ISO - Decent quality Android TV Stick / Box / Mini PC

[stickg1]

I've been looking for days and there's all sorts of options, but I've never heard of any of the brands, they all seem to get mixed reviews. Except for the Minix M8 @ $160 seems to be well respected. But I was looking to spend more in the $100 range. It looks like the Amlogic S812 and Mali 450 are the more up to date CPU and GPUs in this category. I see a lot of options but wanted to hear some testimonials from actual owners.

Budget is $50-$100

Need:
HDMI Out
USB Keyboard
USB Thumb drive media playback
WiFi


Thanks for the help!

 

[[U]ber|Noob]

I wonder if they can go into standby and start up with a timer (responding to pvr software) for recording?

 

[Jagger100]

Fire TV I think it up there for Android TV. You have Side-loading capability and I have a Fire Stick TV and I've sideloaded TVMC.

 

[stickg1]

I've been looking at the Fire TV box, I shop at Amazon frequently and have Amazon Prime, there are actually shows my wife and I watch on Prime so the Fire TV would probably be very easy. Does it play video files from a thumb drive? And if so how versatile is it in terms of codecs and containers?

 

[Tozmo]

You have to root the fire tv to play movies off the usb port / thumb drive.

The firetv is just fantastic as opposed to a heavier, more powerful (and power hungry) htpc.

Great wife factor, gaming is below adequate though, but streaming from my n40L into foretv's plex or kodi is flawless.

One of our best tech purchases

 

[stickg1]

It's on my shortlist. Just wondering if I should get one of these beefier android tv boxes with a better GPU for the kids. I might try both actually. They're cheaper than a PC that's for sure.

 

[DGMurdockIII]

Look at this android box http://www.vidon.me/ if you want something very very good

 

[0_first_of_his_kind]

There is this box: http://www.wetek.com/
I've bought one. They have fast shipping and excellent support!
They sell tuner modules too and it runs both Android (rooted) and OpenELEC.