Xiaomi has officially announced the Mi TV Stick, an HDMI dongle that is powered by Android TV. Similar to its popular Mi Box, this dongle can easily turn your conventional TV into a smart TV. This enables you to stream Netflix, YouTube and access Google apps designed for the TV.
The pocket-sized device can be plugged to your TV’s HDMI port and it even comes with a Bluetooth remote that has dedicated buttons for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Google Assistant. Apart from having Android TV as its operating system, you can also push content directly from your smartphone to the big screen with Google Chromecast.
Despite its small size, it also supports Dolby and DTS surround sound. However, Xiaomi has only announced one variant which only supports 1080p resolution. Previously, it was speculated that Xiaomi has a 4K version which comes with a better processor along with more RAM and storage.
The current 1080p version runs on a quad-core processor (Cortex-A53) with 1GB RAM and 8GB of storage. Connectivity-wise, it supports 5GHz 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2. It comes with an HDMI connector and a microUSB port for power.
During the Ecosystem product launch, it was revealed that the Mi TV stick is priced from EUR 39.99 (about RM195). So far there are no pricing and availability details for the Malaysian market. Expect the local pricing to be significantly lower than the European market. Since the stick was announced with a starting price, we are guessing that Xiaomi could be introducing a higher-spec 4K version at a later date.
