SCISHION V88 Mars II, a rather controversial TV box

Another TV box has landed in my hands. At first, I didn't even think about writing about it, but it's so unusual—I'd even say strange. Since in many ways it's not much different from the others, I'll keep this very brief.
But, as always, there will be tests as well as the obligatory teardown.


I bought a couple of TV boxes. I may review the second one too, but so far I've only gotten around to the one covered here. I didn't buy it for myself; I don't use Android TV boxes at all, since I prefer mini PCs running Windows. But if there's a chance to try one out, why not?
The key factors in choosing it were the price and 2 GB of RAM. In this case, the price was relatively low because it has only 8 GB of flash storage. Since the TV box was intended for watching online videos, we figured that would be enough.

First, the specifications.
CPU — RK3229
Number of cores — 4 (ARM Cortex-A7 CPU, 1.5 GHz)
Graphics — Mali-400MP2
RAM — 2 GB
Flash storage — 8 GB
Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz (Wi-Fi chip: 6051P)
LAN — 100 Mb Ethernet
Bluetooth — no
Ports: 2x USB 2.0, HDMI, AV, RJ45, microSD
H.265 support
Supports 4K resolution
HDMI control: CEC
Operating system — Android 6.0.1
Dimensions — 92 x 92 x 17 mm

Overall, it's a very budget-oriented configuration: no Bluetooth, no Gigabit Ethernet, no USB 3.0—everything is kept to a minimum.
Even the packaging had no printing on it, just a plain, unremarkable box.


The accessories are also about what you'd expect from most inexpensive TV boxes.
1. SCISHION V88 Mars II TV box
2. Power supply
3. HDMI cable
4. Remote control
5. Manual.



The manual, HDMI cable, and power supply are all clearly budget-grade, though honestly, I wasn't expecting anything better for this price.


Since the power supply has a disassemblable case, I opened it up before plugging it in for the first time.


Inside is a board from the economy range, with no filters on either the input or output. The input capacitor is 6.8 µF, and a resistor serves as the fuse.


The DK1203 PWM controller has a built-in high-voltage transistor. According to the datasheet, its power rating is 12/18 W, depending on the input voltage range. Since the power supply is rated at 10 W, it has plenty of headroom.
The output regulation, however, is pretty dismal: instead of an adjustable zener diode, there's a regular one and a few resistors.


The remote is as basic as they come, with no learning buttons. That's probably a downside; it's much more convenient to control the main functions with a single remote.


Exterior

The design is about as classic as it gets: a black square box with glossy sides.


It's small, though it's just a little larger than the MX9 PRO: 92 mm versus 82 mm.


The status LED doesn't have its own opening and shines through the case. Blue means active, red means standby. The red light is barely visible, though the blue one isn't very bright either.


The port layout and number of ports are also fairly typical for compact TV boxes:
On the right are two USB 2.0 ports, a memory card slot, and a reset button opening.
At the back are an HDMI output, a 3.5 mm AV jack (analog audio and video), Ethernet, and the power input.


Still, the manufacturer tried to add at least some visual distinction: the top of the box is textured and has some shiny flecks. Though in my opinion, either they'll become invisible over time because of dust, or you won't see them at all if the TV box gets tucked away behind the TV.


There are lots of ventilation holes on the bottom, which is good, but it's bad that there are no matching holes on top. I'm surprised, really—it's not hard to make a mold with holes on both the bottom and the top. Without top (or side) openings, all this “ventilation” is almost pointless, unless you stand the TV box upright.


Inside the box

Taking the TV box apart is very simple: peel off the four rubber feet and remove the cover. By the way, as for the feet, the TV box slides around a bit, but mostly because it’s so light, not because the feet are poor.


The board takes up most of the case, but there’s still quite a lot of empty space. I think they could easily have added a couple more USB ports.


The first thing you notice is that everything is mounted on the board, even the Wi-Fi antenna. In a way, that’s convenient: nothing is dangling on wires. But antennas like this often perform worse. I took apart a similar TV box not long ago.


I only noticed the reset button after taking the device apart. I’m more used to seeing it behind the 3.5 mm jack for analog audio and video output.


I’d say the heatsink is medium-sized; it’s simply glued to the processor.
The two-color status indicator is implemented using two LEDs. The blue LED faces the opposite direction, but shines brighter than the red one.


There’s no protection on the HDMI output. I usually write that you should connect this port first and disconnect it last, although I rarely follow that rule myself. This time, the rule "came back to bite me". During yet another hot-plug, something glitched in the TV box and almost all the folders and files disappeared. The worst part was that this happened right at the end of testing, so I had to run all the tests again because the folder with the screenshots was no longer visible. But the manufacturer wasn’t the only one at fault here—I was too.


Modern TV boxes, especially budget models, are increasingly just a bare minimum of components. This one is no different: a processor (SoC), RAM, flash memory, a Wi-Fi chip, and power circuitry. I suspect the next step will be integrating Wi-Fi into the processor, then the RAM, and then the flash memory. It’s entirely possible that soon a TV box will consist of just a couple of chips.
1, 2. The RAM chips are arranged in pairs on the top and bottom of the board. All four chips are from different batches, which is unusual.
3. 8 GB of flash memory.
4. There’s also a spot for a chip on the underside of the board, presumably for additional flash memory.
5. SV6051P Wi-Fi chip. It looks like it’s from some Chinese manufacturer.
6. Power circuitry for the processor and memory.


Software.

The settings offer three desktop layouts; this is the one that’s selected by default.
There’s a hideable control bar at the bottom, and you can add a "screenshot" button to it.


Alternative desktop layouts. The first is essentially similar to the one shown above, while the second is styled like Android 4.x.


The TV box runs Android 6.0.1. Personally, I prefer this to versions with Android 7.x.
There are no updates, though I wasn’t expecting any.
Of the 8 GB of flash memory, 4.8 GB is available to the user. Since almost 600 MB of that is taken up by preinstalled apps, you’re left with a modest 4.2 GB. But this TV box probably isn’t for gamers, and that’s enough for apps that stream TV, so it’s perfectly fine—that’s exactly what it was designed for.
As advertised, it has 2 GB of RAM.


There are no side panels here—the ones I dislike on boxes running Android 7.x—so tapping the settings icon takes you straight to the classic menu.


There aren’t many settings, but there is a brightness adjustment.


There are also settings for video output resolution, separately for HDMI and the analog output. But I couldn’t find a CEC control setting, and I can’t test it either.


I’ll put the CPU-Z and Aida64 information under a spoiler, since most users probably won’t need it.


Performance testing.

I'll say right away that in terms of performance, this TV box is clearly not meant for gaming. You can browse the internet and watch videos, though; I'll get to that toward the end. For now, here are some standard synthetic benchmarks. Later I'll put everything into a comparison table, but for now, a quick look at each one.

AnTuTu 5.2


When I tried to install version 6.1, I got a message saying it was better not to install the app, but I ignored it. The screenshot below shows the test result.


Version 6.2.1 produced almost exactly the same result as the previous test.


Geekbench also showed very low performance, though after the AnTuTu test, that didn't surprise me. During the previous test, it was clear the TV box was struggling.
I also installed an app to monitor the temperature and checked its readings from time to time. After the last test, I noticed the temperature had reached about 92 degrees; the highest reading I saw was 96 degrees.


Bonsai benchmark


3DMark and PCMark.


Epic Citadel gave me the lowest result I've ever seen, and that was at a resolution of 1280x720.


The RAM and flash memory speed tests were much the same.
The RAM speed is something you can still forgive, but 25 MB/s read and 10 MB/s write for the flash memory is pretty dismal. The first thing you notice about this TV box is how long it takes to install apps—noticeably longer than on other TV boxes. Apps also launch more slowly, though not by much.


From the farthest point in my apartment, the TV box could see my access point, but the connection was extremely unstable and depended on where I placed it on the table.
The test itself was conducted in the usual way: the router was in the opposite corner of the room, with no direct line of sight, and I tested at distances of two meters and one meter. Speeds were roughly the same in all tests, hovering around 25–35 MB/s. I wouldn't call that a good result, but the speed was fairly stable in every case, which is quite good.


More apps and video tests.

Quite a lot of apps come preinstalled. In my opinion, about a third could easily be removed, but that's very subjective, so everyone can decide for themselves.


One app that might be of interest is some kind of messaging app, though it's probably more useful for automatically updating apps. I think it's more useful than not.


There's also SuperSU, an app for working with wireless displays, and Facebook and Skype.


Of course, Kodi is here too. What I want to point out is that it works really well. Some channels required registration, but that wasn't important for my test. Plugins install, and the channels play.


Most of the channels I tested played, though image quality varied noticeably. In this case, that's more likely a streaming issue than a problem with the TV box.


There's also a YouTube app. I decided to test Full HD at 60 fps right away, and it played without any problems. The temperature rose to 77 degrees when playback started, but quickly dropped and stayed between 55 and 60 degrees, even after almost an hour and a half of use.


As an extra test, I installed TorrentTV. That worked pretty well too: of the roughly 15 channels I tested, two had problems. One didn't work at all, and FoxHD broke up into blocks.
The rest of the test lasted about half an hour, with the temperature holding at 53–55 degrees. I didn't see any point in testing for longer. The temperature often jumped to 65–75 degrees when playback started, then dropped to 55 and gradually fell to 53 degrees..


Everything was going pretty well—I'd even say very well—until I moved on to testing video file playback.
First, I checked a collection of test files (the screenshot isn't from this TV box).
It turned out that AC-3 isn't supported, so you need to install an alternative player. Also, almost all the 4K test files stutter during playback. The stutters aren't too bad, but they're definitely annoying when watching.


The Ducks (Ducks.Take.Off.2160p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv (243 Mbps)) stuttered, though it may simply have been that USB 2.0 didn't have enough bandwidth. Copying the file to the built-in flash storage made no sense, since it was even slower.
The same Ducks video in Full HD played perfectly.


Another 4K test video confirmed that the TV box has obvious problems playing this kind of video. It feels like the processor doesn't have enough power. However, the temperature stayed between 66 and 70 degrees, so overheating can be ruled out.


There are a couple of other things worth mentioning. When I tried to run the AnTuTu video test, it reached 100%, then dropped back to 91%, showed a black screen, and the app froze. Reinstalling it and trying several more times produced the same result.
I also tried launching Asphalt 8. It started and asked to update, which it did. But on the next launch, all I got was a black screen with the game logo. That's it. Though judging by the test results, it probably wouldn't have been playable anyway.

All apps run at 1280x720, and screenshots are captured at the same resolution. However, Full HD video is output correctly, pixel for pixel.


As I mentioned above, here's a comparison table with the test results. The TV box under review is highlighted in yellow, and another box with the same SoC but 1 GB of RAM is highlighted in green. I can say that the one under review even managed to lose to the 1 GB RAM model, which is a little surprising. Perhaps it has slower RAM, or maybe slower flash storage, although the latter has almost no effect on the test results. But the facts speak for themselves.


Time to sum up the test results.
In the review title, I described this TV box as rather hard to pin down, and that sums up the situation perfectly.
The thing is, it combines painfully slow flash storage with performance issues and problems playing 4K video. At the same time, I had no problems playing Full HD video or using Kodi, YouTube, and TorrentTV—which is rare these days. It's even rarer to find a device that has no problems with all of them at once.
I bought this TV box for a regular Full HD TV, mainly to watch TorrentTV and YouTube, and occasionally browse the internet. For that, though, you really need at least a mouse, since doing it with just a keyboard is practically masochism.
And then there's the price. In my opinion, $26 is quite reasonable. Besides, this isn't an Amlogic box with its compatibility issues with certain TV brands.

Overall, this TV box is probably best suited to undemanding users with a Full HD TV. It definitely isn't for gamers, fans of 4K video, and so on.

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

With the 11nov228 coupon, the price is currently 22.99, which I think is a great deal.