[Sunflux]

So, the search for good Kodi boxes doesn’t seem to have changed much in the past few years.

I have an Apple TV 4K. Great streaming box, but MrMC and the audio bitstreaming issue makes it a no-go for Kodi.

I have an Amazon FireTV Stick 4K. Surprisingly capable, can run native Kodi, but limited in its output offerings and lack of memory makes it a no-go for big libraries. Yeah, you can add on a USB stick and I did that on my old one, but the speed of Kodi reading that is pathetic.

I have an Amazon FireTV Cube. Actually a rather great box to put Kodi on for simple use, finally enough internal memory to be usable, but again it has problems with output capabilities.

I have a Roku 4K. Again great streaming box, no Kodi possibility.

I have numerous old Asus Chromeboxes still in use. Pretty much the gold standard for a 1080p Kodi box, tons of space, still way faster and more responsive than most modern streaming boxes, but no 4K capability at all.

I have an Odroid N2. So far my go-to box for 4K HDR playback. However one of them has been giving me issues… picture stops outputting, suddenly gets massively laggy and barely working until I reboot, and I wanted to replace it.

Finally, I also have an older 4K SDR television, and I wanted to be able to play 4K HDR videos from my library. Originally I bought the FireTV Cube for that, until an OS update removed its capability for 4K @ 60hz @ 4:2:0, and now it doesn’t even see the screen as 4K. Thankfully the Roku does still support it for streaming apps, but for Kodi I’ve been forced to go to a full blown Windows PC, which has proper compatibility with my 4K screen, full audio bitstreaming, and the best HDR to SDR conversion available.

Reading through all of this it seems the practical choice for a good 4K HDR box is still between a Vero or a N2+.