I’ve owned an NVIDIA Shield TV Tube since 2020, and I’ve been somewhat happy with my purchase due to its wide variety of features and endless stream of updates. I do have some serious complaints, though. My biggest issue is the lack of ports, but I also found that it requires a factory reset every year or two due to significant performance problems.
Acer announced the Acer 4K UHD Google TV Streaming Box in South Africa late last year, and this looked like the answer to my prayers. This Google TV box is made by prominent ODM SEI Robotics, but a closer look revealed that it easily met my requirement for more ports. This theoretically means I can plug in my portable hard drive for no-frills local media playback, or easily plug in a flash drive to transfer APKs. I recently splashed out on the Acer TV box and, after using it for roughly six weeks, here are my thoughts on making the switch.