I have a Shield pro 2017 that is running really slow with a bunch of issues. The 9.0 update (ads on home screen one) killed performance and now it’s slowly been getting worse. I was thinking of just reformatting but have been looking into debloat it as well ( https://florisse.nl/shield/). Anyone have any other tweaks they’ve done on these? I just use it as a client for Plex and YouTube mainly.
I was thinking of buying the cheapest x86 mini pc on aliexpress and use it with a keyboard to play my totally legal media with mpv. But idk
You’ll want to ensure you get a mini PC with graphics acceleration. The Intel i3-N305 is a good CPU to look for, as are the embedded Ryzen CPUs with onboard graphics.
I was thinking about an inten N3350; way cheaper; plus an N305 would be overkill.
N3350 is 7 years old now, and Intel no longer provide security updates for it, which is why it’s so cheap. AFAIK all the chips are second-hand, extracted from old motherboards.
If you want something cheaper, consider the N5105 or J6412. If you don’t mind using an old CPU then I’d just buy a second-hand small form factor or “tiny” PC off ebay (HP ProDesk or EliteDesk, Lenovo Tiny M series, etc) since that’ll be much better value than a newer mini PC with an old CPU in it.
I guess if I could find one with IR/add IR or just finally get a good remote that would be good. Tbh if it was just me I would have just set up an old sff with a wireless keyboard and be perfectly fine, but my wife likes a streamlined interface that works with our TV remote. I got a k400 a few months ago and have been trying to get that to replace our remote but she doesn’t like it as much. If I could just set up a SoC machine that works with a remote (used Logitech Harmonies at my last job but that was years ago) I think that might be the best compromise. Sorry, started the post about fixing my shield but there is another TV and projector I want to set up right.