Mecool KM9, a TV box with an Amlogic S905X2 processor

I’ve already tested a TV box based on Amlogic’s new S905X2 SoC, and wasn’t entirely satisfied. Although it offered good performance and ran cool, it had a lot of software issues. Now I’ve finally got my hands on another model from the well-known Mecool brand, and today I’ll take a look at what it’s like and whether anything has changed.
As always, I’ll inspect it, take it apart, run some tests, share my conclusions, and wrap up with a summary table.


I ordered this TV box quite a while ago, but because of our customs service’s “New Year’s celebration traditions”—the parcels sat there for a month—and some issues with the store, I didn’t receive it until around mid-February.

Specifications
CPU — Amlogic S905X2
Number of cores — 4
Graphics — ARM Dvalin MP2 GPU
RAM — 4 GB DDR4
Flash storage — 32 GB
Wi-Fi: 2.4/5 GHz
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.2
LAN — 100 Mbit
Ports: 1×USB 2.0, 1×USB 3.0, HDMI, RJ45, AV, microSD card
Operating system — Android 8.1

The specs and ports are identical to those of the H96 Max box. In my opinion, the only things missing are another USB port and gigabit Ethernet. Otherwise, it’s all good, and then some.

The packaging is standard: a neat little box, with the TV box additionally protected by a film. The only information on it is the key specifications.


Package contents
1. TV box
2. IR remote control
3. HDMI cable
4. Power supply
5. Manual.


1, 2. The manual and cable are nothing special. The cable is quite thin, and the manual is very much in English.
3, 4. The power supply is rated at 5 V, 2 A. It doesn’t get particularly hot during use, but struggles to power an external hard drive. If an HDMI-to-VGA adapter is connected, the drive appears to work, but won’t transfer data.
5, 6. The remote is programmable, so you can set up a few buttons to control your TV. It’s convenient, but uses IR rather than Bluetooth.


The power supply is typical for Mecool: budget-grade, but it has a fuse, an input filter, a proper interwinding capacitor, and an output inductor. Interestingly, there are two output capacitors that differ greatly in size but have the same capacitance (470 µF) and voltage rating (16 V).
You can use it as is or make a few improvements—it’s up to you.


The word “design” is a bit of a stretch here: it’s just a regular black square box. Though if you look at Xiaomi’s popular boxes, they have pretty much the same look.


Dimensions: 100 × 100 × 17.5 mm. I’d say it’s on the compact side.


There’s a backlit panel on the front. It glows blue during startup and green during operation, with the brightness changing smoothly.
On the right are a memory card slot and two USB ports, USB 2.0 and 3.0, respectively.
The rear has the power input, TV output, Ethernet, and analog video and audio outputs.


Here’s how the ports are arranged. If you ask me, there’s clearly room for another USB port between the power input and HDMI.


There are plenty of ventilation holes, but they’re all on the bottom. The feet are soft and grip the table really well.


The box is extremely easy to take apart. There are screws under a couple of the feet, and the clips aren’t very tight.


With that done, we can access the circuit board. You can also see the space for a shielding plate, which hasn’t been installed.


Remove four more screws and take out the board.


The Wi-Fi antenna is attached with something rubber-like; I haven’t seen that before. There’s also a steel plate on the bottom cover that acts as a heatsink and, as an added bonus, keeps the TV box from sliding around on the table. Heat is transferred to it through a piece of thermal rubber a full 5 mm thick.


The front insert is matte and backlit by a small LED. It doesn't shine very brightly, but its constant changes in brightness are a bit annoying. I'd cover the whole thing with electrical tape.


At first glance, the top side of the circuit board looks packed to the brim, but there actually aren't that many large chips. For example, the RAM is implemented with just a single chip.


The rear connectors. The HDMI port has protection, which is great. To be fair, though, after a long hiatus this feature has been showing up more and more often.


The USB ports are protected too, which is even better. Kudos. There's also what looks like some kind of power protection on the right.


At the other end of the board, there's a footprint for a connector or ribbon cable, presumably for connecting a DVB module. So I think we can expect hybrid TV boxes based on this board model as well.


1. Amlogic S905X2 SoC
2. 4 GB RAM
3. 32 GB flash memory
4. A very unusual WiFi module—not a chip, but not a module in the usual sense either, more of a hybrid. I haven't seen one like this before.


1. Analog audio output chip
2. The power supply uses a collection of small regulators rather than a multi-channel regulator. It makes no real difference, except that it takes up more space on the board.
3. HDMI protection
4. USB 3.0 protection


I'm sure you've seen this home screen in reviews of other TV boxes. The developers at Mikul didn't reinvent the wheel and went with a familiar launcher.


Along with the main buttons for accessing settings, apps, and so on, there's a button to launch the user guide.
There are two options here: text and video. There's a rather poor Russian translation, but unfortunately only for the text version. In video mode, it simply opens a YouTube page, and the only way to tell which videos are in Russian is by looking at the recommendations.


It comes with Android 8.1.0, with firmware dated October 10. I was hoping for something newer.


There are lots of settings, but they're all in the side menu. I couldn't figure out how to get to the standard settings.



There's a separate setting for brightness/contrast/color, set to 50/50/50 by default. But either I'm missing something, or it just doesn't work. None of the adjustments change anything, either in the menu or while watching video.


CPU-Z hasn't had anything new to offer for a long time, and this is no exception. It has 4 GB of RAM, as advertised.


The tests are the usual ones from my TV box reviews, and, as usual, they're tucked away under a spoiler.


WiFi sensitivity is average, or perhaps a little above average, since I could see my own 5 GHz access point from across the apartment.


The 2.4 GHz speeds were inconsistent. In the far corner of the large room I got 12–13 Mbps; a couple of meters away, 50 Mbps. I somehow expected better speeds within the same room.


The 5 GHz results were also hit and miss. I ran three tests in a row and got speeds ranging from 100 to 190 Mbps.


There aren't that many apps installed, which may be for the best.


There are some media players, including MXplayer, a browser, an awkward file manager, Play Store, and other assorted junk.


Interestingly, Kodi wasn't preinstalled, and tapping its icon prompted me to install it.
It works overall, although sometimes it says one of the plugins doesn't have access—pretty much the usual story.


YouTube: I could say everything is great, except the maximum resolution is only Full HD. Almost all the videos I tested played smoothly, though a couple had minor frame drops. I suspect the videos themselves were to blame.
I tested both Full HD and 4K 60fps videos.


There are no more built-in apps, so I'll move on to third-party ones.
Torrent TV worked without a hitch, although for some reason it wouldn't work properly at first. Maybe it just needed to "warm up" :)


Lanet TV was the same: worked without any problems.


Lime TV also works, but only shows channels that don't require a subscription.


Some dreary app for watching Ukrainian TV. Everything works, but the overall software design is depressing.


An app for watching various old movies. As I already mentioned, it offers to install the YouTube app, where you can watch the movies. Everything works great, but before starting a movie it likes to show an ad for some browser "with no ads or SMS".


All the tests went well, but knowing Chinese developers, I kept waiting for them to mess something up—and I found it.
The problem showed up when playing various video files. As usual, I tested the files from this list.
1024x768_h265_AC3.mkv — no sound
2560x1600_AAC .mp4 — minor frame drops
3840x2160_AAC .mp4 — noticeable frame drops
4096x2160_AAC .mp4 — noticeable frame drops
gopro-hero-3-be-avc-high@l5.1-4096x2160-12p-aac-2ch.mp4 — OK
GraysPeak8HDR_Dolby AC3.mp4 — no sound
LG 4K Paris_AAC.mp4 — frame drops
LG 4K Story-of-Earth_AAC.mp4 — frame drops
LG_Chess_HDR.mp4 — minor frame drops
Philips_UHD_supershopdemo_1.mp4 — OK
samsung-note-3-3840x2160-high@l5.1-AAC-2ch-2.mp4 — OK
4K HD.Club Changhong-Furano-100mbps.mp4 — frame drops/OK
Sony_4K_HDR_Camp.mp4 — OK
Molly — Holy Molly (2016) 4K UHD_60 fps.mkv — frame drops
Ducks.Take.Off.1080p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv — OK
Ducks.Take.Off.2160p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv (243 Mbps) — frame drops
4K HD.Club TCL-super_car-Part-1-HEVC.mp4 — OK
Colours Of Culture Bali (6K.3240p.x264).mkv — doesn't work

I tested with the players that were already installed. They all behaved pretty much the same, though I probably should have installed another one. Connecting the flash drive to USB 3.0 didn't help, nor did playing the video from internal storage.
As noted above, Furano-100mbps.mp4 had dropped frames/OK. The thing is, I have two versions of this file, a regular one and an HEVC one; the latter played perfectly.


4k hdr demo 60fps wildlife video for 4k oled tv 1920x1080
4k hdr demo 60fps wildlife video for 4k oled tv 2560x1440
4k hdr demo 60fps wildlife video for 4k oled tv 3840x2160
Peru 8K HDR 60FPS 1920x1080
Peru 8K HDR 60FPS 2560x1440
Peru 8K HDR 60FPS 3840x2160
Peru 8K HDR 60FPS 7680x4320

Only the 8K file failed to play; everything else worked perfectly.


The Full HD pixel test showed no issues.


Additional tests.
CEC works, and keyboard commands are passed through.
When connected to a "4K TV emulator," the full list of resolutions appeared and 4K was selected automatically. The color space also changed, with no option to select it manually.
The TV box offers two AFR modes, but I couldn't get either to work with the preinstalled players, although you can force any mode.


Summary table and comparison with the H96 Max, which is based on the same processor and has the same amount of RAM and flash storage. Even so, the H96 Max performed better in most tests.


Final thoughts.
Overall, I got pretty much the same results as with the H96 Max. Most things work fine. I liked the decent performance despite the very low processor temperature, and the stable performance of YouTube and various online TV apps. But when it comes to support for different video formats, we have the same problems: dropped frames and stuttering with most of the test clips.
I still hope the manufacturers will improve the software and get everything working properly, but at this stage, things aren't quite there yet.

That's all for now. I hope you found the review useful, and as always, I'll be happy to answer questions or read your comments.