INTRODUCTION

   Watching movies and series on a large TV screen and in the best possible quality is something I’ve liked ever since i can remember. For good or bad my generation grew up with VHS tapes and later on laser discs so unfortunately since high quality in movies and series is something that really started to be possible in the late 90's with the appearance of the first DVD players that wasn't really possible. Now it did take a while for the first Blu-ray and HD-DVD players to make their appearance after the DVD ones and make it possible for people to watch HD and Full HD content on their TV screens (that's history now since Blu-Ray won the Full HD race years ago / still have my HD-DVD players however) but after that things changed rapidly and so now not only do we have 4k hardware and content available but manufacturers are even working on bringing 6k and 8k hardware to the masses as well. Rikomagic is one of the newest yet well-established network media player manufacturers in the market and since they released their first 4k compatible HDMI dongle called the V5 we just had to check it out.

   We were pioneers of the Android Mini PC concept and were the first Android Mini PC provider. Based in Shenzhen, China, Rikomagic aims to revolutionize the digital media player market. Our Research and Development team has extensive expertise in consumer electronics products and the development of network media players. Our core strength remains focused around Android PCs and Android Mini PCs, where we have a great deal of experience. Rikomagic has been at the forefront of the development of multimedia, internet connected devices which truly transform TVs into home entertainment centers. The combination of our forward-looking market research, proven technological expertise and acumen, innovation, and our mature and efficient development process has given us industry-wide recognition. We differentiate ourselves by the quality, value and sophistication of our products. Our customers trust the RKM brand to enhance their entertainment experience, and we always strive to exceed their expectations.

   For the V5 Rikomagic has used the latest Rockchip RK3288 Cortex-A17 ARM SoC (System On Chip / 28nm process) which features 4 cores clocked up to 1.8GHz along with the Quad Core Mali-T764 ARM 3D GPU clocked at 600MHz (supports DirectX 11, OpenCL, OpenCL 1.1, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenVG 1.1), 2GB DDR3 RAM, 16GB of onboard storage and HDMI v2.0 (3840x2160 max resolution supported). Thanks to the above specifications the V5 has the ability to playback even 4k H.264/H.265 10bits encoded content without breaking a sweat (always according to Rikomagic). The V5 also comes ready with Bluetooth v4.0, Dual Band WiFi (2.4/5GHz - 802.11 b/g/n), Gigabit RJ45 slot (10/100/1000M), microSD card slot, two USB ports (Host/OTG) and support for a webcam (needless to say that the V5 also features keyboard and mouse support). So is this the to go to network media player for most people on a budget?