Mecool M8S PRO L TV box, updated version of the Mecool M8S

Last summer I published a review of the MECOOL M8S PRO, which, by and large, differed from the previous models only in having DDR4 RAM. I also compared it with some other models there.
This model is a little newer, but its main difference from the previous one is a different remote control.
As usual, below the fold you'll find an inspection, teardown, tests, and a few conclusions.


In fact, apart from the remote, the models are almost identical. The second hardware difference is that the flash storage is now 32 GB instead of 16.
Specifications:
CPU — Amlogic S912
Number of cores — 8
Graphics — Mali-T820MP3
RAM — 3 GB DDR4
Flash storage — 32 GB (a 16 GB model is also available)
Wi-Fi: 2.4 / 5 GHz
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.1
LAN — 100 Mbit
Ports: 2x USB 2.0, HDMI, RJ45, AV, microSD card
Operating system — Android 7.1
Dimensions — 100 x 100 x 21 mm

Throughout the review, I'll periodically compare the old and new models. There may actually be more differences, particularly in performance.

The packaging hasn't changed at all over the past six months.


The package includes:
1. Mecool M8S PRO L TV box
2. HDMI cable
3. Power supply
4. Remote control
5. Manual


1. There are two manuals: one for the TV box and the other for the remote control.
2. The cable is a standard, budget-grade one.
3, 4. The power supply is also very basic. Output voltage: 5 V, current: up to 2 A.


A few words about the power supply.


And here’s the difference from the previous version.
The TV box is available in four configurations: with 16 or 32 GB of flash storage, and with or without voice control.
This review covers the top-spec version. At the time of writing, the difference between the voice-control and non-voice-control versions was only about $1.50.

Also, the remote sends commands over Bluetooth rather than infrared, which can be handy if the TV box is tucked away behind the TV.
The build is neat, the plastic feels nice, but somehow there aren’t many buttons :)


The remote looks quite a lot like the one that comes with the Mibox; the only differences are the color and the layout of the top buttons.
Actually, no—the Mecool remote is larger and a bit bulkier.


There are no external differences from the previous version at all; the only change is in the name, which now ends with the letter L.


There are ventilation slots around the case, though they don’t do much. The front panel also has a power indicator LED. It glows dimly in blue.


Since the case is the same, the dimensions haven’t changed either: 100 x 100 x 21 mm.


The selection of ports for connecting external devices is pretty sparse:
Rear: analog audio/video output, Ethernet, HDMI, and power.
Left side: two USB 2.0 ports and a memory card slot.


Looking at all this, I can’t help thinking: the TV box has a fairly powerful processor and a decent amount of both RAM and flash storage, but only two USB ports—and they’re just USB 2.0. That’s a bit on the low side....
It also only has a 100 Mbps Ethernet connection.


There are ventilation holes on the bottom, along with four rubber feet.


I took the unit apart before its first power-up.
The TV box is very easy to open: four self-tapping screws under the feet, and no clips.


The circuit board is also secured with two more self-tapping screws, one of which is covered by a warranty seal.


The Wi-Fi antenna is attached to the top cover and soldered to the TV box’s circuit board.


At a quick glance, the Mecool M8S PRO board looks almost identical to the one below. The key visible difference is a different RAM chip; there’s also just one of them, rather than two as in the Mecool M8S PRO.


The front panel has a status LED and an IR receiver for the remote (used to pair the remote).
There’s also an unpopulated spot for a control button.


There’s no protection on the HDMI output either, but there is definitely a protection circuit on the TV box’s power input.


And the heatsink is just as small. People often modified earlier versions of this TV box to improve cooling. The manufacturer could have improved it themselves, but alas, "it is what it is".


1. RAM chip rated at 3 GB. Made by SpecTek; the previous version used Samsung.
2. Toshiba flash memory. The older version had Samsung memory, but I don’t think there’s any difference in this case.
3. LTM8830 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module from Longsys, a company I hadn’t heard of before.
4. Audio chip, same as in the older version.
5, 6. Power converters.


The reset button has been “cut out” in this version, leaving only the contact pads for it. I think removing it was a mistake.


In terms of appearance, interfaces, and hardware, this is almost identical to the previous version. It also repeats the same shortcomings: too few USB ports, a 100 Mbps interface, and poor cooling.

All right, that’s enough looking it over. Let’s power it up.
On first startup, a setup wizard guides you through the initial configuration. It immediately prompts you to pair the remote, which makes perfect sense. It connected for me on about the third or fourth try. It turned out you have to hold the buttons down for quite a while.
Otherwise, everything is standard: connecting to the network, Google account, and so on.


The home screen is a little unusual, though. It shows popular YouTube videos (updated automatically), shortcuts to apps, and menus for settings and all installed apps.


The settings menu is even more limited than in the previous version. At least, I couldn't find some of the options that were there before.
And the translation... well, they would have been better off leaving it in English. The “CEC” function alone is something else. By the way, CEC works; I tested it.


The available video resolutions are the same, but unfortunately there's no auto frame rate setting—or auto frame rate itself, for that matter.


The TV box has voice control, including a profanity filter. You can also disable the remote control, and while you're there, check the battery charge percentage.


The list of installed apps differs somewhat not only from the previous version, but also from other TV boxes I've seen. I'll tell you more about them a little later.


Android 7.1.1 is preinstalled.


The preinstalled apps take up more than 4 GB, but since the flash storage has a capacity of 32 GB, there's still plenty of space available to the user.


The device won't update “over the air”; at least, it thinks it's already running the latest software version.


General information from CPU-Z
After turning it on and launching a few apps, I noticed that the fonts and images looked rather large, making it a little awkward to use.
After launching CPU-Z, I saw that “Screen resolution in dp” was set to 960x540, compared with 1280x720 on the previous version.


Since the TV boxes are very similar, and the Amlogic S912 is already well known, I'll hide the tests under a spoiler and just summarize the results in a table.


The TV box has dual-band Wi-Fi. Its sensitivity is pretty good; I could see quite a few of my neighbors’ access points.


But I wouldn’t say the speed is great—it’s more average.
On the 2.4 GHz band, speeds ranged from 10 Mbps (at the far corner of the room) to 20–25 Mbps (a couple of meters from the router).


On the 5 GHz band, speeds could be pretty good, around 100 Mbps (blue graph), or mediocre, around 50 Mbps (white and green graphs).
The wired connection was much more consistent at 92 Mbps (red and gray graphs).


Let’s move on to the software.
As I mentioned above, quite a lot of apps come preinstalled, so I’ll try to keep this brief; otherwise, the review will get too long.
1. Information about Google Widevine DRM Level 1 support
2, 3. Airplay, Miracast—nothing new.
4. There was some YouTube app for kids, but unfortunately it doesn’t work here.
5, 6. Virtual TV, but unfortunately it’s paid.


Aptitude TV.
I don’t know why it’s called TV, but you can install a ton of other apps from it. For example, I installed a weather app.


The Play Market works fine too. Just to try it out, I installed Haystack TV, which also works fine, though there’s nothing interesting on it.


YouTube.
There’s not much to say here, except that I still haven’t figured out how to change the resolution of the video being played.
Otherwise, everything is great: at least in FullHD, the picture is sharp and smooth, with no glitches.


TV Center, aka Kodi, aka … well, it’s a pretty well-known app. I just used it to access my network storage, and it played everything without any problems.


MX Player is also preinstalled, and it works too.


This app surprised me a little. Not because I couldn’t figure it out, but because it was originally in Russian. I was initially surprised that the translation was so good, then realized Russian was its native language.
The app is an IPTV emulator. If you’re interested in reading more about it, there’s a thread on a well-known forum.


As alternative apps for watching online TV, I installed Torrent TV, but for some reason it wouldn’t work properly. With all the players, it showed the app starting up but displayed nothing.


LOL TV! worked better. It also refused to play a movie at first, but after I switched to another channel, it finally started showing something.
By pure chance, I ended up running a long test with it: I turned on a channel and left it running for several hours. The temperature rose from 74 degrees to 83, but everything worked fine, except that the picture was “blurry.”


After that, I tested the TV box with a wide selection of video files.

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
Sony_4K_HDR_Camp.mp4
Ducks.Take.Off.720p.QHD.CRF24.x264-CtrlHD.mkv (20 Mbps)
Ducks.Take.Off.1080p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv (108 Mbps)
Ducks.Take.Off.2160p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv (243 Mbps)
4K HD.Club TCL-super_car-Part-1-HEVC.mp4
Colours Of Culture Bali (6K.3240p.x264).mkv

For the most part, everything worked, and it even played a 6K test file, though it stuttered terribly.
There were also issues with:
LG 4K Paris_AAC.mp4
LG 4K Story-of-Earth_AAC.mp4
Ducks.Take.Off.2160p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv (243 Mbps)

The picture would stutter from time to time, and it was especially noticeable with the last file. At first I blamed the flash drive’s low read speed, but even after copying the files to internal storage, almost nothing changed. AC3 audio worked in every video that had it.


I had no complaints about the accuracy of Full HD output, pixel for pixel. Unfortunately, technical limitations mean I can't check whether 4K output is accurate.
I tried testing the auto frame rate, but the results were unsatisfactory.


Now I've reached the feature that sets this TV box apart from the others a little: voice control.
Overall, it works pretty well. I easily opened YouTube by voice (just saying “YouTube”), then said “Kirich blog,” and the search took me to my videos. I tried various other phrases in both English and Russian, and had no problems; it recognizes speech reliably.
There is one small downside, though. The program seems to learn as you use it, which is good and bad at the same time. I tried searching for “Dave's blog,” but it kept returning “Diego's blog” instead, and each time it seemed more and more certain.
On the other hand, I only know of one other TV box with voice control, the Mi Box, and it's much worse there, since it only recognizes Chinese :(


I have almost no complaints about searching YouTube, but controlling the TV box sometimes reminded me of a famous scene from the movie I, Robot. Unfortunately, I couldn't find that clip on YouTube, so I had to make this collage instead.
In any case, since the well-known “Gorynych” program came out, voice recognition systems have taken a noticeable step forward, and there's no denying it.


Final test results compared with other TV box models. The model under review and its predecessor are highlighted in yellow.
The biggest performance difference is in applications that use graphics. That's also where the box gets hottest, so performance drops noticeably.


Time to wrap up.
Overall, this TV box is almost identical to the previous version, which is essentially what it is, apart from a few mostly cosmetic changes. The RAM is now implemented with a single chip, and the flash memory has doubled. On the other hand, the number of ports and network interface speed are unchanged, so you can forget about high-bitrate video (over 80 Mbps over the network and 140 Mbps from storage).

YouTube worked reliably, there was a wide selection of apps, and the Bluetooth remote was a welcome addition. But the dismal cooling was a letdown, undermining everything good about this TV box. Sure, you could install a larger heatsink, drill some holes, or even add active cooling (which seems unnecessary to me), but somehow that just isn't right.

Now, about voice control. It's an interesting feature, and it actually works. But personally, I see it more as a toy. For example, I can't imagine talking to the remote in the middle of the night, trying to persuade it to turn on what I want rather than what the TV box wants :) Still, it will definitely impress your guests.

That's all from me. I hope you found this review useful, and as usual, I look forward to your questions in the comments.