Xiaomi Mi TV Stick Review: Android TV in a Lightweight Stick

Xiaomi is always innovating new ideas and ways for home tech. Over the years we have seen their Android TV boxes at a reasonable price. Although not comparable to the Roku or Apple TV box, still Xiaomi delivers great products.

The Mi TV Stick is the new one in the line of android streaming device. There is nothing special about Xiaomi’s Mi TV stick. A TV stick with a simple design and it does exactly what it needs to do. It streams content from your phone to your TV screen.

A Basic Streaming Device

Mi TV stick is a basic device with only 1GB of RAM and 8GB ROM. The processor is Quad-core Cortex-A53, ARM Mali-450 GPU and it runs on Android 9.0. There is nothing special about this TV stick. The best thing is the price. It’s cheaper than other Android TV streaming device.

The operating is simple, you plug it in an HDMI port of your TV or a monitor, connect it with WiFi and that is all. The rest of the setup will continue automatically.

The easiest is to set it up with your mobile’s Google assistant. If it is on a WiFi network then it will connect the stick into the same WiFi without your intervention.

The powering up port is still a micro USB, which we thought is a lacking. These days you could easily afford a USB-C port. Maybe they were trying to keep the price lower.

What’s in the box?

You are getting the following inside the Mi TV Stick box:- 

• 1 -TV Stick.
• 1- Remote with voice control.
• 1 -power adapter with micro USB.
• 1 -user manual.

The outer shell is made of plastic so there is no premium feel if you are looking for it. Very lightweight, under 30grams and doesn’t come with any HDMI extended cable.

The device is made for directly adding to the HDMI port. Although We have tested it via an extension cable. As some TV’s HDMI port is in such a position that you can’t really insert the TV stick and then add the power cable. In both cases, the Mi TV stick shows the same performances.

The stick is not 4K this might be one drawback for it. Xiaomi wanted to keep in the basic line for this TV stick. Keeping everything to a minimal level. There Mi Box-S streams in 4K, so we were hoping a 4K TV streaming stick with more RAM & ROM.

There should be an extension HDMI cable in the package too, as the device doesn’t fir directly on most Sony models.

The remote works great. It has both WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. The Remote gets connected via Bluetooth with the stick. But if you ever need a second remote or lost the primary one you can get a WiFI connected external remote.

We know you can’t use an air-mouse with it. There is no port for adding an external Bluetooth dongle.

After 5 hours of continuous streaming, we have seen that the device gets a bit hotter than their mi Box-S, maybe the surface size increases the heat. 

Check price on AliExpress

Sometimes the remote control lags when you are playing from a little distance or HD video. The stick definitely isn’t as swift as the Mi BOX-S.

We have concluded in our testing that this is suitable for people who watch TV’s occasionally and doesn’t have a smart TV. for people who spend long hours with their TV’s the Mi Box-S is a perfect choice.