Seguro Trongle
Android TV for a pittance
Stream TV for next to nothing
Under pressure from copyright owners, Amazon and ebay announced crackdowns earlier this year on Android boxes designed to run Kodi. This is the controversial video-streaming software that can be used with thirdparty add-ons to play paid-for content for free. Unsurprisingly, Amazon and ebay are still full of these boxes. There’s nothing wrong with owning one as long as you don’t use it to watch films, sports or other paid-for content from illegal sources.
The Trongle, like other boxes, connects to your TV via HDMI and comes in an assortment of specifications, either with a basic remote control or – as in this Amazon Marketplace deal direct from the Chinese manufacturer – a mini wireless keyboard, which makes it much easier to use. Its processor is fast enough to play 4K video, but you won’t find much around yet, and the built-in 802.11n Wi-fi is too slow to stream it anyway, although you could cable the ethernet port to your router. There’s a microsd card slot to supplement the 8GB of storage, but the main point of these boxes is to play video straight from the internet.
Android 6.0 comes installed, with a basic home page offering video and music functions. You can add more apps from the Google Play store, including BBC iplayer, Netflix and so on, or elsewhere. We installed Kodi and it ran smoothly.
The catch is that you’re running apps mainly designed for touchscreen devices without a touchscreen, so some functions can be hard to access. Some rival boxes such as the Nvidia Shield TV (£170, see Issue 495, page 26) or Amazon’s Fire TV 4K (£79, see Issue 462, page 23) would have its own version of major apps for a more polished experience. But if you want something that’s affordable and open to tinkering, the Trongle is a good deal.
You can watch content from Netflix and iplayer, and run Kodi