H96 MAX, or Let's Tweak It Again

This story began quite a while ago, probably at the very beginning of the year, when I received this TV box. Somehow, though, I’m only writing the review now. The box turned out to be not so bad, but it does have its "pitfalls.
Still, as always, it’s best to read the full review, which will include the usual inspection, tests, modifications, and a table.


Today’s review will consist mostly of photos and screenshots, partly because there isn’t much to write about, and partly because some of the information is no longer relevant. But it may still be useful, which is why I decided to publish it.

TV box specifications:
CPU — RK3328
Number of cores — 4 (1.5 GHz ARM Cortex A53 CPU)
Graphics — Mali-450MP2
RAM — 4 GB
Flash memory — 32 GB
WiFi: 2.4/5 GHz
Bluetooth - 4.0
LAN — 100 Mb Ethernet
Ports: 3x USB 2.0 + 1x USB 3.0, S/PDIF, HDMI, AV, RJ45, SD card
H.265 support
4K resolution support
Operating system — Android 7.1
Dimensions — 98 x 98 x 24 mm

The first thing you notice is the budget processor paired with a large amount of RAM and flash storage. Yes, I find that combination a little odd too, especially since it also has 5 GHz WiFi, which you don’t always get even on mid-range boxes with more powerful processors.

The packaging is also different, partly just in appearance, and partly because it’s quite sturdy.


The package contents are simple:
1. TV box
2. IR remote control
3. Power supply
4. TV cable
5. Manual.

The manual is simple, but in English. The cable is also a standard one, while the remote is programmable: you can set up some of its buttons to control the TV.


The power supply is budget-grade, although it has a varistor on the input for protection and an inductor on the output to reduce ripple.


After an overabundance of black boxes, this one looks pretty good—at least it catches your eye.



There are plenty of ports: four USB ports, one of them USB 3.0, AV output and S/PDIF, plus, of course, HDMI and LAN.
One important difference: it has an SD card slot, not microSD.



There are ventilation holes not only on the sides, but also on the bottom, which is quite rare.


Before running any tests, I usually take everything apart. This one is very easy to open: there are four screws under the rubber feet, and the bottom has no clips at all. Very convenient.


Inside is a neat black circuit board.


The antenna is glued on the side opposite the ports, and its cable is soldered in place.


The board layout is dense, although there are some empty spaces, probably for an upgraded version of the TV box.



And then there’s the heatsink. It’s so tiny, it makes you want to cry.


The USB ports are packed together quite tightly. I was surprised that the manufacturer put a microSD slot on the board; I’ve seen that on Beelink boxes.


There is no protection on the HDMI port.


Another surprise: a resistor instead of a capacitor (on the left). I don’t think I’ve come across that before. On the right, you can see a footprint for some kind of chip; I’d guess it’s for Gigabit Ethernet.


1. The RAM consists of eight Samsung chips.
2. I couldn’t identify the flash memory; the markings are almost impossible to read.
3. Power is handled by a multi-channel controller.
4. WiFi and Bluetooth are provided by an HS2734A module.
5. USB hub
6. Presumably USB port protection.


Let's turn on the box.
You could call the desktop classic, since it shows up very often.


When you open Settings, a sidebar slides out. Personally, I'm not a big fan of this layout; I'm more used to the standard white Android menu.
For some reason, the box detected my 5 GHz network but couldn't find the 2.4 GHz one, even though it had no trouble seeing my neighbors' networks. Usually, all TV boxes pick up 2.4 GHz right away, while 5 GHz takes a bit of effort.


Some sound settings appear in the familiar format, while others open in separate windows. It actually looks pretty good.


The video output settings are fairly basic, with a bunch of different resolutions, including 4K. But since I had it connected to a Full HD monitor, 1080p was the maximum available. There's a CEC setting, but it doesn't work. I turn it on, leave the menu, go back in, and it's off again.


The image adjustment feature, on the other hand, is extremely useful. One of my readers once asked me about TV boxes with a feature like this, but at the time there was only some model from Tanix.


There's plenty of memory, so I have nothing bad to say here: 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of flash storage aren't that common.


CPU-Z probably won't tell us anything new, since this processor has been around for a long time, though it's in the very budget segment.


A little about the preinstalled apps. I wasn't too keen on the menu itself: after installing some apps, the color scheme changed, and finding the one I wanted became very inconvenient.


Included apps:
1. A standard file manager that's actually pretty convenient in its own way.
2. Browser
3. Basic settings mode.
4. Some kind of superuser mode
5. Media center, nothing interesting
6. Camera, which first opens the settings and then throws an error. I assume the software is meant for use with WEB cameras.

There's also Kodi, but there's nothing interesting there.


The second file manager, ES File Explorer, was much better. It connected to my storage without any problems, let me browse the folders, and play a movie using its own player. Five stars.


FimOnTV. It works, and not too badly, but it wants money and only shows a clip of the video, as you can see in the fourth screenshot. Since the app kept prompting me to register, I did. Unfortunately, nothing changed; it still only shows a clip.


Modbro.
It works fairly reliably, though the picture quality is so-so, and there's not much worth watching. On top of that, it shows an ad before shutting down, and the ad is in higher quality.


Show box. Nothing interesting at all.


I liked YouTube, though: a nice, stable picture. A couple of videos did stutter, but for the most part everything worked very well.


Even though I had the resolution set to Full HD, YouTube automatically selected 4K quality, both for regular videos and for 4K 60fps ones.


And then... then it became clear that the manufacturer had skimped on the heatsink.
When I tried to run a test, the temperature had already reached 106–107 degrees before the test even started. Put it under any more load and the box simply shut down.


What can I say, even the basic Play Store app heated the processor to 100 degrees...


Naturally, all this affected the test results of an already underpowered processor.


Something had to be done. I had to dig into the storage closet for my stash of switches, which I periodically raid for heatsinks.


Let's pry off one heatsink. It's small on its own, but looks impressive next to the TV box heatsink.


There wasn't much to fasten it with, so I used silicone sealant to glue it on, keeping the layer as thin as possible. I once compared how well this solution works and concluded that it's perfectly acceptable as a last resort.


The first test showed an improvement, but after I put the board back in the case and closed it, the temperature was still around 90°C. Not the terrifying 107–110°C, but still too high. Interestingly, performance is practically the same at 70 and 90°C.


Bonsai Benchmark heated the processor to 90°C.



The TV box sat in a box for a long time, but now I've finally gotten around to it again—especially since I now have thermally conductive adhesive.

Let's remove the heatsink. By the way, if you ever remove heatsinks from processors, don't try to pry them off—that's unsafe. They usually come off with a simple twist.
As you can see in the photo, the silicone layer really did come out even and very thin.


Let's use an even bigger heatsink. I couldn't find the original one, but looking at the photo of the previous modification gives you an idea of how much bigger the new one is.


Carefully clean the remaining silicone off the processor, then wipe everything down with alcohol.


The heatsink I found is 15 mm tall and probably wouldn't fit in the original spot, since the standoffs are also 15 mm tall—and that's not counting the thickness of the processor itself.
But there's an opening in the case. So I first had to position the heatsink so it would fit entirely within that opening. It needs to be at least 20 mm from the edges of the board, so I left a little extra room and placed it about 22 mm away.


I applied the adhesive, but at first it was very runny, so I had to remove the heatsink and add a little more. I also applied adhesive to the memory chips. There's really no benefit to having the heatsink touch the memory chips too; I only did it to make sure it stayed in place more securely.


Glue the heatsink in place, pressing it down firmly, and leave it like that for a few hours.


While I was at it, I discovered that the side holes are actually very small and only arranged in a single row. I drilled another row of holes above the one where the tweezers are inserted.


Now it should work better.
First up, as usual, are AnTuTu versions 5 and 6. The TV box has a known issue that prevents you from taking a screenshot of the results, so I had to use a camera.


The SD card connected via USB 3.0 (first test) performs quite well. In the second test, a different card is inserted in the slot. The results are noticeably worse, but caching kicked in, making the score look almost too good.
The built-in flash memory has read/write speeds of about 40/40 MB/s—not very impressive for reading, but decent for writing.


Geekbench has clearly come to life too: the multicore results are about one and a half times better than before.


3DMark and PCMark


The Epic Citadel score isn't particularly high, but now there's clearly no overheating.


Same story with Bonsai Benchmark. I ran several tests in a row and did manage to get a score in one test that was slightly lower than the previous ones, but I'm not sure it was due to temperature.


AnTuTu Video. Another photo instead of a screenshot—so-so.


As I mentioned above, the TV box has dual-band Wi-Fi, but the connection speed on the 5 GHz band isn't all that high—only about one and a half times faster than on 2.4 GHz.


Within a large room, speeds on the 2.4 GHz band ranged from 40 to 50 Mbps, dropping to 20 only once.
At a distance of 2–3 m from the router, the 5 GHz band was only slightly faster, at 60–70 Mbps.
With a wired connection, I got 90–93 Mbps. Unfortunately, the network card here is only 100 Mbps. I think gigabit Ethernet would have been a much better fit.


And now a little about how it works with third-party apps.
TorrentTV works, but because of the quirks of my local network, the video stops after a few seconds, even though the picture quality is excellent.


Our Cinema works very reliably, but asks you to update the YouTube app.



The updated app is also stable, but only supports 1080p, while the original one also works in 4K. Installing it didn't replace the old app; it installed as a second one, so you can choose whichever one you prefer.


Lime TV: I wasn't too impressed with the picture quality, but it works fine.


Lanet TV works just as well. The picture is worse than on Lime TV, and the channel selection is worse too—there seem to be more news and political channels.


Initially, I tested playback of various video formats using VLC and MX Player, but VLC doesn't support everything, and MX Player is painfully slow. In the end, I found the solution in the player that comes preinstalled with the ES file manager. It works beautifully—smoothly and reliably, even with 4K at 60 fps.


The usual list of test 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

Every video on the list played. The only stuttering was with the IXBT test videos, numbers 2–4 on the list. Even AC3 audio played fine.



There were no problems with 4K 60 fps video either; only 8K resolution failed to play.
hdr demo 60fps wildlife video — 1920x1080
hdr demo 60fps wildlife video — 2560x1440
hdr demo 60fps wildlife video — 3840x2160
Peru HDR 60FPS — 1920x1080
Peru HDR 60FPS — 2560x1440
Peru HDR 60FPS — 3840x2160
Peru HDR 60FPS — 7680x4320



The box passed the Full HD pixel test without any issues. By the way, it outputs a 1920x1080 image to the screen, rather than 1280x720, as cheap Rockchip boxes used to do.


This TV box isn't a performance powerhouse, but compared with other models using the same processor, it's about average—slightly faster in some areas, slightly slower in others.



All in all, the TV box itself is decent, but feels somewhat unbalanced. It has plenty of ports, including USB 3.0, 5 GHz Wi-Fi, 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of flash storage, but all of that is powered by a weak processor—just like in that joke: “Now let's see if we can get all this off the ground.”
Overall, though, it works pretty well. Give this box a slightly faster processor and gigabit Ethernet, and it would be a popular model. But this is what we've got.

The cooling was a major disappointment; it was completely poorly designed. I ended up installing a much larger heatsink to get stable, reliable operation. As far as I know, there's an H2 model with a proper heatsink, but it only has two USB ports and a microSD card slot.

That's all for today. I hope this review was useful, and maybe someone can explain why I'm having so much trouble with TorrentTV.