Alfawise H96 Mini 4K TV Box Review – WoW! surprising results for the price

Alfawise H96 Mini 4K TV Box Review

So here we have the Alfawise H96 Mini Amlogic T962E Android 4K TV Box. So what so special about this box? Haven’t we already seen hundreds of TV boxes with same specs as this one? Well let me tell in this review you will see this TV box do something that boxes twice in price and twice in hardware struggle to do. Which will challenge you mind and your understanding as to what’s the relation between benchmark scores and performance.

Product Links:

Alfawise H96 Mini US – http://shrsl.com/14zkd

Alfawise H96 Mini UK – http://shrsl.com/14zke

Alfawise H96 Mini EU – http://shrsl.com/14zkg

H96 Mini Hardware

• The hardware in the H96 Mini is pretty basic but with one thing different, it comes with a new CPU called the Amlogic T962E ( Special TV Chip)
• CPU – Amlogic T962E 4X
• GPU – ARM Mali 450MP
• RAM – 2GB DDR3
• Internal Storage – 16GB eMMc
• Wi-Fi – Dual Band Support
• Bluetooth – 4.0
• Sound – 5.1 Surround

However, I was curious about the Amlogic T962E CPU used on this box ordered it just to see what it ca do. This chip is listed my the manufacturer as a new TV chip used in this device, so what are the results?

Alfawise H96 Sotware

The Alfawise H96 Mini runs on Android 7.1.2 Nougat operating system. It is rooted, well rooted I might add, that app my Keymapping and mirroring apps works without any problems, something many high end boxes struggle and in some cases cannot do. Another thing that recently came to my attention was that once keymapping and mirroring cannot run on certain boxes, so to does webcams. However, webcams work well on this box. The H96 Mini uses the same launcher as previous Alfawise models, and it functions smooth with a navigation bar at the bottom and a status bar at the top for easy navigation and multitasking. The box comes with your normal set of system and browsing applications, and additional apps like Miracast Netflix and KDMC. There’s a new application here which is TV app. This is simply a secondary display from another media output which utilizes the HDMI input port on the box.

Benchmarks:

• Antutu – 33717
• GeekBench4 – 624 single core / 1809 multi core
• Ice Storm Extreme –
• Ram Copy Speed – 2679 MB/s
• Internal Storage Speed – 67 MB/s read / 48 MB/s write
• WiFi Speed – Below maximum

Summary

Well to my surprise, after being a bit disappointing by low benchmark scores, I was blown away by its user experience. What do I mean by this? If you are a TV box fan and follow all my videos, you would see that I stress on choosing boxes with high-end hardware over low end boxes. This is because high-end hard equals higher, faster performance and a better overall user experience.

However, many times, I have seen high-end boxes that couldn’t deliver on some key areas like playing 4K videos at high bit-rates, run high-end 3D games smoothly without overheating, poor Wi-Fi reception, my personal beef which is that they are rooted, but cannot run key-mapping apps and mirroring apps. This leads to always searching for firmware updates to solve some of these problems.

Whit the Alfawise H96 Mini, I am now forced to rethink my position on benchmark scores and performance. Here’s why, the H96 Mini has a Max CPU clock range of 1.4GHz, 2GB DDR3 RAM, 16GB ROM. It uses the famous Mali 450 from 2016, it has lower benchmark scores and the cheapest Amlogic S192 TV box, and it cost just $59.99. So what would expect with this box. Well let me tell you

1. It’s rooted so well it can run Key-mapping apps and webcams
2. It played all my 4K videos even .ts file format and my jellyfish video at 400 Mbps.
3. The launcher (UI) runs smoothly no lagging jerky movement.
4. It plays 3D games and my high end games too with ease with out overheating of freezing.

Now just these four points alone can be challenging for some high end TV boxes. So I give the Alfawise H96 Mini high scores in my book for being the best low cost Android TV box for 2017.