Last year, Xiaomi released the TV Stick 4K 2nd gen with a more powerful chipset and HDR10+ support. Now the company is refreshing its basic TV Stick HD with similar features.
Starting with the exterior, it uses the more rounded design of the 4K 2nd gen. Alas, the power port is still a micro-USB – come on, Xiaomi. Note that there is only one USB port and no microSD slot, so if you want to connect extra storage, you’ll have to look at Xiaomi’s TV Boxes. The original stick didn’t support USB-OTG and we’re not sure whether this one does, but that’s an awkward solution anyway.
This stick is aimed at older TVs since it tops out at 1080p 60fps output – it can’t do 4K. You can pick it up if you are subscribed to the lower tier of streaming services (4K costs extra on most services).
The Xiaomi TV Stick HD 2nd gen runs Google TV and comes pre-loaded with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube. These have dedicated buttons on the remote control (more on the remote in a bit). In addition to streaming, you can also cast photos and videos from your phone.
The stick is powered by a new chipset with a quad-core Cortex-A55 and a Mali-G31 MP2. Xiaomi promises a 38% performance uplift over the 1st gen HD stick (which had four A53 cores and a Mali-450 GPU). However, the RAM and storage capacities are the same at 1GB and 8GB, respectively, which is very limited. The TV Stick 4K 2nd gen has a bit more oomph with 2GB of RAM and a Mali-G310 V2 GPU.
For content, the stick supports HDR10+, but your TV has to support it too to actually make use of it (this is a fairly new standard). More importantly, the new chipset has hardware AV1 decoding, which is vital for a good YouTube and Netflix experience.
For sound, the stick supports DTS:X and Dolby Audio, but again, your other devices (either the TV or your sound setup) have to support these too.
The stick connects to your home Wi-Fi network over dual-band 802.11ac (aka Wi-Fi 5). Bluetooth 5.0 is used for the remote control, which also has an IR blaster – this lets it turn on your TV.
The Xiaomi TV Stick HD 2nd gen should be available globally soon. We haven’t seen pricing yet, but the 4K 2nd gen can easily be found for €50.