Vorke Z6 TV box: what it’s really like

I’ve already reviewed two Vorke mini PCs: I really liked the first, and the second was interesting in its own way too, although it did have some drawbacks. This time, though, I was interested in an Android TV box from the same manufacturer. The previous devices had pretty good build quality and simply worked reliably, so I was curious to see how the Vorke Z6 would fare.
Inspection, teardown, tests, conclusions.


Some information is hidden behind spoilers. If you can’t find something, it may be in there :)

I won’t list everything the manufacturer claims in the description; here are just the main specifications:
CPU — Amlogic S912
Number of cores — 8
Graphics — Mali-T820MP3
RAM — 3 GB DDR4
Flash storage — 32 GB
Wi-Fi: 2.4 / 5 GHz IEEE 802.11 b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.1
LAN — Ethernet 10/100M/1000M RGMII
Video output — HDMI 2.0, HDR, CEC and HDCP 2.2 support, and 4K*2K @ 60Hz resolution
Ports: 2x USB 2.0, Optical S/PDIF, RJ45, microSD card
Operating system — Android 7.1.2
Dimensions — 113 x 113 x 26 mm

Inspection.

The packaging follows Vorke’s signature style: thick yellow cardboard, with only the basic specifications on the label.


The package includes:
1. Vorke Z6 TV box
2. IR remote control
3. Power supply
4. HDMI cable
5. Manual.




1. The manual is very basic and brief, entirely in English. It briefly describes the ports and the software update procedure.
2. The HDMI cable looks no different from the ones supplied with other TV boxes; it doesn’t even have “gold-plated” connectors.
3, 4. The power supply is fairly compact and doesn’t get particularly warm during use. For the test, I connected an external hard drive and played a movie from it continuously for several hours.


The remote is neat, but also extremely basic. While testing it, I hoped the manufacturer had thought to add an AirMouse function, but no luck: it’s just a simple, ordinary remote with very few functions. On the other hand, perhaps it could be convenient in its own way.


There’s not much to say about the appearance. To me, it’s just a little box, with no design frills. It reminded me a lot of the Tanix TX92 TV box, which has the same processor but 64 GB of flash storage.



1. There’s a small LED display window on the front.
2. As usual, most of the ports are on the back: power, HDMI, Ethernet, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a reset button hole, and a 3.5 mm S/PDIF output jack. There’s no analog audio output.
3. The memory card slot is on the left.
4. The right side has only ventilation openings.

Speaking of the ventilation openings, as you can see in the photo, there are quite a lot of them; they cover about half of both the left and right sides. I was almost pleased, thinking they might finally have made proper ventilation.


There’s a configurable illuminated power button on top.
On the bottom, I expected to find additional ventilation openings for cool air to enter. But no—the Chinese engineers did things their usual way: they typically put openings either only on the bottom or only on the sides, but almost never on both. And proper ventilation is achieved precisely that way.


The front has an LED indicator that displays the current time, the network connection type (Wi-Fi or Ethernet), whether a flash drive or hard drive is connected via USB, and a timer icon.
The indicator and button are lit only while the device is running; they’re off in sleep or powered-down mode. I’d have preferred the indicator to stay on at reduced brightness, which would be much more convenient and logical.


Inside.

To get inside, you need to remove three screws. There’s no screw under the front-left foot. The screws are closer to the center of the box, so there’s no need to peel off the entire foot.


The circuit board takes up almost the entire case. I have no particular complaints about the build quality, and the power button is connected via a connector.




But they clearly cut corners on the antenna connector, which makes disassembly somewhat awkward. The antenna was also glued on carelessly, which is a minus.


Some of the heat is transferred to the metal plate through a thermally conductive rubber pad. Not long ago, I took apart a TV box from another manufacturer and complained that its heatsink had almost no fins. Here the situation is the opposite: it has fins, and in this case they actually make cooling worse.
Actually, it would be more accurate to put it this way: if the manufacturer had used a plain aluminum plate instead of a finned heatsink, cooling would only have improved. In any case, I'll come back to the temperatures during testing.


The heatsink is attached with relatively thin white tape that has a somewhat fibrous texture.
The top of the board also looks reasonably neat, although overall the quality is about on par with TV boxes from other manufacturers—not better, not worse.


The power regulator section isn't spread across the board; it's grouped in one place. I sometimes noticed a quiet buzzing during operation, audible from about 0.5-1 m away.


Input power protection circuit (presumably). You can also see above that there is no additional protection on the HDMI output; the component pads are unpopulated. In my opinion, that's forgivable in cheap devices, but not in this price range, so I recommend connecting this port first and disconnecting it last.


1, 2. Two 512 MB RAM chips are on top, and two 1 GB chips are underneath, for a total of 3 GB of RAM. Made by Samsung.
3. The 32 GB flash memory is also made by Samsung, which is a good thing in my opinion. This memory is usually a little faster and definitely more reliable than the well-known Foresee chips.
4. LED display controller.


1. Gigabit Ethernet is based on the widely used RTL8111F controller made by Realtek.
2. 8223A-SR WiFi module made by Fn-Link.
3, 4. Power regulators for individual sections of the TV box.


Software.

Vorke definitely decided to stand out here by creating its own interface. I wouldn't say it's particularly convenient: it looks nice and has animations, but sometimes it can be unclear whether a menu item has actually been selected.
The thing is, the "desktop" is divided into three sections:
1. Main menu.
2. Settings menu and apps added for quick access..
3, 4. Menu of installed apps.

On the left, you can see three round "buttons." To switch to another screen, you first have to click left until you reach these buttons, then click up or down, and then move to the new menu screen.
It looks nice, I won't argue with that, but it's not very ergonomic. Though if you only use a small set of apps, it won't matter: Kodi, YouTube, a browser, and so on can be put on the main screen, and you can ignore the other screens entirely.


The settings menu—or, more accurately, the first level of the settings menu, since there are three levels.
All the main settings are here. As far as I can tell, English is the only language available.


There are so many settings that I thought it would be better to hide them under a spoiler.

1. Ethernet connection settings.
2. WiFi
3. PPPoE
4. Bluetooth
5. Factory reset.
6. TV box information.



The first settings screen also gives you access to:
1. Adjusting the image to fit the screen; I didn't need this.
2. Selecting the audio signal format.
3. Automatically launching the setup wizard on the next boot.
4. Setting the resolution and video output mode. I'll show this in more detail below, since even half of it wouldn't fit here.


The second level of the menu, the More settings item. This is where the settings sidebar comes into play, as seen on some TV boxes running Android 7.

Since the TV box was connected to a Full HD monitor, the maximum resolution was limited to 1920x1080.
Above that is the Color Space option, which lets you choose the color output mode for the box's video output.

There's also a Dolby Vision set menu. In all three attempts, the TV box froze completely when I tried to open it, and I never figured out what it was for.


Audio output settings.


Various settings, including CEC controls.


Video output controls, including the HDR and SDR mode switch.


I can sort of understand the navigation bar option—you can force it on or off—but this is the first time I've seen an image rotation option on a TV box. One possibility is to mount the TV vertically, but that's more of a “because I feel like it” kind of thing :)


The power button can be configured to shut down, enter sleep mode, or reboot. In any of these modes, the TV box turns on automatically when power is connected, without pressing the power button.


If you select More settings in the previous settings menu (déjà vu), you'll get to a third level of settings, already familiar to most smartphone users.
In previous TV box reviews, I've sometimes complained that opening the display settings from this menu would freeze the settings app. That doesn't happen here.



The TV box runs Android 7.1.2. This is the first TV box with this version of Android that I've had my hands on; previous ones topped out at 7.1.1, though personally I didn't notice much difference.


It comes with 32 GB of flash storage, of which almost 25 GB is available to the user.


When I tried to update, it first said there were no updates, but the separate Update utility found one, and all subsequent tests were run with it installed.


The TV box uses the well-known Amlogic S912 SoC, so there's nothing new in the CPU-Z information.


Performance testing.

Since this processor isn't new to the market, I'll put the tests behind a spoiler and comment on only a few points. Most of the results will go into the comparison table.


As with most modern devices, Wi-Fi works on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. Reception is pretty good: from the farthest point (12 m away, with reinforced concrete walls in between), I could see my access points, although I still couldn't connect to them.


With good reception, the connection negotiated at 72 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band and 433 Mbps on 5 GHz.


Real-world speed tests, however, produced worse results, which is understandable. Within a single room, speeds were around 20–35 Mbps, depending on distance and obstacles.
On the 5 GHz band, speeds were noticeably higher, at 90–100 Mbps. The device was 2–3 m from the router, with one small obstacle: the corner of a wall.


The wired interface delivers speeds of around 500–650 Mbps. I usually recommend a wired connection for greater stability, and if you have a gigabit network, for the speed as well.



Preinstalled software and video playback tests.

There's quite a lot of preinstalled software, including:
1. AirScreen, which, as far as I can tell, is for transferring files between devices.
2. A program for installing Kodi add-ons. I didn't quite understand what it does. As far as I can tell, it lets you download additional language packs, but since Russian isn't available, I don't see much point in it.
3. Media Center.
4. Modbro, for watching online TV and so on.


1. Kill apps, which clears memory by closing unused apps.
2. Miracast
3. A separate app for configuring a PPPoE connection
4. Read Logs, a program with a self-explanatory name (reading logs), but not-so-clear functionality.
5. Update, a program for updating the firmware and backing up data.
6. And this is the built-in Speedtest for checking your internet connection speed. It would be great, except that it's set to Baidu (baidu.net) by default, so it shows speeds of around 380 Kbps even with a normal connection. You can set the server manually, but when I tried that, the test wouldn't run at all (I tried Google).


Kodi, which comes preinstalled, works mostly fine. Most of the channels I tested played without any problems.


But some channels absolutely refused to play, so it's hard to say how many actually work and how many don't. In my tests, most of them worked.


YouTube works perfectly, though. I tested both regular channels and Full HD 60 fps videos, and everything played smoothly without freezing.

By the way, I'll digress for a moment here. A while ago, I decided to pay more attention to temperature monitoring, so now the first thing I do is install an app that displays it on screen. You can see the reading at the very top of many of the screenshots.
I ran YouTube videos for over an hour during the test. The temperature initially rose to 65 degrees, then fluctuated between 62 and 64 degrees.


The third bundled app for online video is called Modbro. I don't know who it's "bro" to, but most of the channels were "breaking up" for me, with awful freezes, unfortunately :(


Alternative apps for watching online TV.
TorrentTV performed better than Modbro: the picture didn't break up into blocks, but there were frequent freezes, making it uncomfortable to watch.
The built-in media player seemed not to work at all, while Kodi was much more stable.


Another app is LOL!TV. It's actually quite good and easy to use, and works pretty well on most of the TV boxes I've tested, but I ran into problems here too.


The picture could also occasionally "break up," but this happened much less often and in a slightly different way. In the second screenshot, you can see "ghosts" to the left and right of the woman—remnants of the previous frame. The video decoding software is clearly not working correctly.
Some channels played perfectly, though, such as Fox HD and another one whose name I can't remember.


A Blu-ray disc image played in Kodi without any problems at all. After playing the movie twice, the temperature was around 65–67 degrees. In the last video, you can see the temperature reaching 75 degrees. It wasn't caused by video playback, but by my taking several screenshots in a row. I've seen the same issue with other TV boxes, so I don't consider it a drawback.
The video was played from a hard drive connected via USB. This also gave me a chance to check how hot the power supply got; it didn't overheat, even under these conditions.


So how does it handle other video files? That's simple: I tested a number of files in both Full HD and 4K. There were some minor stutters in the IXBT tests, but nothing critical. As is almost standard, the TV box doesn't support native AC3 decoding, so you'll need to install an alternative player.


The "problematic" Sony_4K_HDR_Camp.mp4 video played smoothly without any issues, although I haven't seen it render incorrectly in a long time.


The "ducks" video was a little more complicated. The 4K version with a 240 Mbps bitrate played only from internal storage, since USB 2.0 didn't provide enough bandwidth when using the hard drive.
The Full HD version played perfectly from the hard drive, but I found a strange issue: if I pressed PrintScreen while the video was playing, the hard drive would "disconnect" with the sound of its heads parking. It seems there isn't enough power, although there were no problems in any other situation, including while playing a Blu-ray rip. In other words, it only happens during playback of a particular video.
As I mentioned above, taking screenshots on TV boxes gradually raises the processor temperature. Why does creating a screenshot use so many resources? It's a mystery, but this is typical of TV boxes based on both Amlogic and Rockchip.


There are no issues with pixel-perfect output, but then again, I haven't seen a TV box struggle with this test in a long time.


The comparison table gives a clearer picture. I've compiled the test results for the TV boxes I've tested. I may add other tests to the table as well. I'd also like to include prices for an easier comparison, but they keep fluctuating, so that's probably not going to happen.

On average, the TV box performed about the same as other models based on the S912, a little better in some tests and a little worse in others. The 3DMark result was the only real surprise. I can only assume there's some kind of incompatibility, since the result in Epic Citadel is perfectly reasonable.


I've inspected the TV box and run the tests. Let's sum things up.

Design and appearance.
In both respects, the TV box is much like its competitors: a modest black box with a clock on the front panel. I did list the small number of USB ports as a drawback, along with the lack of USB 3.0 (debatable) and an analog audio output.
The cooling isn't quite textbook, but it did the job. I had no complaints about the power supply.
My only complaint was that the hard drive disconnected when several factors coincided.


Software.
The manufacturer really went all out here. I haven't tested many TV box models, but I've never come across such a wealth of settings. There really are a lot of them. That said, all those settings make the menus less convenient to navigate; in some places, the manufacturer outsmarted itself. Still, I'd rather have more settings than fewer.
There are also quite a few preinstalled apps, although about half are only useful occasionally and not for everyone.

Testing and multimedia.
In terms of performance, the TV box doesn't stand out either. Its results are roughly in line with other models based on the same SoC.
Wi-Fi testing showed that, despite decent sensitivity, connection speeds aren't very high. I recently tested the relatively budget-friendly Alfawise Z28 Pro, which had two antennas and was about twice as fast. Why they didn't do the same here is a mystery.
I had more questions about multimedia. There's nothing to complain about when it comes to format support or video playback in general, but using online TV apps can be tricky. For example, my tests of TorrentTV and LOL!TV showed that things aren't quite so smooth, and you probably won't be able to use them reliably.

I'd appreciate suggestions for other alternative online TV apps to test.
Otherwise, I have to say I expected a little more. At the very least, I hoped the manufacturer would pay more attention to its product, especially given the price range this device is in.

That's all. I hope you found the review useful. As always, I'll be glad to hear your suggestions and answer your questions in the comments.