Magicsee N5 Plus Review
Just when we thought Ugoos stole the market for 2019, here comes the Magicsee N5 Plus just in time for the holidays with a bombshell of a TV Box contesting not only Ugoos, but A95X also. Magicsee has done a fine job on this box giving it power and massive storage capability on the latest Amlogic S905X3 hardware for 2019. The N5 Plus is so well designed that it prevents overheating and it has a really good user interface.
$55.99 Coupon：GBCNN5PLUS Best Black Friday Offer – http://shrsl.com/1zhu6
Hardware
- CPU – Amlogic S905X3 1.9GHz
- GPU – Mali G31 750MHz
- RAM – 4GB DDR4
- Internal Storage – 64GB eMMc
- WiFi – 2.4GHz + 5GHz
- LAN – 100Mbps
- Bluetooth – 4.1
Ports
- 1 HDMI
- 2 USB (2.0/3.0)
- 1 TF micro SD reader
- 1 AV out
- 1 Optical audio out
- Internal SATA bay 4TB Max
N5 plus Special features
- Regular OTA updates
- Advanced launcher
- Alternative launchers work
- Root switch.
- Advanced CEC options.
- Dolby Vision, Dolby Audio, and DTS audio settings.
N5 Plus Cube Performance Benchmarks
- Antutu – 61,493
- Geekbench4 – 763 Single-Core | 2114 Multi-core
- Ice Storm Extreme – 5,482
- Sling Shot – 500
- RAM Copy – 3,251 MB/s
- Internal Storage Speed – 150MB/s Read | 93MB/s write
- WiFi Speed – MAX speed on 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi bands. LAN Port fell below 100Mbps bandwidth
Cons
- Netflix 480p only
- Limited status bar
- No screen rotation
- No Dolby TrueHD
- SSD issue to shared internal storage
- Low LAN speed
Conclusion
The Magicsee N5 Plus is surely a top contender for 2019 and it delivers features an performance combining features seen in Ugoos boxes, and expandable storage options seen in A95X Max. So this is surely going to be a popular model in the TV box community.
Please: For further testing, buy yourself cheap TV with DV, ATMIS and HDR 10+ and VP9 profile 2. PHILIPS 43PUS6554. Do it tomorrow. PLEASE. Please for the third time.
With all due respect I have been reading your comments for the past month, and I am more than happy to receive this TV if you buy for for me. If not then don’t expect me to just buy a new TV after I just purchased one this year. You see, what you do not understand, is it’s not the TV you are looking at, but a 4K capture card from Avermedia the best model they got. The TV is after the capture card, on the output of the card. So please stop telling me to buy a new TV, it’s the capture card that’s doing the recording and not the TV. If it was the TV you would have seen the HDR icon appear when I play a video. You get where I am coming from? Don’t let me repeat myself again.
This is the capture card you are looking at in my videos. https://amzn.to/37WpXJc
TV Box Stop
Your capture card is realy great, but no option capture DV HDR. The video quality of your tests is the best.
Congratulations.
Thank you for this very solid review, I went ahead and bought a box from gearbest with your code.
I was wondering if you have an idea, how long does it take give or take for gearbest to confirm that the product has actually
shipped. I bought the box on the second of Dec and it still has not shipped yet as of today, that is 17 business days. Is that to be expected?
Best Regards,
Mike
Hi Mike, what’s the order number let me ask for you.
Awesome,
Order No: 19120200975207333352
Thank you 🙂
Mike
already in stock and will be soon shipped out today or tomorrow
Appreciate you time and effort, thank you.
Things are moving along this busy time of the year the item has been finally packed at least, will ship soon, hopefully.
I do have a question if you don’t mind, I am a long time kodi user, so much so I failed to update my knowledge about new better streaming sources, like the one you mentioned in the review. I confess I did not understand which source it is you referred to, would you be so kind as to point me in the right direction, perhaps a tutorial or source… to understand it more.
Happy New Year 2020 for you and all your loved ones.
Mike
Download and install this app – https://www.filelinked.com/
Use this key to to access the app – 64539676
once inside dismiss all attempts to sign-up to extra stuff.
Scroll down to the Movies and TV shows section, and click download on apps you want to use to watch free movies.
There are many but these are my favorites. – Cimema HD, TeaTV, Cyberflix, Freeflix HQ.
There is a Kodi alternative found on the Google Play store called Stremio. Check it out it’s really good. Install main app, then install browse to the addons section and enable all the addons you want ( no Source and repositories needed like in Kodi. really cool, you would love it. If there are kids in the home DO NOT enable the Porn addons, it will put you in trouble, as there is a watch history that displays on the Stremio home screen from all the things you have been watching on the app. Once you don’t enable the porn addons you are good to go https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stremio.one
I hope this helps
TV Box Stop
This helps quite a bit, you saved me a lot of time searching.
You’re right stremio is really good, teatv I particularly like it can stream episodes that have no sources in exodus.
The box shipped today :), can’t wait for it to arrive to configure it the way you did in the episode, hopefully there will be a firmware update to solve the hard drive capacity issue soon.
Thank you again for your time and effort!
Mike
No probs. Glad to help
TV Box Stop
Hi again,
Can you believe I still did not receive the box? it was delivered somewhere else apparently, delivered! Gearbest response:
“Thank you very much for your response.
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that you have encountered.
For this problem we have contact with transport company.
Please rest assured that we will solve it once we get the information from the carrier.
Please wait 7-10 working days!
Thank you very much for your understanding.
We hope you have a good day!
Best Regards,
Quintana
Gearbest Customer Service”
All in all it has been a pretty bad experience with this website. I think they are just stalling to avoid issuing a refund as much as possible, and I will end up opening a Paypal dispute.
Do you recommend another box as of now but one I can buy from north America? I don’t want the same box anymore, you can laugh but for me, too much bad karma till now.
Cheers.
Mike
Bad service is bad service. It happened to me earlier last year and had to get a refund for non delivery of boxes, so I know how it feels. The problem is all these boxes are made in China, even the ones you see on Amazon is shipped from China.
It is actually the WORST service.
They admitted that there was a shipping mistake: “The shipping company is actually responsible for this loss which is unfortunately beyond our control. However, because you are a valued customer, we are ready to help you in the best way possible.” but they want to refund only 26.99$, less that half of what I paid them and probably the difference is the cost of goods paid to the manufacturer if they want a decent margin after paying for ads, so they suffer no loss at their end. All that because I did not purchase their “shipping guarantee”. What a joke. I really feel good being their “valued” custmer! yippeee. I just opened a Paypal dispute. PS: with Amazon you don’t have to go through scam attempts to get your money back, which is a huge difference in the customer experience.
Does the Magicsee N5 Plus Amlogic S905X3 antenna input made for north america?
thanks.
No everything in made in China
Just got this box and it works great. Really like the clean simplicity of the homescreen launcher and the ample amount of vents really helps with keeping the box cooler, especially with a cooling fan on the bottom of the unit. While some are critical of the size of this box, I’d rather have one this size with adequate venting and air space than a thinner, smaller box with a bunch of plastic in close proximity surrounding the processor. All in all, a very nice product.
Glad you like it
regards
Just saw Bob’s review below. Sounds like he may have received a bad unit, as mine has worked flawlessly, with none of the issues mentioned. Status bar on mine functions well. I’d suggest using wi-fi to connect rather than the ethernet port as I was getting speeds at 50 – 75 mbs with VPN and over 125 mbs without VPN. When one first gets a full android device, there is a bit of a learning curve on where to find things and install apps. Believe me, it is well worth the effort to explore your device and see what it is capable of. Don’t compare it to a PC or Mac.
TL;DR DO NOT BUY UNTIL FIRMWARE ISSUES ARE RESOLVED.
Great hardware but crappy UI/firmware makes this box almost unusable. Blatant lack of testing/QC. Here are just a few of the faults.
* Cannot drop down staus bar make it impossible to see/clear notifications.
* Ethernet cable shown as not connected after a reboot.
* Occasional clicking/popping audio.
* ‘#’ character always visible at top of screen when playing fullscreen video in root mode.
* Q key doesn’t work when using hardware keyboard and cannot hide onscreen keyboard when using hardware keyboard.
* Some sites won’t play video (chrome or firefox) eg https://oomovie.net.
* No access to normal system settings menu.
* Cannot use many alternative launchers because you cannot drag icons around (apex, evie, microsoft, nova) Lawnchair works though.
* If you install an internal drive, you will need to format it on a PC beforehand or it will not be recognised and there is no facility to format/partition the UI.
* Zero support (emailed magicsee twice with no reply after 2 months since first email).
I find this review quite poor imo because there are no OTA updates and most alternative launchers DO NOT WORK but these are listed as ‘special features’. In fact the version of android 9 installed is security patch level 5th August 2018, so I find it hard to believe that Magicsee will ever put out an OTA update.
On a plus it boots up quite fast (21 seconds from power on) but it takes 22 seconds from reboot command until you see the boot splash screen so a reboot cycle actually takes 43 seconds????
I have got twrp working on this box and have fixed or found workarounds for most of the issues but wish I never bought it now. Never going to buy magicsee again!
Current firmware version on purchase was MGCTV144A20191031.
Found firmware update MGCTV144A20191101 but only appears to fix video issues in browsers and ethernet cable.
https://mega.nz/#!xbYnBAoa!DI2ug-BJVJVba91lxBMvZN9MczizF70zkEVbZvttnN8
The kernel on this box is not capable of mounting loop devices so you cannot run linux deploy etc. WTF!
Me parece um ótimo aparelho ,gostaria de comprar mas como corro o risco de perder devido ao bloqueio de tv box vindas da china vc pode me indicar outro meio de comprar com segurança para receber o produto aqui no brasil!!
Sou inscrito no seu canal.
I bought the N5 Plus 4 months ago along with an Ugloos AM6 Pro as my 2 primary streaming devices and both have been excellent performers. I ran Antutu benchmark tests on both and got a score a bit over 73,000 on the N5 Plus vs. 120,000 for the AM6 Pro. The Ugloos heatsinks are bigger and do a bit better job of cooling than the N5 Plus, which I corrected with a bottom mounted usb cooling fan. Other than these 2 areas, these 2 boxes both deliver great performance.
Hey thanks for sharing at least you understand how cooling is important on these TV boxes