Back in mid 2015 I bought an Android TV box, I had seen around my work office a few iterations of these “tv-on-a-stick” devices but most were half baked ideas, using too weak hardware with too little ram to provide a compelling experience. The idea itself was cool, you would create a device that for all intents and purposes was an Android tablet or phone but without the screen, the device would plug into the HDMI slot of your TV and would come with an external power supply (wall wart) or be powered via USB. Android was flexible enough to make this work so it seemed like an excellent idea. Who wouldn’t want their mobile apps to run on their TV. Youtube, Plex, Chrome, Play Music, Spotify, Kodi, all using your TV for the display.
You might say “well this isn’t a new idea” and I suppose that’s true, but keep in mind this was before chromecast became a lot more fully-fleshed out. Even now comparing the flexibility of a TV box vs Chromecast isn’t a fair comparison. The TV box does give you flexibility that chromecast can never compare to. Sadly though most of the initial TV boxes were underpowered so the experience was frustrating. Software crashes, overheating and so on gave the cheap imported devices a bad reputation.
In 2015 I bought a Minix Neo X8-H Plus. It had great hardware, a reasonable amount of ram, all in a nice package.

Minix Neo X8-H Plus
The device worked great but as time went on, and is the case with Android OS updates got fewer and fewer support for the device eventually stopped and software slowly stopped working as well. The OS version was too old for the newer software and often updates from the Google Play store stopped coming due the device’s age. It was stuck on Android 4.2 and to put it in perspective as I write this the newest Android is 8.X.
Luckily on a whim this last week I did some searching and it turns out that someone in the Minix/Android community created a hacked Android 5.1 version of the OS for the Minix. This would significantly improve the ability to run newer software. After reading the notes at the minixforums.com and following a few of the posts I upgraded the device and oddly enough the device has regained a lot more life. The developer removed a lot of the typical Android bloat making the device appear a lot more responsive, the new OS allowed me to install a lot of software that simply wasn’t possible on the last OS the device was running (Kodi 17, Steam Link beta as examples).
This is one of the reasons why I like Android. Yeah, it can be a chaotic mess, yeah there is little incentive for companies to keep updating legacy hardware for new OS updates, but thankfully, if you chose a piece of hardware that has an active community updating it, there is a good chance you’ll squeak out another year or two out of your aging devices. It cannot be understated. When buying an Android device MAKE SURE you look into the community to see if there is active development for that device. Yes, you might find a similar or better priced device from China but if it doesn’t have anyone developing for it then it’s lifespan will be much shorter than you’d like. It will always be better to pay a little more for a device that has an active community for it.