Mecool M8S PRO L
Hardware
The M8S PRO L TV Box is classically equipped with an Amlogic S912 chipset. This is an ARMv2016 octa-core processor with two Cortex-A8 clusters that was released in 53. The clock rate of the individual clusters is a maximum of 1.5 GHz or 1.0 GHz. On the hardware side, the processor supports the decoding of H.265, H.264 and VP9 at maximum 4K resolution. In addition, the chipset is able to process HDR10 and HLG HDR feed material. The processor graphic is a Mali-T820 MP3 GPU.
Regarding the storage equipment, the Mecool M8S PRO L TV Box is optionally equipped with a 16GB or 32GB eMMC flash memory. The choice of RAM is a bit disappointing. Although this is quite generous with 3GB, Mecool has only opted for a DDR4 RAM in contrast to the DDR3 RAM of the previous model. The connection options amount to a CVBS socket, an RJ45 Ethernet socket, an HDMI 2.0 socket, two USB 2.0 sockets and a MicroSD memory card slot. Wireless dual-band AC WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1 are available for data transfer.
Software
The TV Box is already delivered with a real Android TV (7.1.1). Few apps are already pre-installed, and additional apps can be installed via the Google Play Store or as a sideload. One advantage of Android TV is Google's Voice Search, which is implemented directly in the system. Mecool includes a corresponding remote control with microphone and voice search button in the scope of delivery.
As a Widevine L1 certified device, the M8S PRO L is able to play Netflix with maximum 1080p resolution. Videos can also be streamed in 4K on YouTube. MiraCast, AirPlay and DLNA for streaming local media are supported. The maximum playback resolution is 4K with 60 frames per second. According to Mecool, the TV Box is compatible with the multichannel audio formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD.
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The Mecool M8S PRO L shows that even cheap China TV boxes can be equipped with real Android TV. Especially interesting is the playback of Netflix HD and YouTube 4K. Anyone looking around the current market will find very few cheap TV boxes with these features. Once we have a test copy, the detailed test follows within this post!
