Mecool’s latest proposal in media boxes is BB2 Pro.
The new version is equipped with 3GB of fast DDR4 RAM and promises high performance.
Let’s see how it goes.
Packaging – Specifications
BB2 Pro arrived in a small white box.
Inside you will find the media player itself, the power adaptor, an HDMI cable, the detachable Wi-Fi antenna, the remote and a quick start guide.
Specifications are typical for a S912 powered with 16GB of ROM media box with the exception of the 3GB DDr4 RAM.
So besides the aforementioned S912 8-core Amlogic CPU and the Mali t820 GPU, I/Os feature 2 x USB 2.0 , 1 x optical out, HDMI 2.0 (4K and HDR support), SD slot and a/v out.
For wired network connections an RJ45 with Gigabit LAN is the best available option and the same can be said for wireless connections with Wi-Fi AC and BT 4.0.
Android 6.0 is the selected operating system.
Media Player – Remote
BB2 Pro has a more classic square design.
Quality is very nice for a plastic chassis and the fake-metallic grey color adds points to its aesthetics.
The 2 x USB 2.0 (and SD) ports are located on the side so if you store your data on external drives you will have visible cabling. All other connections are located on the back side.
The detachable antenna is quite small and gold color fitting looks quite good (not cheesy).
The remote is quite nice (IR), we have seen it before in many other media boxes, certainly above average, made of plastic and the numeric keyboard can be quite useful in many occasions so it is another bonus.
The range is good and the grip/feeling when in use is also stellar.
As in most of all the modern media players, the user has option to control the media player via web interface for as long as its smartphone is connected to the same network.
Menus – Settings
Booting into the main menu lasts a minute or so but until you get there a nice animation to make you forget about time.
The menu is simplistic, exactly like the one we found at BB2 model from the same company.
You will find one main screen, only featuring the basic options (KODI, File manager, Settings, Web Browser and apps) with the possibility to add shortcuts. It is clean and simple, with a useful clock widget in the middle.
Settings menu is the classic grey themed one that we find in all recent media players. Classic Android menu is also present for extra settings.
Big informative icons will help you find and adjust the settings you want very quickly.
All modern display options are also here (4K screen resolutions, HDR)
Testing
As expected, audio files playback flawlessly (mp3, flac) in all audio players (KODI, external).
BB2 Pro comes with KODI 17 (alpha) pre-installed.
It better to upgrade to KODI 17rc3 (or later) in order to get better compatibility and performance with video files.
4K video files (10bit HEVC included) had perfect playback (not the case with the pre0installed version of KODI) and chances are you will not find easily an unsupported popular 4K encoding.
Full HD video files had also perfect playback, even high bit-rate BLU RAY backups.
Motion at 23.976 appears to be correct with no evident lags every now and then.
Auto frame rate switching is not supported but that is the case with the majority of media boxes.
Digital Audio was a bit tricky though.
Via KODI 17 we could only get stereo PCM from all type of inputs. RAW bit-streaming was not possible even for simple cases like Dolby Digital and DTS.
Fortunately, using the external video player or MxPlayer Pro, bit-streaming of DD/DTS and TrueHD was possible. No love for DTS HD MA though (we got DTS core instead).
Via wired LAN playback of high bit-rate .ISO backups was a breeze as expected and through Wi-Fi AC mode, streaming of medium bit-rate 1080p videos was also possible.
Android
Android 6.0 is the new trend for media boxes and this one is no different.
Google’s platform is here in all its glory.
YouTube, Gmail, Chrome and all applications and games in Play Store are at your disposal.
Gaming performance is also stellar with light 3D games having good performance with few lags appearing only in heavy 3D textured titles.
No OTA FW was available during our tests.
Summary
BB2 Pro distinguishes itself from its competitors by sporting 3GB of DDR4 RAM.
In practice, these helped a lot in application response and multitasking.
Another good thing is that price is quite normal too, costing less than 80€.
Definitely keep it in your shortlist.
We would like to thank www.gearbest.com for sending the player in exchange for 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.