HiMedia S500 Google Certified TV Box Review
The HIMEDIA S500 is a fully Google certified Android TV box, that is supposed to allow you to watch premium streaming services in HD and 4K. However despite being a fully Google certified, the box does not have Netflix ESN certification and Amazon prime video certification to play these services in HD and 4K. This brings into question the usefulness of this box. It runs on a certified version of Android 9 pie TV OS, and can play at least one premium services directly on the play store which is Disney+.
It’s hardware on the other hand is limited providing only 2 GB of DDR3 RAM and 8GB of internal storage. It’s CPU is also clocked at 1.6 GHz. This results in lower benchmarks than usual.
It does provide features such as 4K HDR display, but with no Dolby vision or a digital surround sound audio output.
HiMedia S500 Hardware Specs
CPU – HiSilicon Hi3798MV200 1.6GHz
GPU – ARM Mali 450
RAM – 2GB DDR3
Internal Storage – 8GB
Wi-Fi – Dual Band 2.4GHz + 5GHz
LAN – 100Mbps
Bluetooth 4.1
HiMedia S500 I/O Ports
1 HDMI 2.0b
1 RJ54 100Mbps
1 Optical Audio
1 AV
1 IR
2 USB 2.0
1 DC
Micro SD – NONE
Benchmarks
Antutu – 83,537
Geekbench 4 – 588 Single-Core | 1,529 Multicore
Ice Storm Extreme – 3,054
RAM Copy – 2,043MB/s
Internal Storage – 88 MB/s read | 45 MB/s write
Wi-Fi – 100% on 5GHZ Band | 2.4GHz 19%
LAN – 59% 100 Mbps
Features
HiSilicon Hi3798MV200 CPU Mali GPU
Google Certified
Android 9 Pie TV OS
4K HDR display
Not Rooted / DRM Widevine L1 HDCP 2.2
Dual Band 2.4 + 5GHz WiFi
Bluetooth 4.1
Premium Streaming apps work eg. Disney+
YouTube in 4K
Chromecast / Google assistance
CONS
Low hardware specs
Low benchmarks
No Netflix ESN and Prime Video certification
No Dolby Vision
Not Rooted
No Dolby Atmos or DTS Audio
Poor 3D gaming
Final thoughts
The HiMedia S500 plays 4K HDR videos really well, and it’s running on Android TV OS so you will have to sideload lots of apps. But remember no root access. and it’s not a good gamer.
This box is strictly for streaming movies and TV shows as it is very limited on hardware resources. It is Google certified but it does not have required Netflix ESN certification or Prime Video certification for 4K viewing. Disney+ is available on the play store so no problems with quality there. I am disappointed that it does not have Dolby and DTS audio, and it does not have a micro SD card reader.
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