X96Q Pro+ is an Android 14 TV box powered by the new Allwinner H728 octa-core Cortex-A55 SoC with a Mali-G57-MC1 GPU, and a 4Kp60 / 8Kp24 H.265 and VP9 4Kp60 video decoder that looks very similar to the Allwinner T527 AIoT SoC.
The TV box ships with 4GB RAM and 32GB eMMC flash by default, and features an HDMI 2.0 port outputting up to 4K at 60 Hz, a 3.5mm audio jack, an optical S/PDIF output, a gigabit Ethernet port, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, and a few USB ports.
X96Q Pro+ specifications:
- SoC – Allwinner H728
- CPU – Octa-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor in two clusters of four cores four cores
- GPU – Arm Mali-G57 MC1 GPU
- VPU
- Video decoder
- H.265 up to 4Kp60 or 8Kp24
- VP9 up to 4Kp60
- H.264 BP/MP/HP up to 4Kp30
- Multi-format 1080p60 VP8, MPEG-1/2 SP/MP, MPEG-4 SP/ASP, AVS+/AVS JIZHUN
- Video encoder:
- H.264 up to 4Kp25
- MJPEG up to 4Kp15
- JPEG encoder – Up to 8K x 8K resolution
- AWonder1.0 post-processing engine
- Video decoder
- Package – FCCSP 660 balls
17 mm x 17 mm size, 0.5 mm ball pitch, 0.3 mm ball size - Manufacturing process – 22nm ULP
- System Memory – 4GB (2GB optional)
- Storage
- 32GB eMMC flash (16/64GB optional)
- MicroSD card slot
- Video Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4Kp60 with 10-bit HDR support
- Audio – 3.5mm audio jack, optical S/PDIF, digital audio via HDMI
- Networking
- Gigabit Ethernet port
- Dual-band WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0
- USB – 1x USB 3.0 port, 2x USB 2.0 ports
- Misc
- Power button
- Update pinhole
- Front panel display
- Optional RTC
- Power Supply – 5V/3A via DC jack
- Dimensions – 140 x 90 x 20mm
- Weight – 150 grams
The TV box ships with a remote control, a power adapter, an HDMI cable, and a user manual. The main benefit of the X96Q Pro+ is that it runs the most recent Android 14 (for TV?) operating system. The Allwinner H728 “Decoding Platform Processor” does have some interesting interfaces like PCIe 2.1 x1, 30x PWM, two gigabit Ethernet MAC, and more that make it look like the Allwinner T527 even more, so it’s probably just handled by a different business unit within Allwinner, and that’s potentially the same silicon.
The X96Q Pro+ Android 14 TV box is sold for about $40 (2GB/16GB) or $50 (4GB/32GB) on AliExpress under the VONTAR brand. I was initially contacted by Shenzhen Amedia Technology Co., Ltd. who claims to be the manufacturer.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Current year and still no AV1 decoding, and only “small” cores. I wonder if it also runs hot, as other allwinners. At least it’s cheap.
Indeed. Rather underwhelming really.
Even the apparent cheap price looks less so when you think about what you can get for not that much more.
> only “small” cores.
A733 (belonging to their sun60iw2 family — the currently known sun60iw1 variants being called A736/T736) appeared also in the wild in the meantime (6 x A55 r2p0 @ 1.8 GHz + 2 x A76 r4p1 @ 2.0 GHz): https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7327650
Appears Allwinner has continued to reuse its current Phoenix(v3?)VE (Video Engine) on its H728 SoC…new VE with AV1 hardware decode should not be too difficult as both Rockchip and Amlogic has done successfully.
Ahah 8 cores sharing a single 32-bit memory bus, must be awesomely fast and efficient! I think that cores 3..8 are here only for decoration purposes ?
So you get a quarter of the bandwidth (assuming same DDR/LPDDR speed) of a typical x86 platform, or only half of some (e.g. Alder Lake-N, Mendocino). Is that not enough for 8x relatively slow Cortex-A55 cores?
It’s not that bad, Raspberry Pi 4/5 also has 32-bit bus and their cores are much much faster than an A55.
Those A55 get small L2s which help too.
A USB port that can be a USB gadget is a port with USB 2.0 or 3.x throughput?
The role is unrelated to interface speed (Hi-Speed or SuperSpeed, 2.0 and 3.x are protocol revisions and not interface speeds).
X96Q products are low quality software. H728 aka A527 get very hot. But i think they reduce frequency for all cores to 1.4.
I have Rongpin SBC which first 4 cores are 1.8 ghz. Its have big radiator and still very 80 celsius degree hot.
> i think they reduce frequency for all cores to 1.4
Unlikely. If you search for ‘exdroid’ in Geekbench browser you get Allwinner Android results. If you click on the A523/A527/H728/MR527/T523/T527/R828 results then you see cluster information (4 x 1.42 GHz and 4 x 1.80 GHz) and when you add ‘.gb6’ to the results URL (needs a Geekbench account to work) then you get benchmark metadata with cpufreq measured on Android and Linux which confirms the 1.8 GHz.
I have just received that box. Quad-Core Cortex-A55 1.8GHZ + Quad Core Cortex-A55 1.0GHZ. Maybe not first quad-core but they reduced second quad-core. Hm I have predicted. By the way. A527(A523) is very hot. They had to do something with that
As mentioned in the comments, the software is very problematic. Or rather the integration which was done in a not too professional way. Audio support, for instance, is very lacking. I had to wait for a firmware update just to get any sound, and it still cannot send encoded audio correctly to my avr.. 4k video is choppy. And all surround audio formats are reported as unsupported, while they are definitely supported in my setup and working perfectly with other boxes.
Yes, I totally agree with you. It’s an android that leaves a lot to be desired in terms of the features it has.
I recently bought a X96 pro plus (allwinner-h728-octa-core-cortex-55-soc-powers-40-x96q-pro-android-14-tv-box) and I have the following problems.
1. It does not rotate the image 270 degrees (portrait).
2. Many applications cannot be installed from the google play store.
3. It does not have a button to turn on and off on the screen.
Question, can these be solved?
Is there another software version?