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Beelink GT King Review: the New King of TV-Boxes

Jupit3r
Performance

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The Beelink GT-King is powered by the new Amlogic S922X chipset, which contains 4 cores of Cortex A73 clocked at 1.8GHz , 2 cores of Cortex-A53 clocked at 1.9GHz, and a beefy Mali-G52MP6 GPU clocked at 846MHz. There's also 4GB LPDDR4 RAM under the hood to handle multi-tasking.

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In Antutu V7 benchmark test, the GT-King scored an impressive 125,479, putting it in way ahead of almost all the other TV boxes we have tested. It didn't fall far behind the mighty Nvidia Shield TV.

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In Geekbench 4 CPU test, the GT-King notched 1,447 in single-core, and 4,065 in multi-core.

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In the PCMark 8 Work 2.0 test, the GT-King snatched 5,334, which is on par with the scores of many mid-range smartphones, easily blowing most of the other TV boxes out of the water.

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In the more graphics-focused 3DMark test, the GT-King scored in 1,576 Slingshot, second only to the Nvidia Shield TV.

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The Ice Storm Unlimited returned the King with a score of 22511.

The GT-King may still not be able to compete with flagship Android smartphones and tablets in terms of processing power, but it has very few competitions in the world of Android TV boxes. Probably the only thing that offers more horsepower than the GT-King is the Nvidia Shield TV, but that is more marketed as a gaming console rather than a TV box.

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As for the real-world performance, the GT-King is more than capable of handling normal day-to-day TV box tasks. Even when the HDMI output was set at 4K, we still experienced almost no hiccups, lags or delays.

I played many video clips of different formats in Kodi, MX Player and Beelink's very own Movie Player, the King never struggled with anything we threw at it. Only with one video did I notice some synchronization problems between the visuals and sound.

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Streaming 1080P in the YouTube app and 2K videos in the YouTube TV app was extremely smooth, but when playing the 4K Costa Rica Video in YouTube TV, there were some stutters in the beginning. We also streamed many 4K online videos in Chrome as well, and experienced almost no lags at all. Unfortunately, although the GT-King supports Widevine L1, you still won't be able to stream HD videos on Netflix and Amazon Videos. Many reviewers report that the maximum resolution for Netflix videos on the King is only 540P, since Netflix is not available in the country that I am living in, this is not a problem for me personally, but I know it can be a deal breaker for those devoted Netflix fans.

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However, the GT-King is by no means just a streaming box. It has more than enough power for most of the graphic-intense games you can find in Google Play Store. I tested Asphalt Extreme, Real Racing 3, Snowboard Party and World of Tennis, all of them ran smoothly at maximum settings. A joystick is highly recommended if you want to fully enjoy gaming on the GT-King,

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Browsing on the GT-King is also a joyful experience, image-heavy webpages load extremely fast in Chrome, and you won?t experience any lags switching from one page to another.

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The device is obviously designed for entertainment, as all TV boxes are, but it's not impossible to use it for some lightweight productivity tasks and social networking. With a mouse, a keyboard and the right apps, it is easy to write Emails and even edit some documents on the King.


Connectivity

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The GT-King offers a slew of connectivity options. It supports 2.4GHz/5GHz dual band Wi-Fi. Although without an exposed antenna, the GT-King still has solid reception, it could pick up more Wi-Fi hotspots than the ABOX A1 and Remix IO when the three boxes were placed right at the same spot. The Gigabit Ethernet jack can also come in handy when you want more stable connection via a network cable. There's also Bluetooth 4.1 on board to take care of local data transfer and connecting with audio and input devices. I connected the GT-King with the Vifa Helsinki speaker and they worked fine together. If Bluetooth audio transfer doesn't offer satisfying sound, the SPDIF port and 3.5mm RJ45 both support direct wired connection with most soundbars and speakers.

The HDMI 2.1 port on the GT-King can output videos up to 4K@75fps, and should support most TV sets, monitors and projectors. The 3 USB ports support external USB storages of up to 4TB. The Micro SD card slot had no problem reading my 128GB Samsung card.


Verdict

I liked my experience with the GT-King very much. For only $106, the TV box has a lot going for it. It is beautifully designed, very well built, and offers amazing streaming performance. Also, the gaming experience is pretty decent, as nothing in Google Play is really too demanding for the GT-King. There are some minor compromises, as you won't get Netflix and Amazon Videos in HD, but besides that, you won't find much to complain about it.

The Nvidia Shield TV is still a more capable device overall, but it does require you to reach deeper into your pocket. For those who wants more performance and functionalities than what an average TV box could offer but have issues with the price tag on the Shield TV, the GT-King is a decent alternative.
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Help Internal Storage Data Migration Question

svim
When you reformat a microSD card as internal, its file system gets reformatted from FAT (FAT32 or exFAT) to ext4 and it gets encrypted. These are significant changes as ext4 is the same file system as your device's internal storage and the encryption key links the card only to that particular device. Once internal, your device's Android operating system merges the card's storage with the internal storage, and it's just the OS that manages it. When you're manually transferring files between the two, you're still using that microSD card as when it was formatted as portable. Either let the OS work the way it needs to (leave the card as internal and don't bother messing with it) or go back to using your card as a secondary storage media (format it back to portable, which will return it back to its previous un-encrypted state using a FAT file system).
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How to download audio files from URL links?

R
I am creating an app in which I have to play audio from a number of URL links. At the first ever run of the app I am providing user the option of either downloading all of the audio files at once. Right now I am downloading each URL individually using Async Task. The problem with this approach is that since I have some 6000 url links for audio files it takes very long.

My questions is that is there any way I can quickly download audio files from these 6000 urls or any better approach of handling downloads.

Below I am also providing the code that I am using for downloading each url.

public class DownloadAudio extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, String> {

public static final String TAG = DownloadAudio.class.getSimpleName();

ProgressDialog mProgressDialog;

Context context;
String stringUrl;
int index;

public DownloadAudio(Context context,String url, int randomNumber) {
this.context = context;

stringUrl=url;

index = randomNumber;

}

protected void onPreExecute() {
mProgressDialog = ProgressDialog.show(context, "Please wait", "Download …");
}

@override
protected String doInBackground(Void... voids) {
try {

URL url = new URL(stringUrl);
HttpURLConnection c = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
c.setRequestMethod("GET");
c.setDoOutput(true);
c.connect();
String[] path = url.getPath().split("/");
int temp = path.length - 1;
String mp3 = path[temp];
int lengthOfFile = c.getContentLength();

String PATH = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory()+ "/MyAudioApp/" ;
Log.v(TAG, "PATH: " + PATH);
File file = new File(PATH);
file.mkdirs();

String fileName = mp3;

File outputFile = new File(file , fileName);


FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(outputFile);

InputStream is = c.getInputStream();

byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
int len1 = 0;
while ((len1 = is.read(buffer)) != -1) {

fos.write(buffer, 0, len1);
}
fos.close();
is.close();

} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}

return "done";
}

protected void onPostExecute(String result) {
if (result.equals("done")) {
mProgressDialog.dismiss();
}
}

}

Please any suggestions would be very helpful.

Thanks​
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To anyone using google calendar and the gtasks app...

azdayton
When I found out about Tasks, and saw they integrated into Calendar, I was so excited it never even occurred to me that it wouldn't work on the phone. SURPRISE! So now all those "events" I had on my calendar to serve as reminders/tasks, which I removed and moved to Tasks, now have to be removed from Tasks and put back into Calendar. THANKS GOOGLE!

I also can find no widget in the Google Tasks app. So I'm assuming that's something else Google got rid of because it was too convenient for users.

And Google wants our company to move to Google Suite? I don't think so! Hell, I'm considering moving to an iPhone after this F-up!

And I noticed they put in a nice "Shopping List" as a pre-made task list that won't go away, and which has no integration whatsoever with the phone's shopping list function. You know, where you say, "Okay Google, add bread to my shopping list", and it does. So why does Tasks have a shopping list that's completely disconnected?

I think the Google Tasks team is off on their own world.
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Problem with USB after drop

svim
If you're repeatedly dropping your phone it's not surprising that various parts are failing. Panasonic has a Toughbook/Toughpad series of mobile devices designed to take some physical abuse:
https://na.panasonic.com/us/computers-tablets-handhelds/handhelds/handhelds
They're a bit pricier but weigh its cost to the total cost of buying a new phone and having it repaired on a regular basis (including the inconvenience of being without a phone each time its being serviced).
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General Java discussion

23tony
Thanks for the suggestions!

Coderanch seems the most active, several posts just from today. DreamInCode seems ok but hasn't had a post in 2-3 weeks. That's still better than anything we've found so far.

GameTheory said:
By the way, were you able to get you're map app on the play store?
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Thanks for asking!

Not quite yet, still getting those graphics wrapped up. Should be publishing this weekend. So far I've had pretty positive feedback (along with some good bug reports and feature suggestions) so I'm pretty happy. At least one of my testers is switching to my app over google maps! Can't complain about that!
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App to get notification when you have voicemail?

F
adidas1124 said:
You have the answer, yet you choose to ignore it... YouMail is not hard to setup and use... it will give you what you want, it will even notify you if the person does NOT leave a message so you aren't wondering if you're missing a message.
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The "answer" repeatedly given was obviously not an answer to the problem as stated, which you choose to ignore.

ericsbcn said "I don't really want to set up a new... voicemail system." He just wanted a simple app that will show him when he has messages in his current voicemail system. YouMail apparently requires the user to switch to a new voicemail system. Not only that, but it has received many bad reviews, which specifically state that it's difficult or impossible to return to one's old voicemail system once you've installed YouMail.

I understand what ericsbcn was saying because I have the exact same issue. I want a simple app that will just show me how many unplayed and how many saved voicemails I have, without requiring me to switch to a different voicemail system. Even an app that would show me if I have any voicemails would be a step in the right direction. It's been nearly a decade since ericsbcn asked his question, and -- based on an extensive search -- there still appears to be no app that can competently handle the job that the cheapest answering machines were able to do over 3 decades ago.
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