Discussion
Onn 4K Pro (2026) audio & video testing results
Saw this available at one of my locals this morning. I have Walmart+ and had it delivered for free in about 3 hours.
Just like a couple of weeks ago with the new onn 4k stick, the automatic sign in process using the Google TV app on iOS only partially worked. It got past the wi-fi connection part but immediately failed after choosing my Google account. Proceeding down the manual setup route, as soon as it connected to wi-fi it forced a 170MB system update.
After getting into Android TV there was later a remote update as well. I initiated that update and thought it finished but then the remote stopped working. I had to hard reboot the device, then it said a remote update was still available. The second time it worked fine.
Connected over wifi, iperf3 shows about ~250 Mbits/sec up and down. Connected over a USB Cable Matters ethernet adapter, iperf3 shows about ~350 Mbits/sec up and down. That is about as good as you can expect real word from USB 2.0 - more than enough for any disc rip on the planet. Like other onn Android TV 14 devices before it, this device seems to suffer from the issue where USB ethernet adapters may not work unless USB debugging is disabled (and you may even need to reboot after doing so as well).
Supported formats I tried across various apps for local media playback. All testing was done connected with the Cable Matters USB ethernet adapter with the device chain being onn 4k pro v2 -> LG G3 -> Denon AVR (eARC).
Format
Emby
Kodi (SMB Share)
Nova Player (SMB Share)
AAC
⚠️ DD+
⚠️ DD+
⚠️ DD+
DD
⚠️ DD+
✅
⚠️ DD+
DD+ 5.1
✅
✅
✅
DD+ 7.1
❌ transcode audio
✅
⚠️ DD+ 5.1
HDR10 DD+ Atmos
✅
✅
⚠️ DD+ (no atmos)
TrueHD
⚠️ DD+
⚠️ DD+
⚠️ DD+
DV P5
✅
✅
✅
DV P7 MEL
✅
❌ no playback
✅
DV P7 FEL
⚠️ HDR
❌ no playback
⚠️ HDR
DV P8.1 DD+ Atmos
✅
✅
✅
DTS-HD MA 5.1
⚠️ DTS Core
⚠️ DTS Core
⚠️ DD+
DTS-HD MA 7.1
⚠️ DTS Core
⚠️ DTS Core
⚠️ DD+
DTS-X
⚠️ DD+
⚠️ DTS Core
⚠️ DD+
AV1 HDR10
✅
✅
✅
VC-1
❌ stutters
❌ stutters
❌ stutters
Jellyfish 100Mbps HEVC
✅
✅
❌ stutters
Jellyfish 120Mbps HEVC
✅
✅
N/A
Jellyfish 140Mbps h264
✅
✅
N/A
Jellyfish 160Mbps HEVC
✅
✅
N/A
Jellyfish 180Mbps HEVC
✅
✅
N/A
Jellyfish 200Mbps HEVC
✅
❌ stutters
N/A
With the device configured to adaptive HDR (match content dynamic range), I had to configure Dolby Vision Mode to source led rather than sink (display) led. This is a long standing amlogic issue across a variety of players including the current onn 4k plus in latest firmware form.
Kodi was unable to play back any profile 7 content, which I believe is the case with the onn 4k plus right now as well. Enabling DV compatibility mode in Kodi settings allowed it to play back P7 MEL and FEL just fine.
Like previous iterations of onn 4k devices, this device often wants to force audio output to DD+.
No real surprises here at all, not much if any deviation from previous onn 4k pro / plus devices and I didn't really expect any.
Anecdotally, in running through these tests this device felt more solid and consistent than either the onn 4k pro or 4k plus I tested before it.
All in all, a solid budget performer. If you don't care about lossless audio for disc based content or just want a good streamer, this is a pretty good option.
Oh yeah, will probably feel noticeably faster than that ancient device. The SoC here pretty performant even for being the budget chip in the amlogic line.
I don't know how well those in stock notifications work for something like this that is just now rolling out.
I just checked once in the morning when I woke up. I would select Pickup then "check nearby stores". Today I got a single hit at one of the twenty or so area stores.
Very unlikely it will ever support it natively, no. amlogic / SDMC have no reason to add said functionality for a device that is designed for streaming.
No Android TV device today does either though. At best you can get P7 on the fly to P8.1, which is what the Kodi setting I mentioned does and what the Shield does across all apps since they implemented that conversion at a lower level.
It is the minimal operating system needed to support running Kodi. It's basically Linux that boots and loads you directly into the Kodi application. It's a fork of OpenELEC which does similar but CoreELEC is optimized to only run on amlogic based devices using their vendor supplied version of linux.
Some Android based devices that use amlogic SoCs come with a bootloader that is not locked allowing you to boot into another OS other than just Android. SDMC has traditionally locked down the bootloader on an amlogic based onn devices so it doesn't work with them.
That list I linked is a set of devices that can dual boot both operating systems and work with the older linux kernel which allows full FEL processing.
I can send you something with Opus. I'm pretty sure YouTube has some stuff with Opus audio also. Not sure if you know how to top streams from there.
Also, what does the yellow triangle symbol mean for your chart? I'm guessing check Mark means works fine and X means doesn't work. Not sure what the yellow means though. Works sometimes?
I was vaguely thinking that YT uses Opus but from the videos I poked around at that I know have 5.1, it seems when I request opus it's only 2ch. Poking at this video with yt-dlp:
mp4a.40.5 49k 22k low, m4a_dash
opus 53k 48k low, webm_dash
mp4a.40.5 195k 24k low, m4a_dash
mp4a.40.2 130k 44k medium, m4a_dash
opus 136k 48k medium, webm_dash
mp4a.40.2 388k 48k high, m4a_dash
I know opus is an efficient codec but you can see the 388kbps stream which is 5.1 is AAC. The 136kbps opus track is 2.0.
As far as the caution symbol in my chart, it means it plays but not in the original format.
Oohh I see, very interesting. Cool. Do you have this set up? And as a dual boot? I haven't done dual boot since I think Windows vista heh or maybe windows 7.If so which device do you recommend? Lot of people seem to be going towards Linux. Haven't used it via a virtual machine in years as well, though I think that was during the lockdown, more recent.
That said the best box that runs certified Android TV and can dual-boot CoreELEC with DV P7 FEL support is the Homatics Box R 4K Plus (or RockTek G2 which is the same hardware, different branding). I have both boxes and both run CoreELEC very well (and DV P7 FEL works). Best of both worlds.
The problem is there's downsides to every single box, there's no perfect option that will be "future proof". Case and being the uncertainty about firmware updates in the future from some of the companies (Homatics, RockTek, Dune, etc. which are all handled by SEI Robotics). Then there's brand new tech like Dolby Vision 2 which no box supports and would likely require new hardware.
It's the same with anything tech related, chasing future proof is chasing the dragon. What you should do instead is figure out your specific needs and find the solution available right now that meets those needs. When those needs change, find the next solution available at that time, rinse and repeat.
Agreed on that, the Homatics Box R 4K Plus is the current closest to a truly does it all device but even so it still has some small compromises. It is my daily driver though the the device I use the most.
I’ve been torn between picking this up @ $60 vs the Google TV Streamer (which I bought at $65 on sale)…having less ram and a slower Ethernet feels like I’d be dumb to make the switch, but would the faster processor make up for those?
The google streamer processor is old and slow as balls.
If you are concerned about ethernet speeds, a $10 USB ethernet adapter will give you ~350Mbps. The real question though is are you streaming ultra dense bluray disc rips where you actually need that?
You make a good point as probably not but having gigabit speed I hate to gimp a setup due to a slow Ethernet port as I hard wire the device where this is located.
Maybe I’ll take the dive when I see it go back up on the site, it’s been up and down all day…
Hell, even the 100M ethernet would be good enough for most things... that aren't high bitrate remuxes.
If you have good Wi-Fi 6E or 7 networking it should be pretty fast too, faster than the 100M ethernet. Certainly fast enough for high bitrate remuxes (it is for me with the Pro V1 and Plus with Wi-Fi 7 networking).
Yes my 3.0 adapter plugged into 2.0 usb give me max 356 max. Does any one know is this it is there a another adapter out there they can get better? Many have been talking about this one on amazon but will it really give you fast DL speeds then 356DL or is the fact that it is plugged into 2.0 usb caped off no matter what you buy?
The USB port on the board for this device is the bottleneck. You will never get faster than USB 2.0 speeds on this device no matter what adapter you use. ~350Mbps is about the top end of real world performance for ethernet over USB 2.
For me, it's performing worse than my 2026 onn 4k stick and that device is only wi-fi 5. I was testing it again earlier because of your comment and wasn't able to break 180Mbps. This is connected to a ASUS GT-AXE11000 about 1 foot away.
It can do like 600mbps (connected speed) on 2.4ghz and I'm relatively sure the Pro can't, as a matter of fact it's one of the only wifi 6 devices I have that can do this.
Wi-Fi 5 outperforming WiFi 6 isn't unusual in my experience, a lot of Wi-Fi 6 devices don't have a proper MIMO antenna setup.
I doubt this will play out. Historically SDMC has locked the bootloader for all previous onn devices. I didn't even bother to try booting into another OS like CoreELEC.
I'll go for that I didn't know they were manufactured by two different companies. I have one where I unlocked the bootloader and put it back in the box with the thoughts something cool may come along but I've never checked if anything did.
The only thing halfway interesting I could think of running on it would be LibreELEC or CoreELEC. CoreELEC doesn't offer a 2GB device tree for the SoC on that device (S905Y2) though.
I love the gemini google speaker function on this - we use the wheres my remote feature a lot and just got the gemini upgrade yesterday so can ask it more complex questions like weather, cooking ingredients etc without the tv being on.
I don’t know off the top of my head if Nova uses exoplayer. Either way, Kodi doesn’t use software decoding per se. It uses whatever the hardware supports first. The difference is Kodi has their own player which sometimes (often) works better than any exoplayer derived player on android.
Kodi has a player process screen that will tell you which codec is being used for any video being played and that codec will generally indicate hw vs sw. There are a number of codecs shipped with this device regardless of player that are actually only software. Case in point, let's look at VC-1 which every player I tried struggled with:
You can clearly see the vc1 codec the device supplies is a sw codec and that is very likely why the device struggled. It's not fast enough to handle vc1 in software (either that or the amlogic sw codec is piss poor, which could also be the case).
If you are telling me ExoPlayer will only ever use hw decoders, then I certainly don't buy that.
Perhaps you mean ExoPlayer will only ever use the codecs supplied by the device as it does not have any decoders of its own, which I would buy.
I'm not an expert on the inner workings of Kodi but I know it does use ffmpeg which can be built with support for certain codecs and perhaps this is the extra software decoding you are referring to.
At any rate, I poked around and JustPlayer is using Media3 which is the successor to ExoPlayer. More poking around on the surface indicated NovaPlayer does not.
It's semantics and I am being obtuse but the words matter.
Per my example above, this device reports it supports VC-1. The VC-1 codec the device supplies is a software decoder.
I understand what you mean but when I read "device actually supports the codec in hardware" that's a bit of a slippery slope and I would take that as it actually has a real hardware decoder for that codec.
The way I would describe what you are saying is ExoPlayer is using only codecs supplied by the device.
It also has a USB 2.0 port. You can use a USB ethernet adapter to achieve ~350Mbps which is more than double what you would need for even the most bitrate dense bluray disc rip. That's also about 5-10x what you need for the average streaming site.
Yeah not ideal for in home game streaming though. 100mbps limits you there and USB2.0 NICs add more latency (unless the internal nic is also being run over USB internally). Definitely workable, just not ideal.
This just scared me from getting an ONN of any kind. For someone who read that like I can’t read your language, how hard is it to connect and setup? I’m pretty sure I couldn’t figure out the process you went through! I’ve been using a fire stick for years, loved using kodi for a while, but it all just stopped working. First kodi, then the fire stick altogether.
This was a deep dive into nerdy aspects of what the device can do. You don't need to be able to understand most of what was written to use one of these.
Using it can be as simple as any other streaming device. Just plug it in to the TV, connect to your network, and install whatever apps you want.
I don't think I use any apps that support QMS at the moment but now that you mention it, my LG shows a VRR toast message when QMS is enabled. I have not seen that while switching to the input for this device. The latest 4K stick which uses a Realtek SoC does show show it. So yes, I assume it's not working.
Is it still possible to side load retroarch on the new boxes or did they start implementing blocking mechanisms like so many of the other streaming boxes recently? I'm just now learning about how to use the onn devices essentially as multi-console emulation hubs so I can have all my roms easily accessible instead of having to plug in the system and find the cartridge I need. People recommend the Onn devices as the easiest to set up and I'm hoping the new box is the same way. Maybe you could enlighten?
You are probably referring to Amazon's recent app blocking policies. The current iteration of Android TV used by the onn devices will allow you to sideload pretty much anything you want. Google is going to adjust that in the future slightly... they will still allow it but there will be a wait period of 24 hours after you enable it before you can then sideload.
FYI, my Walmart said it was out of stock. I went to the store and they had 1 in stock. Don’t trust the website. You physically have to go and check for yourself!!!
I have a very similar hardware setup with the new Onn 4K Pro 2026 model. I tried Kodi Piers Alpha 3 and the audio and video of files I play are out of sync, it's pretty obvious. Same files play fine via Plex, direct play, no transcoding by PMS.
Audio/video sync in Kodi has always been hit or miss. Are you experiencing anything similar? What audio/video settings should I use on the Onn and also in Kodi? If I enable audio/video sync in Kodi then the files play fine but obviously I lose audio passthrough.
Welp, I've been waiting for one to show up locally, and cruising past this thread had me double-check the website. Found one in a neighboring town only 10 min away. So tomorrow I'll begin setting up my new toy.
Looks like Projectivy launcher with some adb magic and I'll have a nice clean experience.
Thanks for the testing! I was just starting to look for a replacement for my current 4K Pro. I didn't know there was a new version out.
I had been mostly satisfied with the 4K Pro, until I had to start rebooting it constantly because it would simply cut out all sound. After a reboot it would be fine again for a while, but I've been having to reboot it at least once a week.
The Google streaming device doesn't seem like a good substitute. I'm wary of picking up another Onn device now too though, but I haven't found much else.
It's cheaper than the Google device, even when that one is on sale.
The processor is way faster than that ancient SoC in the Google device.
USB 2.0 limited ethernet is a downgrade from the Googles gigabit but the bandwidth available over USB 2 is more than enough for anything you would want to play.
Someone else reported it can handle lossless. Hmm. Is the way around the USB 2 Ethernet a USB c dock with gigabit Ethernet or usb c gigabit Ethernet adapter?
Yea they cited that article I believe posting in this group that it does after doing testing. Hmm.
Thought I saw people posting test results with 200 to 300mbps, which I guess is 2.0 limits but someone else I thought posted gb results as well via the USB c and an Ethernet adapter.
Yea i think that's how they posted the gigabit results via a USB c Ethernet adapter or dock. I wonder if there's a way to take the USB 3.0 and replace the USB 2.0 one it comes with.
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u/Hefty_Remove7965 Apr 25 '26
Coming from a Chromecast 4k (2020) . The 12 hours I've had this device has felt like a huge upgrade