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Update: June 10, 2022 (5:10 AM ET): Xiaomi has come back to us regarding a wider launch for the Mi Box 4S Max, and you might be disappointed with the response:
That’s a little disappointing given the new product’s increased RAM and internal storage space. But at least current Mi Box devices offer USB support for portable hard drives and flash drives.
Original article: June 8, 2022 (4:02 AM ET): Xiaomi’s Mi Box series of Android TV devices are among the most popular streaming boxes around, offering Google’s TV-focused platform and a cheap price tag. The company has just launched another Mi Box device, and this looks like a major boost for all Google-powered TV boxes.
The Mi Box 4S Max launched in China this week (h/t: Liliputing and APC TV) and its standout features are arguably the increased RAM and storage on offer. The new TV box sports 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.
This means the new Xiaomi box has more storage and RAM than rival devices such as the Tivo Stream 4K, Nvidia Shield TV tube, and Chromecast with Google TV which all offer 2GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. The storage bump is particularly important as 8GB of storage fills up in no time flat, as I can attest with my Shield TV tube.
Xiaomi’s Mi Box 4S Max is powered by a budget-tier Amlogic S905X3 chipset, featuring a quad-core Cortex-A55 CPU and Mali-G31 MC2 GPU. It’s also advertised as a 4K/60fps and 8K-capable box, but APC TV notes that it doesn’t have hardware support for AV1 decoding so you shouldn’t expect smooth 8K playback.
Other notable specs include 4K HDR support, HDMI 2.1 port, the MIUI for TV skin, a full-sized USB 3.0 port, and Bluetooth remote control. We’re also guessing that you can expand storage via the USB port, which would be in line with previous Mi Box devices.
The Xiaomi Mi Box 4S Max is only available in China right now for 499 yuan (~$75). We’ve asked Xiaomi about global availability and will update the article if/when it gets back to us. Hopefully, it comes to more markets, as we could use a TV box with more storage.