Pendoo X8 Mini Android TV Box – So much power in a little box

Pendoo X8 Mini Android TV Box Review

Does a TV box need to be big in size to be powerful? Well it seem that this rule doesn’t apply to the Pendoo X8 Mini 4K Android TV box. The box is just 3 inches in size and packs enough power to rival much bigger TV boxes. The Pendoo X8 mini was manufactured by the Shenzhen Dragonworth Technology Company Ltd, a factory specialized in android TV boxes for over 5 years. They carefully designed this TV box to be portable and powerful at the same time. In this review you will see the capabilities of this box and my final thoughts on its performance.

Pendoo X8 Mini With Rmote

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Main Features:

  • OS: Android 7.1.2 Nougat OS
  • Flash: 16GB EMMC
  • SDRAM: 2GB DDR3
  • CPU: Quad Core ARM Cortex A53 2GHz
  • GPU: Penta-core Mali-450MP GPU 750MHz
  • WIFI: 2.4GHz IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
  • LAN Ethernet: 10/100M, standard RJ-45
  • HDMI: HDMI 2.0
  • Power Supply: DC 5V/2A
  • USB Host :2 High speed USB 2.0,support U DISK and USB HDD
  • 1*TF CARD Support 4GB/8GB/16GB/32GB/64

Pendoo X8 Mini Amlogic S905W CPU

User Interface

The Pendoo X8 mini comes with Pendoo’s custom UI. Now my first impression of using this UI is how fast and smooth it moves. Thought it is fast, it does not come with a navigation bar and status bar for multitasking, and the menu button on the remote does not facilitate this either. The X8 mini is fully rooted, you can install and uninstall any app you like or dislike. You cannot change the launcher to a custom launcher like Nova launcher because it conflicts with the base UI, so it crashes when you try to run another launcher.

Pendoo X8 Mini Launcher

Movie Streaming and 4K Playback

When it comes to streaming a TV box has to be able to run Netflix. The Pendoo X8 mini can play Netflix in standard 720p quality which is quite watchable. It does not have the necessary DRM support to run in HD and 4K. It can play all of the alternative streaming sources like movie streaming APKs, Kodi etc. YouTube play in up to 720p on the stock YouTube app, and the Android TV version of YouTube crashes when try to run. When it came to 4K video playback the Pendoo X8 mini was able to play 4K videos at 29fps – 30fps with ease, it had some challenges with really high frame rates like 60fps.

Netflix

 

Benchmarks

  • Antutu – 26582
  • Geekbench 4 – 505 Single Core | 1421 Multi-core
  • Ice Storm Extreme – 3545
  • RAM copy – 2360
  • ROM speed – 67MB/s Read | 52 MB/s write
  • Wifi Speed – 35MB download from 40MB package

   

Gaming

For a mini TV box I was impressed that it handled some games quite well and I was able to use a keymapping application to play some games. Now it will not play very high graphics games in excess or 2GB but it handles anything up to about 1.4GB games. Remember to ventilate while gaming as to avoid overheating due to the low height clearance the tiny ventilation holes at the bottom.

Pendoo X8 Mini with key mapping app

Final thoughts

The Pendoo X8 mini is a good stable TV box to buy. It is Fast, rooted, and performs better than a lot of TV boxes bigger in size. It does com with its own challenges but these challenges can be solved with a simple firmware update. My biggest issue with this box is the navigation bar and status bar that is lacking. The issues with the 4K video playback and YouTube can all be solved by a firmware update. So that’s something Pendoo should look into soon. My most enjoyable experience on this box was the movie streaming APKs and the 3D gaming with keymapping function.

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