(25 / 01 / 2016)
Tronsmart released a new series of media players under the S95 name.
They are all feature rich (depending from the configuration) and promise special features regarding video playback.
Let’s find out.
Packaging – Specifications
Tronsmart S95 arrived in a small box. Nothing special here.
Inside you will find the media player, remote, wall charger, HDMI cable and a sata one for connection with external HDD’s.
Our version of S95 (Telos) is the better equipped.
Featuring Amlogic’s Quad-core 64 bit Cortex A53 S905, Penta-Core Mali-450 GPU with 2GB RAM / 16GB ROM it as almost as good as it gets promising great playback for apps, light games and video.
I/Os are still impressive sporting HDMI 2.0,e-Sata connection, 3 x USB 2.0, SPDIF out and SD slot.
Networking is great as well sporting a Gigabit wired lan and dual band WiFi AC.
Android 5.1 makes sure all of the above work properly.
Media Player – Remote
S95 is compact with clean lines.
It is made of plastic (a better chassis could be justified for the price though) with a sturdy feel and the square minimal design will allow you to place it anywhere you like.
The implemented LED will not distract and after a few minutes you will forget its existence.
Remote (IR) is simple featuring only the basic buttons. No numeric keypad here.
The grip is nice though and its range is quite good.
S95 also supports control using your smartphone as long as they are both connected to the same network.
Menu -Settings
Booting into the main menu was quick (less than a minute) and we are facing a nice GUI.
Tronsmart actually cared to make a difference here and they succeeded.
You will find big shortcuts to popular options/applications like KODI, Web browser, Settings, File manager and Music.
Although it consists of only a main screen, user can make adjustments and everything responds very fast.
Settings menu is the one we find in the majority of Android media boxes and setting it up according to your needs should be very easy.
Testing
S95 makes big promises here.
Full BLU RAY playback and HD Audio among others.
To achieve that, Tronsmart collaborated with Vidon and the end result is a special version of KODI.
Menus are the usual ones but playback is now optimized.
Full BLU RAY playback was perfect (menus included) and our A/V receiver showed all the HD Audio logos. No cinavia limitations here. We would like to add that HD Audio aside (perfect bit streaming) there were some audio glitches with DD/DTS. This is resolved if you playback these files with another application (MX player)
4K playback was also good with perfect playback of all 4K TV series content.
In order for the Vidon version of KODI to work, user will have to register to Vidon. Usually the service costs 14$/ year but Tronsmart has made a deal for 20 years (if you manage to keep it more than that ,congrats!)
Playback was perfect from local HDDs and from wired lan (Gigabit) as well.
Via WiFi streaming of 1080p average bit rate mkvs was also achieved. Well done Tronsmart!
As usual, no issues with music files playback.
Android
Android 5.1 is a very stable platform and that was the case with S95 Telos as well.
All the applications and games are available through the Play Store and even light gaming is possible.
Would be wise to get a gamepad controller though.
You will also get excellent support. While we were working with this review we got two OTAs.
Summary
It is small, beautiful, excellently equipped and with excellent performance.
It is one of the few media players that can do Full Blu ray menus + HD Audio.
It usually takes an HTPC or more expensive media players (Dune) to get these features.
Also Meta and Pro versions of the S95 player are out here that are less equipped but should have the same playback capabilities.
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.