ال Xiaomi TV Stick 4K has a two-tone design with matte and glossy finishes, the latter of which will quickly get covered in scratches. On one side is a microUSB connector for the power cable and an LED indicator for power. The remote is lightweight and comfortable to hold. The design also makes it easy to tell the correct direction without looking.
ال Xiaomi TV Stick 4K runs Android TV 11 with the Google TV interface. The device is powered by what appears to be an Amlogic S805X2 S905Y4 quad-core Cortex-A35 CPU and Mali-G31 MP2 GPU. There is also 2GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, of which about 5.2GB is available to the user.
The new Google TV UI is not radically different from the older Android TV UI. The home screen lets you pin apps, and you can also select “channels” from your installed apps to display content on the home screen. The Discover tab displays suggested content from your installed apps and other apps, and uses your Google account to sync and personalize them. The app shows all installed programs, organized by regular apps and games.
Xiaomi also has its own PatchWall UI that basically does the same thing as the Discover app. Both of these like to show you content from different services.
ال Xiaomi TV Stick 4K‘s settings menu lets you enable a “Match content dynamic range” option, which is off by default. This setting ensures that the device only outputs in HDR when playing HDR content, rather than always in HDR. This is definitely a feature you should enable; the only reason companies like to turn it off is when the TV switches back and forth between HDR and SDR.
Video-wise, the Xiaomi TV Stick 4K supports both HDR10 and Dolby Vision. This covers most of the HDR content on the internet, as a lot of it is now in Dolby Vision, and almost all of it is at least HDR10.
The UI performance on the tested firmware is good. Navigation on the home screen and in the app list is smooth and responsive. Navigation in most apps also feels good. Some parts of the UI cause slowdowns while they load data, such as the Discover tab. Other than that, UI performance was solid even when playing 4K 60fps HDR video.
