LAKE I, another TV box with a Realtek RTD1295 inside

About six months ago, I reviewed a TV box based on the rather uncommon RTD1295 SoC from the very well-known company Realtek. Processors from this manufacturer are fairly rare, and TV boxes using them are practically invisible among the many Rockchip and Amlogic models. That last point is exactly why I decided to write a relatively short review of this device. Maybe it will be useful to someone choosing a TV box.



Since I’ve already reviewed a TV box with this processor, I’ll naturally compare the two from time to time, which makes sense, and I’ll also mention better-known models in the test results.
I bought the TV box about a month ago; at the time, it cost $78.

Specifications.
CPU — Realtek RTD1295
Number of cores — 4 (ARM Cortex-A53 at 1.4 GHz)
Graphics — Mali-T820MP3 GPU
RAM — 2 GB
Flash storage — 16 GB
WiFi: 2.4/5 GHz
Bluetooth — BT 4.0
LAN — 1000 Mb Ethernet
Ports: 1x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, S/PDIF, 2x HDMI, RJ45, SD (128 GB), SATA
Supports hardware decoding of UHD 4K at 60 fps, with support for many formats including H.265 10-bit, H.264, and AVS+
Operating system — Android 6.0
Dimensions — 132x124x27 mm

Comparing these specifications with those of the Beelink Sea, you can see that the only difference is in the dimensions. The LAKE I is slightly thicker and shorter. Otherwise, everything is the same: the interfaces and the amount of memory.

The TV box comes in a relatively large white box, covered on every side with icons, specifications, promotional information, and the like.
It also claims that 2 TB of cloud storage is included, although I don’t think this feature is useful to many people, especially given that there’s room for a hard drive.


The package contents are simple and standard for most TV boxes:
1. LAKE I TV box
2. IR remote control.
3. Power supply
4. HDMI cable
5. Manual.


1. The manual is in English, but it’s mostly pictures and very short, so it’ll do.
2. The HDMI cable has slightly unusual-looking plastic connector housings, but it’s otherwise a standard cable.
3, 4. The power supply is rated at 12 V, 1.5 A. Its case is glued together and looks pretty decent. It runs warm, or even a little hotter than warm, despite having a hard drive installed that isn’t from a “green” series.
The Beelink Sea came with exactly the same power supply and cable, which indirectly suggests they’re made by the same manufacturer. In fact, at first I thought this was a Beelink.


Even the remote is the same as the Beelink’s. I could’ve just reused the photos from my previous review :)


The case design, however, is quite different. Without the clock and the lettering on top, you could easily mistake it for some kind of router. I’d say it looks understated, with one small caveat: the Beelink looks even more plain by comparison.


As I mentioned above, it’s significantly smaller, at least in width. The Beelink was clearly rectangular, while this one is closer to square.


Like the Beelink, it has a built-in clock display on the front, but the time is only easy to read when viewed straight on. Raise your head a little and the top part disappears. Unfortunately, this is true of the vast majority of TV boxes with displays. The feature itself is handy, but the small digits and narrow vertical viewing angle spoil it.


At first glance, the TV box may seem very flat, but most of its thickness is hidden underneath, making it almost one and a half times thicker than the Beelink.


The port selection is identical:
Rear —
1. HDMI output
2. HDMI input
3. Gigabit Ethernet
4. S/PDIF
5. 12 V power input.

Left side —
1. USB 3.0
2. USB 2.0
3. SD card slot.

The port list and layout also exactly match the Beelink’s configuration, right down to the familiar “Beelink-style” SD card slot instead of a microSD slot.


There is one difference, though: the WiFi antennas are now external, and raising them makes it look even more like a router.
When folded, the left antenna blocks access to the USB ports and memory card slot, which is rather inconvenient.


There are quite a lot of ventilation holes on the bottom, although with no corresponding holes on top of the case, their usefulness is gradually approaching zero. I have to mention the rubber feet: the TV box doesn't slide around on the desk at all. I couldn't even pull it loose with heavy HDMI cables connected (not included). Beelink is the complete opposite in this respect.
There is also a cover on the bottom for installing a 2.5-inch hard drive.


I ran almost all the tests with a hard drive installed, especially since this TV box (like many others) doesn't handle bootable flash drives properly.
I installed a WD 500GB 7200rpm test hard drive.


The display glows white and is quite bright. As I mentioned above, it has a fairly narrow viewing angle, probably no more than 45 degrees.


As you may have noticed, the case is white :) In this case, that's both good and bad. The good thing is that fingerprints don't show, but the bad thing is that the labels are hard to see too. There's a photo of the ports above; they are labeled in real life, but even when holding the box in your hands, the labels are hard to make out, let alone in a photo.
To see the labels, you have to look at them from a particular angle to the light. The designers overthought this one.


I took it apart after running the performance and temperature tests, but decided it would be better to put this section before the tests.
The case is a little awkward to open: there's one screw under the hard drive cover, then you need to run something flat and rigid around the perimeter. The two halves fit together very tightly, and there are clips as well.


The device has the usual single-board design. You can see a screw at the bottom right. I'm not quite sure why there's a trace leading to it or why it wasn't tightened all the way; there must be some trick to it.


It was only after taking the TV box apart that I noticed two buttons. It turned out there are special holes for them in the case. Their function isn't specified. It's logical to assume one is a reset button; the other is a mystery—either it enters firmware update mode or powers the device on. The manual doesn't mention these buttons at all.

There are tabs next to the SATA connector for fitting a shielding cover, but the cover itself is missing, and this area is covered with film.


Remove four more screws and take the board out of the case. I'll note that putting it back is much harder, as connectors and cables keep getting in the way.


A steel plate serves as the heatsink. It's fitted into a recess in the top cover and held in place by clips. Its shape looks a little odd: there's room for a rectangle, but for some reason one corner has been cut off. Interestingly, the Beelink Sea has exactly the same piece of metal :)


The circuit board. The layout is practically identical here: they took the original Beelink board, moved the SATA connector and display a little, and voilà, another TV box. By the way, this isn't the first time I've seen a computer sold under the Beelink brand later appear in almost the same form under other brands; I've even posted comparison photos. I don't know who their OEM manufacturer is, but it seems that something is first released under the Beelink brand and then under other brands.


The indicator and photodetector are on the front edge of the board. This photo also shows quite clearly how thick the thermal pad is. I was somewhat surprised by the relatively low processor temperature under load, given the rather flimsy heatsink and thick pad. At first I thought about replacing it with an aluminum plate, but then changed my mind since the TV box was working fine as it was. If you want to improve the thermal performance, though, you'll need a plate about 3 mm thick. Plates like that can be found in LCD monitor boards, and that thickness is fairly common in general.


This section has been left completely unchanged; even the empty spot for a chip is in the same place. I'll also point out that it has a battery. I don't know about you, but it annoys me when a TV box shows the wrong time until it gets the correct time from a server. Especially after my recent trouble accessing NTP servers. So the battery definitely gets a thumbs-up.


One of the connectors is also used for firmware updates. A transistor is located nearby, presumably for monitoring the TV box's power supply. Just in case, I try to photograph everything, since people quite often ask me questions about repairing various devices, and I help identify component markings.


It's good to see that the manufacturer didn't skimp on protection components for the HDMI input and output, although lately I've been seeing this kind of cost-cutting almost everywhere.


The board supports two different WiFi modules. I would guess one is dual-band and the other single-band; in this case, a dual-band 2.4/5 GHz module is installed. The antenna cables are soldered on, which I personally don't like very much.


And here are some of the components on their own.
1. Realtek RTD1295 SoC
2. RAM
3. Flash memory, unfortunately made by Foresee.
4. Power controller for the whole system.


1. WiFi and Bluetooth module
2. Indicator section
3. Power controller, presumably for USB.
4. Another voltage regulator, located on the back of the board near the buttons.


So, we can say we've covered the hardware. Next I'll describe the software and run some tests.
On first startup, you'll be prompted to go through the basic setup: choose a language, check the screen output, and select how to connect to the network.


After that, you land in the main menu, or the "desktop," so to speak. The setup wizard won't run on subsequent startups; instead, loading is reminiscent of Windows 8 or 10 startup, though it feels a bit "sluggish."


Unlike the Beelink, this time there are more apps. A few have been added to the previous one and a half, including Qodi (a renamed Kodi), Beelive, and a guide to setting up the TV box and accessing it from a tablet or smartphone.
Otherwise, it's still the same bare-minimum set of apps; there's not even a YouTube app, which felt quite unusual.


Since it runs Android 6.x.x, the settings menu uses a more traditional layout, without any side panels. Trying to update the software didn't get me anywhere.


There's also a guide to setting up remote access to the TV box and cloud storage.


As before, there are plenty of picture settings, as well as control via the CEC function.



The TV box has 16 GB of flash memory and 2 GB of RAM. Since it runs OpenWRT as well as Android, a fairly large amount of flash memory is occupied, leaving the user with about 9 GB out of 16.
During testing, I checked RAM usage from time to time, but never saw it exceed 900 MB.


General information from CPU-Z and AIDA. In short, root access is available, and the 5 GHz band is shown as unavailable, but that's a mistake: 5 GHz is present and works.
More details under the spoiler.


Since I’ve already reviewed a similar TV box, I ran these tests mostly out of habit. For the most part, the results match the previous ones.
AnTuTu 5.2.0, 6.1.3 and 6.2.1, as well as the Bonsai test.
Last time, the results were:
28135, 37707, 36228, 907 (27.2)


Geekbench versions 3 and 4.
In my previous review, I put together this "table" of results, so you can compare them. The new model is slightly faster so far, by just a few percent.
S905X____S912___Realtek 1295
629_____624_____586
1852____2331____1983
594_____441_____515
1673____1940____1542
877_____1440____806


A speed test for storage and RAM. I didn’t test USB 3.0; the hard drive was installed inside.
The built-in flash memory is about one and a half times faster than in the previous model, which is certainly good news. RAM performance is roughly on par with the Beelink.


There are noticeable improvements in graphics performance, though. It looks like they’ve done some software optimization.
Epic Citadel scored 56.6 versus 45.8 in the first test, and 34.2 versus 29.8 in the second.


Let’s try another classic benchmark: 3DMark and PCMark.
There are improvements here too: 5374 versus 5084 for the Beelink in 3DMark.
The difference in PCMark is just as significant: 3951 versus 3524. What can I say? It may be a small improvement, but it’s nice to see.


The next test is a game: the well-known Asphalt.
The game itself ran fine, apart from the ridiculously inconvenient installation process, with its pile of updates and add-ons.
Gameplay was pretty smooth, except for one thing: the processor temperature fluctuated between 95 and 101 degrees. I was actually surprised that everything worked normally. I showed the reason for these temperatures above: the very thick thermal pad can’t dissipate heat even from a relatively "cool" processor.


The game settings were set to maximum.


Wi-Fi is quite stable, and its sensitivity and speed are clearly better than the Beelink’s.
I even managed to test the connection to my main router, which is installed behind a lot of obstacles. The speed was terrible, though—but I managed to test it all the same.
Red — main router, 12 meters away, with lots of reinforced concrete walls in between.
White — in the same room as the router, but at opposite ends.
Green/blue — one meter from the router.
Gray/yellow — 5 GHz router. The speed here is quite good, around 100–150 Mbps.


Then I decided to test the wired connection. Obviously, Wi-Fi would lose in this test; I got a speed of about 800 Mbps.


A quick look at the preinstalled software. There’s a little more of it here than on the Beelink, but the selection is still very limited.
1. An app for working with cloud storage.
2. Video capture software
3. Miracast, for streaming video over Wi-Fi
4. Some kind of media app.


First, I tried Kodi—or rather, its clone called Qodi.
I still couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Add-ons installed, but nothing would work. Maybe I just need more experience with this app.


But once I installed YouTube as an add-on, things went much better.


1, 2. I had no trouble watching videos from my channel, as well as 4K videos. Though I should qualify that: some 4K clips would occasionally start dropping frames. It felt as if they were playing at 28 frames per second instead of 30, and this didn’t depend on the content or how much was happening on screen.
3, 4. Someone once asked me whether it could play Blu-ray 3D rips. I downloaded a rip of "Jurassic Park" and played it. The playback was smooth, but I can’t say anything about the 3D itself, since I don’t have glasses—and besides, it looked like ordinary video. But I had the TV box connected to a regular monitor, so that may have been the reason.
I monitored the temperature while it was playing. Even with the hard drive running (the movie was playing from it), the temperature stayed below 75–78 degrees.


Now let’s try some third-party apps.
Here I got exactly the same results as in my review of the TV box based on the Rockchip RK3328. Torrent TV either kept trying to open a movie forever or started playing it, only for the video to freeze after 5–10 seconds.
Lazy media also tried to work, but eventually returned an error.


LOL TV, on the other hand, worked brilliantly. I had no trouble watching a large number of programs in both standard and HD quality. A couple of times at first, the picture started breaking up into blocks, but after that it played without any problems.
There are quite a lot of channels, covering so many different genres that I thought it would be nice to have the option to password-protect some of them.
A few channels did tell me I didn’t have access, though they looked like perfectly ordinary channels.


Next came the usual check of how it handled different video formats. Again, there were no problems with either video or AC3 audio, even using the bundled player.


The video with the ducks (Ducks.Take.Off.2160p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv (243 Mbps)) played, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that performance was right at its limit. Maybe I was just imagining it, though—I can’t say for sure.


The 4K video with a lower bitrate plays very smoothly; no complaints here. I had to use screenshots from another review, since here I only got black screens with information about the processor temperature.


Full HD video is output pixel for pixel, with no issues.


A few words about the option to record video from the HDMI input.
Just for the experiment, I connected the computer’s output to the TV box input. A preview appeared in the program right away, along with the option to select the recording resolution. I tested it at 1920x1080, the most demanding setting.


Clicking the appropriate button displays the video in PiP (picture-in-picture) mode, and you can choose whether to include the audio.


You can record or take a screenshot while it’s running. Scheduled recording and streaming modes are also available.


At first I thought I’d take a bunch of screenshots, but then decided it would be easier to share a link to the review where I compared the capture quality of a dedicated device and this TV box. As I recall, we concluded that the Beelink (and therefore the one reviewed here) captured video more accurately.



The video is recorded in the same format, using High Profile 4.2.


And I have to mention a rather unusual feature that I’ve hardly seen anywhere else: this TV box also comes with OpenWRT.
It’s very easy to access. First, find out the TV box’s IP address (either one you set manually or one assigned by your router), then enter it in your browser’s address bar.
Username: root; password: blank.


This takes you to a large settings menu.


Here are all the menu options, as well as how the installed hard drive appears. A reminder: you can click to enlarge almost all the images in this review.


Near the end, I decided to measure the temperature of the installed hard drive after all the tests. The only temperature test I ran without it installed was the Asphalt game. I think the temperature would have been even higher with the hard drive installed, which is another reason to replace the rubber thermal interface material with aluminum or copper.
The hard drive doesn’t get extremely hot, but it does get noticeably warm—46–47 degrees. Only two things are reassuring:
2.5-inch hard drives handle overheating a little better.
I tested it with a fairly “hot” 7200 RPM hard drive. Things should be a little better with drives from the “green” series.


Throughout the review, I’ve been comparing the two TV boxes, so it seems only fitting to put them “face to face” now and show them side by side.
From the front, the only things they have in common are the display and the IR receiver window.


From the back and left, they have a lot more in common—almost everything, in fact.


Now it’s time to sum things up.
Essentially, the TV box reviewed here is a copy of the Beelink Sea, but there are some differences.
The Lake I offers slightly better performance and Wi-Fi reception thanks to its external antennas, while the Lake is a little cheaper.
However, the Beelink has a better hard drive layout: it’s mounted on the side, so it generates less heat for the other components.

Otherwise, the TV boxes are “twin brothers.” Even the high temperatures caused by the poorly designed cooling system are about the same, though the Beelink does run a little cooler. You probably won’t notice this drawback when watching movies or browsing the internet, but it will be quite noticeable during gaming. And although the TV box didn’t just avoid freezing during all my tests—it didn’t even try to—I’d recommend considering a cooling upgrade, especially since it’s relatively easy to do.

Not long ago, I came across a coupon for this TV box and posted it in my own section :)
GBLAKE8 brings the price down to $73.99, which I think is pretty good.

That’s all. I hope you found the review useful.