(17 / 03 / 2016)
Zidoo X5 is an affordable yet powerful entry in the crowded media player world.
Let’s see how it performs.
Packaging – Specifications
No surprises here. X5 arrived in a Zidoo familiar white box that protects the media box quite nice until it reaches at your doorstep.
Inside you will find the X5 itself, a wall charger, the remote and an HDMI cable.
Zidoo X5 is equipped with Amlogic’s popular S905 processor acompanied by Mali-450 GPU.
1GB of RAM / 8GB of ROM is the lowest option available but should be enough for all the popular tasks.
2 x USB 2.0, SD slot, Mbit lan and an HDMI 2.0 port fill the bill.
For wireless connections, Draft N and BT 3.0 will serve your needs.
Nothing special here. A typical low to mid range spec list with some nice touches (Draft N, S905 , HDMI 2.0)
Media Player – Remote
X5 is quite compact and its round design is quite elegant. Finishing is good/smooth and is also compact (less than 140 x 140 mm). Although a plastic chassis does not assist in terms of heat dissipation, we didn’t encounter any throttling issues during our tests.
USB inputs are on the side so you will have to do some cable management here, but if you serve content via wired lan all the connections are located at the back which is a much better option.
The remote is small and made of plastic.
Layout is good and grip is nice, although the buttons are on the very soft side.
You will also find a numeric keypad which is nice.
Menu -Settings
After booting into the main menu (takes a bit less than a minute) we face a Zidoo familiar GUI.
A dark grey colored theme with large icons is all there is but you will not need anything else.
All the basic options are in front of you (KODI, Browser, File manager, Settings, Play Store among others) and you have the option to add shortcuts of your favorite apps.
Settings menu is typical and you will end up setting your preferences really fast.
Android 5.1 is the selected operating system. (not rooted)
Testing
Zidoo X5 performed as expected for the price segment.
In KODI, all 1080p files had perfect playback , including the ones with high bit rate.
Picture quality was nice and motion was handled quite nice.
The majority of 4K files had stutter issues, but for the majority of users it is not a big deal (probably).
HD Audio bit streaming was not possible, but we had no issues passing through DD and DTS .
As expected, no worries with mp3 and flac files playback.
Through wired lan playback of BLU RAY remuxes was possible and WiFi Draft N was capable to stream 720p TV series mkvs.
Android
Android 5.1 was a major update compared to KitKat and all latest apps should run fine with no compatibility problems.
Google’s Play Store makes sure that every application can be selected, although the limited free space (~5GB) will run out soon if you install games.
YouTube, Chrome , Facebook and others performed admirably with no annoying lags.
Summary
Zidoo X5 is a compact and elegantly designed media player that will take care all of your basic needs without emptying your wallet.
Keep an eye on it if you want a low cost solution with great performance.
We would like to thank www.geekbuying.com for sending the player in exchange of an unbiased presentation.
- If this review helped you towards making your decision, we would appreciate if you made your order through the previous affiliate link(s). This way we will be able to review more products in the future.