What the maker puts in writing
- “STABLE LINUX ECOSYSTEM: Built on Linux 4.9, this set-top box provides a reliable and secure environment for authorized video services. It is optimized for integration with official operator applications and Ministra PRO”
- “PREMIUM PERFORMANCE: Powered by the Amlogic S905Y4-B chipset with a Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A35 processor delivering 16,500 DMIPS”
- “ULTRA HD 4K & HDR: Experience stunning 2160p resolution at 60 FPS. The device supports modern HEVC and AV1 codecs, ensuring high-quality video playback while optimizing bandwidth consumption”
- “DUAL-BAND CONNECTIVITY: …built-in 2T2R ac Wi-Fi module… It also includes a 100 Mbps Ethernet port”
- “ENHANCED MEMORY CONFIGURATION: Equipped with 1GB LPDDR4 RAM and 4GB eMMC flash memory”
- “CINEMATIC AUDIO: Supports eight-channel Dolby Digital Plus”
- Description: “a high-performance set-top box designed for authorized operators and their subscribers”
It is not the kind of box the rest of this shelf is
Four separate places name operators or authorization: “designed for authorized operators and their subscribers”, “optimized for integration with official operator applications and Ministra PRO”, “a reliable and secure environment for authorized video services”, and “for authorized service integration”.
Linux 4.9 is not Android. There is no Google Play Store, no Chromecast, no Google Assistant, and no mechanism for you to add applications.
The box is designed to be configured by a television operator, which supplies its own application and portal. Ministra PRO is middleware operators use to manage subscriber devices at scale.
So this is an IPTV decoder — closer in kind to an ATSC converter box than to the streaming boxes beside it.
Eight of the nine products on this shelf run Android or tvOS and have app stores. If you want to install Netflix, buy one of those.
What this is excellent at is the job it was built for: a stable, locked-down platform an operator can rely on for years, with no store to break and no updates it did not sanction.
The Amlogic S905Y4-B chipset with a Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A35 processor delivering 16,500 DMIPS.
DMIPS — Dhrystone millions of instructions per second — is an old integer benchmark, and it is still the figure set-top box operators specify against, because it predicts whether a device will run a given middleware and program guide smoothly.
It says nothing about video decoding, which dedicated hardware does rather than the processor.
And the core choice tells you the design priority. A Cortex-A35 is a low-power, efficiency-focused design — where the Ugoos SK1 Lite publishes a Cortex-A76 plus four A55s, and the Ugoos AM6B Plus four A73s plus two A53s.
So: modest general-purpose horsepower, capable video hardware, low heat. Exactly what an operator box needs and nothing more.
AV1, and the reason an operator box has it first
Supports modern HEVC and AV1 codecs, ensuring high-quality video playback while optimizing bandwidth consumption.
That last phrase is the point. AV1 delivers comparable picture quality at perhaps twenty to thirty percent lower bitrate than HEVC — and for a company streaming to thousands of subscribers, that is a direct saving on transit costs. YouTube and Netflix adopted it for the same reason.
On this shelf only this and the Ugoos SK1 Lite at $299.90 publish AV1.
Which produces an awkward comparison: the Ugoos AM6B Plus at $247.69 publishes “4K H.265 HDR” and no AV1. So the second-most expensive box here lacks a codec the ninety-nine-dollar one has — and a box without hardware AV1 decoding falls back to software decoding, which stutters, or to an older codec at lower quality.
Various video containers such as MKV, MP4, and AVI, along with high-resolution audio formats like FLAC and APE.
Worth drawing out, because only one other listing on this shelf names any format.
MKV is the container most ripped video actually uses, and a great many devices refuse it. FLAC is lossless audio compression — identical to the source at about half the size. APE (Monkey’s Audio) is a rarer lossless format, and supporting it is unusual anywhere.
Which makes sense for a box with dual USB 2.0 ports: it is expected to play local files as well as operator streams.
A hundred megabits, and one gigabyte
Ethernet at 100 Mbps. For streaming that is ample — a 4K stream is 15 to 25 Mbit/s. Where it would matter is playing a high-bitrate 4K file from a network drive, which can exceed 100 Mbit/s. The HK1 at $78.62 and both Ugoos models publish 1000M.
1 GB of RAM and 4 GB of storage are the smallest figures on this shelf: 2 GB / 8 GB (Formuler), 2 GB / 32 GB (Xiaomi), 4 GB / 64 GB (HK1, Ugoos SK1), 4 GB / 32 GB (Ugoos AM6B), 64 GB (Apple).
On a box with no app store, that is a coherent choice rather than a shortfall: there is nothing to install, so the storage holds one operator application and the memory runs it.
The things it does publish that most of this shelf does not
HDMI 2.1 — three boxes here publish a version at all.
Eight-channel Dolby Digital Plus — a specific channel count, where four listings name no audio format.
A 2T2R ac Wi-Fi module — two transmit, two receive antennas, which is a real specification rather than “dual band”.
172 g and 120 × 78 × 21 mm — among the smallest here, alongside the Xiaomi at 95 mm square and the Formuler at 94.
What is not published
No HDR format. The title says “HDR” and no bullet names Dolby Vision or HDR10+ — the two dynamic-metadata formats, which are incompatible, so a box supporting only one falls back to plain HDR10 on a television that supports the other. Xiaomi at $94.99 and Apple at $234.99 publish both.
No box contents. No remote, no power adapter, no HDMI cable stated — and on a box sold to operators, a remote is usually supplied by the operator rather than in the retail carton. Four listings here publish contents.
No Bluetooth, where five boxes publish a version.
No Google services of any kind, which is the defining fact rather than an omission.
Prices quoted in this text were read on October 4, 2026. The live price is at the top of the page.
