We present an overview of the budget MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic TV set-top box. It differs from its older version of the MECOOL KM9 Pro with a smaller memory capacity – 2GB + 16GB instead of 4GB DDR4 RAM + 32GB ROM and 2.4GHz WiFi support, IEEE 802.11 b / g / n instead of dual-band WiFi. The prefix works on the same four-core Amlogic S905X2 processor with all its advantages, primarily the absence of overheating and the stable operation of the system as a whole.
MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic runs on Android TV 9.0 and is certified by Google, which provides support for branded services, including Google Home, Google Cast, etc. The kit includes a remote with voice search and support for Google Assistant.
The cost of the MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic TV box at the moment is significantly different from the older model – $ 43 versus $ 70, while the difference in the functionality and operation of the set-top box is not so significant. In our review, we will try to show what this console is and how it works.
Features of the TV box MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic
- SoC – Amlogic S905X2 Arm Cortex-A53 quad-core processor with Mali-G31 MP2 Dvalin GPU
- System memory – 2 GB DDR4
- Memory – 16 GB eMMC flash memory, micro SD card slot up to 32 GB
- HDMI 2.1 to 4K output at 75 Hz with HDR / HDCP 2.2 / CEC
- 3.5mm AV port (composite + stereo)
- Communication – Fast Ethernet, WIFI 2.4, Bluetooth 4.1
- USB – 1 USB 3.0 Port, 1 USB 2.0 Port
- IR receiver, power indicator
- Power Supply – 5V / 2A
- Dimensions – 10.9 x 10.8 x 1.7 cm
- Weight – 130 grams
Packaging & Equipment
The MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic TV box is delivered in a cardboard box with a glossy color image. It looks quite presentable.
Package Contents Mecool KM9PRO Classic:
- Set-top box Mecool KM9PRO Classic
- Bluetooth remote control with built-in microphone
- Power Supply 5V, 2A
- HDMI cable 80 cm long
- Operating Instructions, in English
Remote control – works via Bluetooth without an additional adapter, which usually takes a separate USB connector. There are no aero functions and a separate mouse emulator button, but for Android TV these functions are not particularly needed.
The buttons are pressed clearly, with no loud click. There are not many buttons: volume key, Home button, Back button, Set-top box mute, Mute, microphone on and a large round arrow key and OK button.
The sensitivity of the built-in microphone allows you to enter voice commands from an arm’s length. To activate the microphone, just press the button once and release. When you press and hold the Off button, a menu appears with a choice: turn off the console, put to sleep or take a screenshot.
For the remote control to work, you need to buy two more AAA elements that are not included. In general, using this remote control in Android TV is very convenient, no problems arise.
Appearance
The MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic TV box has rather compact dimensions, a square case measuring 10.9 x 10.8 x 1.7 cm. It weighs only 130 grams. The front of the TV box is equipped with an LED indicator of the status of the device, under which there are diffusers for the removal of warm air. The Mecool logo and AndroidTV are located on the top cover of the case.
The indicator works in the “ Smart breathing light ” mode – smart flickering light. The glow color depends on the mode of operation:
- Turquoise – no internet connection;
- Blue – connected to the Internet;
- Flashing in different colors – voice input, detecting a USB device or connecting a memory card;
- Red – the prefix is off or in sleep mode.
On the right side are a slot for TF memory cards, one USB 3.0 port and one USB 2.0 port.
The rear side connectors : DC 5V power port, HDMI video output, RJ45 LAN port, and AV-out analog audio and video output. There is no digital optical or coaxial audio output SPDIF here, multi-channel sound can be output only through HDMI, as a universal multimedia interface.
The bottom cover contains an identification sticker and a large number of ventilation holes. Four rubber feet create an air gap under the console, which contributes to better heat dissipation.
Dismantling the console
Disassembling the prefix is quite simple; for this, it is necessary to unscrew the two screws that are under the rubber cushions on the right side.
The board is located “processor down”, which is not very good for cooling it. To remove the board, you need to unscrew another four screws.
Mecool KM9PRO Classic uses the same board as KM3, Mecool KM9, KM9PRO; the difference is only in the type of installed WiFi module and in the RAM and built-in memory modules. The processor is cooled using a massive metal plate, to which the processor is pressed through a rubber gasket. Given the presence of a large plate, a large number of holes on the case, and the fact that the Amlogic S905X2 chip itself is quite “cold” – you don’t have to worry about overheating. Further testing will confirm this.
Protection for USB ports and HDMI output is fully installed. The reset button is located beside the AV connector.
Main components of the MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic:
- SoC Amlogic S905X2
- 16 GB eMMC 5.1 Foresee NCEMAD9D-16G storage
- 2 GB RAM – LPDDR4 Spectek PS007-062BT
- Sound Amplifier dio2133
- Network Transformer H1601SG 100 Mbps
- WiFi IEEE 802.11 b / g / n, 2.4 GHz + Bluetooth 4.2 Ampak AP6236 module
The board is assembled neatly, which is the hallmark of MECOOL, the soldering is clean, without traces of flux.
Startup Menu
The start up takes a little longer – this is a feature of Android TV, while the initial settings wizard starts and the first thing it offers is to synchronize the regular Bluetooth remote. To do this, hold down the “Minus” and “OK” buttons, after which the remote control is determined and remembered by the system. Next, connect the box to Internet via WiFi or using an Ethernet cable.
Then you connect your Google account. There will appears a code on your TV, to which the MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic is connected.
Once you enter this code, your Google account will be copied to the TV box. Everything is very simple and convenient. In the next step, you can install the applications, such as media players, games, etc.
After a little pre-installation, we get to the desktop – the main menu of Google Home Launcher based on Android TV 9. The interactive tiled interface consists of several lines, the first of which you can add to fix your favorite applications. In the upper-right part of the screen are the clock, the settings icon, and the system notification counter. The voice search icon and the text search input line are located on the left side.
In order to change the order of channels or delete a channel, press the Left button on the remote opposite the desired channel and move it in the desired direction.
To add channels to the Home screen or delete them from there, select Configure channels at the bottom of the screen. The bottom line displays the advertising channel, which can also be disabled in the settings. All menus are perfectly adapted to work with the standard remote control and voice control.
Voice request “Weather for tomorrow”
Google Assistant
Using Google Assistant, you can search for information, play media, work with applications and solve various problems. Google Assistant understands many languages.
To activate Google Assistant, press the Google Assistant button on the remote control or using the navigation buttons, select and click the Voice Search icon on the Home screen. In order to stop voice recognition, after you have finished speaking, you need to press the OK button on the remote control.
You can perform voice search in all applications at once that support this function.
Initially, the system has a minimum number of applications: Google, YouTube, AirScreen, Google Play Market, Live channels, file manager, built-in media player, etc.
Games
Thanks to a fairly powerful processor and the complete absence of overheating, you can play most Android games on the console. Having only 2 GB of RAM does not really affect performance. For a comfortable game you need to connect Bluetooth wireless gamepad. For example, the popular games Beach Buggy Racing, Asphalt 8, Subdivision Infinity, Riptide GP: Renegade, etc., are excellent at this console.
Settings
The settings menu consists of several submenus: General settings, Device settings and Advanced Settings.
In settings menu, you can configure the main system parameters – network, language, application management, channel settings for the desktop, etc. This menu section is fully translated into Russian.
In the Remotes and Accessories section, you can configure the connection of the necessary devices via Bluetooth, for example, a wireless gamepad or soundbar.
While In Sound section, you can configure manual or automatic selection of surround sound formats. In the Main screen section, you can configure the channels and applications that will be displayed in the launcher main menu.
Advanced Settings contains finer settings. This section is not translated into Russian. Here you can configure many image parameters, such as resolution and image size, sound output options. The prefix supports a resolution of 480p-60Hz to 4K2K-60Hz, as well as 4K2K-smpte, that is, a full 4K, of course, when you connect the corresponding TV.
There are settings for color profiles and HDR control, that is, the conversion of HDR to SDR and vice versa. The Dolby vision function setting is present, but the function itself does not work.
In the Usb model section, you can configure the operating mode of the USB 3.0 port: normal or Host. CEC Control – control the set-top box using the TV remote control and vice versa using the HDMI protocol. The HDMI self-adaption setting should activate autoframe – an automatic change in frequency, but in this case it does not work. In the Powerkey definition section, you can configure the action by pressing the power button on the remote control: activation of sleep mode, shutdown or reboot.
System Testing
TV Box MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic runs on Android TV 9.0, kernel version 4.9.113, firmware version number PI.V1.20190329. The prefix supports firmware updates “over the air” – OTA updates.
Information from the AIDA64 application – used system components and their specifications. As you can see, the application does not yet recognize the SoC Amlogic S905X2. The TV Box is equipped with an Amlogic S905X2 Cortex-A53 @ quad-core ARM processor with a clock frequency of up to 1.8 GHz and a Mali-G31MP2 GPU with a processor frequency from 100 MHz to 1.8 GHz.
The speed of RAM and internal memory, the results are pretty good:
- RAM speed: 3587.72 Mb / s
- Internal memory speed: read: 114.60 Mb / s , write: 45.57 Mb / s
- USB port speed: read: 123.51 Mb / s , write: 3.16 Mb / s
Of the DRM certificates required for paid streaming services, the MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic TV box supports Google Widevine Security Level L1 and ClearKey CDM.
At the moment, the device does not have root access. Its presence would allow, for example, to activate the AFR function using the add afrd (Automatic Framerate Daemon).
Network Interface Speed
Ampak AP 6236 WiFi/ Bluetooth module (budget, single-band 2.4 GHz WiFi/ Bluetooth 4.2) and an Ethernet controller integrated in the SoC Amlogic S905X2 with support for speeds up to 100 Mbps are responsible for the network interfaces in Mecool KM9PRO Classic. During testing, the Tenda AC10 gigabit router was in the same room behind a brick wall from the TV box, at a distance of about 5 meters.
When connecting to the Internet via WiFi in the 2.4 GHz band, the speed was: download – 18.5 Mbit / s, transfer – 22.51 Mbit / s. These are very modest speed indicators, which will be enough to watch online video only in quality up to 1080P. When connecting to the Internet via cable through the LAN RJ45 port, the speed reaches95 Mbps (download and transfer).
This speed will be enough to view 4K video with a standard frequency and bit rate. Unfortunately, watching online UHD BDRip and BD Remux with a high frame rate and bit rate will be difficult on this device. The only way out is to watch them from an external drive connected to the USB3.0 port.
Temperature Mode
You can see the temperature values during the work of various applications in our screenshots above. In the average operating mode, the temperature is kept at about 50 degrees and does not rise to critical values.
According to the results of the standard 15-minute test, the Cpu Throttling Test showed that under maximum load the processor does not reduce the core frequencies. Performance holds 93% of maximum.
The temperature was about 65 degrees. You also need to consider that this set-top box is certified by Google, which automatically guarantees the stable operation of the system. Therefore, there is no need to control the temperature of the processor or to upgrade the cooling design.
Play Video
The TV Box plays all available movies with a resolution of 480p, 720p and 1080p (24 / 30 / 60 frames per second), as well as 4K (60 frames per second) with various video codecs, such as H. 264, H.265, MPEG2, MPEG4, RMVB. Playback of the video did not raise any questions.
All test videos with various codecs and bitrate were played smoothly, with sound. The MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic TV box easily coped with the clips in the network storage BDRip, BD Remux, UHD BDRip. To play sound in AC-3 format, for example, you can use MX Player with the included HW + decoder.
Dolby Digital 5.1 multi-channel sound is perfectly reproduced by the WiMu media player and transmitted via HDMI to the receiver when the corresponding option is enabled in the player.
The built-in client for Youtube works perfectly and reproduces video with a resolution of up to 2160p 4K without any problems.
Additional Software
Additionally, installed popular On-line cinema HD Videobox works without comment.
The HD VideoBox + version paired with the TorrServe application allows you to take advantage of very convenient watching movies from torrents directly without first downloading. Alternatively, it is possible to watch online movies in maximum quality and with multi-channel sound Dolby Digital 5.1.
Any selected video plays perfectly, no problems with the image and sound are not observed.
Work with VOD services has been tested using the popular Megogo platform.
When working with Megogo, no problems were found, all videos are played with maximum quality without any comments.
Playback of TV channels via IPTV was verified using the IPTV application and the playlist from the provider. Everything works without comment.
Conclusion
The MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic TV box with voice control is another excellent MECOOL set-top box. TV Box copes with the declared functions. Android TV 9 operating system, voice remote control and operation based on the powerful and cold Amlogic S905X2 processor should satisfy most users.
The console is certified by Google, and this guarantees the operation of Google-branded services, in particular Chromecast, and is a kind of quality guarantee. The presence of a smaller amount of RAM practically does not affect the system performance. The console works quickly and without failures. except, in the low speed over WiFi and not working AFR. To watch the video in maximum quality, we recommend using a wired Internet connection.
Pros:
+ Good system performance
+ High-quality build
+ YouTube in 4K
+ No overheating
+ The system works stably, without crashing
+ Convenient remote with microphone
+ Fresh Android TV 9 operating system
+ USB 3.0 availability
+ Chromecast support
Cons:
- Auto
-frame does not work- Lack of ROOT
- Low speed over WiFi
If you are looking for an inexpensive and high-quality TV set-top box for home entertainment, convenient to use (using voice control), then you should consider buying a MECOOL KM9 Pro Classic, which is definitely worth the money.