modest:
1. TV box
2. Power adapter
3. IR remote control
4. HDMI cable

Yes, there's no familiar instruction manual in the box. This is a first for me.


The cable and remote are as ordinary as they come. The remote isn't even programmable—it's the simplest kind.
I didn't take the power adapter apart, but I can say it has no trouble powering the box, a flash drive, and an external 7200 rpm hard drive, while staying barely warm.


The TV box has a familiar design: a small, square plastic box. The only design flourish is a slightly convex top cover. Even so, it doesn't look off-putting—simple and tasteful.
There's a power LED on the front. It glows a dim blue, and there's no power button; the TV box turns on automatically when power is connected.


The top is matte and measures about 110 x 110 mm.


The selection of interfaces is also very modest; they included only the bare minimum:
On the left: 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, and a microSD card slot. The card slot's spring is quite stiff, and the card sits flush with the case, so be careful.
On the back: Ethernet, HDMI, S/PDIF, and the power input.

As you can see, there's no analog audio or video, and the number of USB ports is also kept to a minimum. The USB 3.0 port is a welcome addition, although whether it's useful on a TV box is still debatable.


There are four rubber feet on the bottom. The box doesn't slide around on the table, even though it's quite light.


Remove the rubber feet and unscrew the four self-tapping screws.


Inside is a square circuit board coated with a dark brown solder mask. It looks neat and understated. On this side of the board are two RAM chips and a number of small components.


Unscrew two more screws and remove the board. Unfortunately, the WiFi antenna is soldered in place, which could make an upgrade difficult. Though, to get ahead of myself a little, an upgrade probably won't be necessary.


The cooling system is also fairly conventional: a large steel plate that dissipates heat through a thermal pad.
I didn't notice any obvious overheating during extended use. The processor is quite power-efficient, but the top of the case was noticeably warm.

You can also see the printed WiFi-Bluetooth antenna nearby.


Here's the TV box's circuit board. Everything is very neatly laid out.


I'll make a brief digression here. At the very beginning, I wrote that the box comes in an unremarkable package and with a basic remote, but that's not actually a downside. If every manufacturer paid as much attention to what’s inside the device as they do to the packaging and the number of "extras" in the box, we’d have more products like this.
I couldn’t resist showing just how neat this board is, even though it has a few minor flaws and signs of cost-cutting too.

It really is a good build, especially for a no-name device.


The board is clean, the soldering is neat, and they’ve put a black sleeve over the LED so it only shines forward. A small touch, but a nice one.


They clearly skimped on HDMI protection, and there’s no separate Ethernet controller either—it’s built into the SoC. But that’s true of the vast majority of modern budget TV boxes.


Another surprise was how few components there are on the board. Here’s the list:
1. RK3328 SoC
2. RAM: four Samsung chips, for a total of 2 GB.
3. Flash memory is Samsung too, not the disappointing Foresee. Excellent.
4. A multichannel power management controller made by Rockchip.
5. A Wi-Fi module based on Realtek’s RTL8188.
6. I needed an even number of photos, and there aren’t any more chips on the board, so here’s a photo of a few transistors near the Wi-Fi module :)

Yes, there really are only the bare essentials: no audio, no external chip, Ethernet is built into the processor, so that’s one less chip. They used a multichannel converter, eliminating a whole bunch of small DC-DC regulators at once.


It boots pretty quickly, in about ten seconds. The "desktop" looks a little different from the ones I’ve seen before, though mostly just on the surface.


After a while, I decided to click the button in the top-left corner of the desktop. It turned out to be a simple instruction manual. A very simple and neat solution. I wouldn’t say the manual is really needed here, but it’s certainly harder to lose now. Credit to the developer for thinking outside the box :)


The settings menu is also a little unusual. Click the corresponding button and a panel like this opens on the right.


But I found it more convenient to switch to the standard control panel interface.


The system kernel is very recent, dated March 31. Android version 7.1.1


Still, I tried updating the system. Unfortunately, no updates are available yet.


Of the 14.5 GB available to the user, about 2.5 GB is already occupied. RAM is 2 GB, as advertised. In my opinion, these boxes are perfectly usable with 1 GB of RAM, but I’d recommend choosing one with 2 GB, even though it costs a little more.


There were a few glitches too. When I tried to open the display settings, I got an error message. As you can see, the screenshot says "again," although that word wasn’t there the first time. I tried about five times, but got the same result each time. The problem occurs specifically in the Display menu.


All right, let’s try another way. I go back to the home screen and try the new control panel interface.
No problems here; everything works, although there aren’t many settings.
By the way, even though 1080p is selected as the output resolution, the desktop and apps are displayed only at 720p. Only video is output at 1080p—at least without any complicated workarounds. I don’t know how to do those anyway :(


Adjusting the image output is pretty straightforward.


As for the apps, there aren’t many. I’ll show them separately later, but I can tell you now that there’s nothing new to see.


For some reason, CPU-Z thinks it has an RK3066 inside, not an RK3328. Still, it correctly reports the maximum frequency, GPU model, and the rest of the information.


I’ve included the AIDA64 information as a supplement, so I’ll hide it behind a spoiler and add just a few brief comments.


And of course, the benchmarks—what would we do without them?
As always, AnTuTu comes first. In version 5.x, the TV box delivered performance roughly on par with the Amlogic S905.
Version 5.2.0
S912 — 34309
S805 — 16655
S812 — 41872 (v5,7)
S905 — 28547
S905X — 27406
RK3328- 26455

Interestingly, this is the second TV box with the new Rockchip, and once again there's a problem verifying the result: AnTuTu 5.x simply can't see the network.


In AnTuTu 6.x, performance is roughly on par with the 905 and 912.
Version 6.1.2 (6.1.3)
S912 — 36184
S905 — 34918
S905X — 33458
RK3328- 34980

In version 6.2.1, the Amlogic S912 scored around 40000, so this is a little lower.


Geekbench math performance tests were run in versions 3 and 4.
Comparison results
S905X___S912__Realtek 1295_RK3399__RK3328
629_____624_____586______1480____610
1852____2331____1983_____3481____1793
594_____441_____515______1404____595
1673____1940____1542_____2572____1612
877_____1440____806______1983____788


In the 3DMark test, this TV box turned out to be noticeably weaker than its competitors.
3DMark
S912 — 6158
S905 — 4275
S905X — 4277
Realtek 1295 --- 5084
RK3399 --- 9850
RK3328 --- 2291

In PCMark, on the other hand, it put up a decent result.
PCMark
S912 — 3177
S812 — 2937
S905 — 2951
S905X — 3120
Realtek 1295 --- 5084
RK3399 --- 3524
RK3328 --- 3733



Epic Citadel test.
High Quality and Ultra High Quality
S912 — 55/28.3
S905 — 46.0/23.8
S905X — 50.7/27.1
Realtek 1295 -- 45.8/29.8
RK3399 -- 56.7/55.4

Performance here is roughly on par with the 905/912 processors, but it's worth noting that the test was run at 1280x720, not 1920x1080. I mentioned this limitation above.


I'm still collecting data for this test, but I can already say that, for example, the Beelink with a Realtek 1295 scored 1907/27.2, while the RK3399 scored 3973/56.7.


In AnTuTu Video, the result is slightly higher than the S912's.


RAM access speed is also on par with the other TV boxes, at around 3500 MB/s.
Flash memory performance was a bit disappointing, though. I expected more from Samsung, so for now its only advantage is that it's more reliable than Foresee.
USB 3.0 works too, but transfer speeds are lower than expected. The test was run with an external hard drive capable of sequential reads at around 100 MB/s. Still, it was faster than USB 2.0.


Wi-Fi was a pleasant surprise. There's no 5 GHz band, but 2.4 GHz works quite well.
What's more, even under the worst signal conditions—with the signal passing through the entire apartment and several reinforced-concrete walls—the connection held up quite reliably.
The connection speed reading was basically made up, though :)


The connection didn't drop, though, even if the speed wasn't very high.
1. 12 m, no line of sight, reinforced-concrete walls (including load-bearing ones).
2. In the same room as the router, but in the opposite corner, about 5 m away.
3. Line of sight, about one meter away.


A quick look at the preinstalled software—fortunately, there's not much of it :)


As I mentioned earlier, the TV box outputs video correctly: 1080p is displayed "pixel for pixel." I did have to go into the display settings and expand the window to the maximum, though. Before I did that, the picture was a mess.


I also had no problems playing various formats. The only test that seemed to give it a hard time was the panorama from IXBT.
The TV box even outputs AC3 audio without any prior configuration or third-party software.

1024x768_h265_AC3.mkv
2560x1600_AAC .mp4 (I didn't notice any brief glitches)
3840x2160_AAC .mp4 (brief image freezes)
4096x2160_AAC .mp4 (noticeable image freezes)
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

It also played Sony_4K_HDR_Camp.mp4 without any problems, a file that's quite demanding for Amlogic-based boxes.
The screenshots look a little "rough" because the box captures them at 1280x720, even though it outputs a proper 1080p image to the screen.

There is one slightly annoying issue: the video is a bit darker than I'd like, and the TV box has no brightness adjustment. It feels like the contrast is set too high. But this could be related to my monitor. The screenshot looks brighter than the actual image.


While discussing another TV box on a well-known forum, I was asked to test the output quality and CPU load when playing an x264 Hi10P file.
I tested it here out of curiosity, too. I didn't see any artifacts.


CPU load during playback in RKMC (Kodi) is around 40%.


I put together a quick overview—or, more accurately, a demonstration of the TV box's software.



Summary.
Pros
Good build quality
USB 3.0
Good Wi-Fi sensitivity
Handles video correctly
AC3 decoding support.

Cons
Only two USB ports
Flash memory isn't very fast.
YouTube limited to 720p

My take: this TV box is roughly on par with the better-known Amlogic S912, but has fewer video playback issues. Also, I haven't heard of any incompatibility with certain TV models, which is an issue with Amlogic devices.
I'd also like to point out the quality components and very neat assembly. And of course, the Wi-Fi: I haven't come across many TV boxes with a built-in antenna and decent reception lately, so I was a little surprised.
Having USB 3.0 on board is certainly nice, although I'm not yet sure what advantage it offers in a TV box. But I was disappointed that there are only two USB ports; a third would have been useful. During testing, I used a keyboard, mouse, and flash drive (in addition to a microSD card), so I had to unplug something.

The time synchronization issue has been resolved; the TV box wasn't to blame, so I've removed that section from the review.

That's about it. As always, I'm looking forward to your questions and comments.

There's a coupon for this TV box: GBZ28. It brings the price down to $41.99; the coupon has been tested.