The Tronsmart Orion R68 is Tronsmart’s first Rockchip RK3368-powered TV box. Coming in two versions, rhe Pro packs in 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage whilst the Meta features 2GB of RAM and 16Gb of onboard storage. But the question is how does it perform? Read on to find out in our Tronsmart Orion R68 review.
I want to say thanks to GeekBuying for providing me a Tronsmart Orion R68 Meta sample to review.
Check Price at GeekBuyingTronsmart Orion R68 Technical Specifications
- Operating System: Android 5.1
- Chipset: Rockchip RK3368
- CPU: Octacore Cortex A53 processor @ 1.5 GHz
- GPU: PowerVR G6110
- Memory: 1 (Pro) or 2GB (Meta) DDR3
- Internal Storage: 8 (Pro) or 16Gb (Meta) eMMC + Micro SD card slot (up to 32GB)
- Connectivity: 10/100M Ethernet, 2.4GHz (Pro) or Dual Band (Meta) 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
- Audio/Video Output: HDMI 2.0, SP-DIF
- Interfaces: 3 x USB 2.0, 1 x micro USB OTG
- Power Supply: DC 5V/2A
- Other: IR Sensor, Power button
- Dimensions: 119 x 119 x 23mm
What’s in the Box?
Inside the box, the Tronsmart Orion R68 comes with:
- 1x Tronsmart Orion R68 TV box
- 1x Power adapter
- 1x HDMI cable
- 1x IR Remote Control
- 1x Micro USB OTG Cable
- 1x English instruction manual
Tronsmart Orion R68 Initial Impressions
The Tronsmart Orion’s design isn’t anything new. Borrowing liberally from their previous designs, the Orion R68 is a minimalist black square that blends in rather than stands out.
The ports are located on both the rear and side of the unit. On the back, from left to right, we have the power button, DC in, a USB port, HDMI, Ethernet and optical audio.
The side of the device houses an SD card slot, 2 fullsize USB ports and a micro USB OTG port.
Powering up the Tronsmart Orion R68 is done via its power button. A cold boot takes around 32 seconds whilst resuming from standby is instant.
The Tronsmart Orion R68 runs Android 5.1 and Tronsmart have kept the customisation to a minimum. There are a couple of preinstalled apps such as eHome Media Center, Netflix and Kodi 14.2. They’ve also added OTA update functionality, however, there weren’t any updates available during my initial tests.
Navigating through Android feels great and apps seemed to load quickly, making it a pleasure to use.
Playing back some 1080p H.264 and H.265 samples via Kodi seemed to play fine.
Wifi performance generally seemed good. I had no issues streaming 1080p video samples from an NFS share. My 4K samples did experience some minor buffering at the start of the video but this could be due to wifi congestion. Watching YouTube in HD wasn’t an issue at all.
Gaming on the RK3368 was identical to the Beelink i68 which is great. Both Jetpack Joyride and Beach Buggy Racing played well at 1080p, even with Beach Buggy Racing’s graphical settings on maximum.
Brief benchmarks using Antutu returned a score of 37160, whilst Epic Citadel scored 58.6 FPS at 1080p on the High Quality test.
Verdict So Far
The Tronsmart Orion R68 is certainly looking promising at this stage. Thanks to its powerful internals, it was able to blitz my gaming tests and the most common codecs played back well.
Getting One
You can purchase the Tronsmart Orion R28 from GeekBuying.
Check Price at GeekBuying
I don’t understand why these boxes capable of 4K don’t have Gigabit ethernet ports. Even the cheapest nastiest routers have Gigabit as standard. I’ve seen on my older WDTV Live network speeds approaching 100Mbits streaming uncompressed 1080 BR rips.
Yeah, I agree – gigabit should really be standard these days. Although the Tronsmart Orion R68, like the Beelink i68, were meant to have gigabit but the first batch only had 10/100 (which means my test units). New versions should be gigabit.
Ok thanks, buyer beware then, wait until old stock is depleted before buying.
Yeah, worth asking the seller which version they have.
Yeah but Michael every week I think I’ve made my mind up on which device to replace my WDTV’s with I visit here and something even more tempting has just been reviewed (not saying that as a bad thing). Keep up the great work.
Lol. I can definitely sympathize! Thanks for the support!
There is a new firmware coming for the Orion r68, fixed the Netflix problem, and add rooted, you may want to try and update the review:
http://www.tronsmart.com/?p=3521
Hi Eric,
Thanks for letting me know. I got the OTA notification last night and can confirm Netflix is now working.
The whole process was painless.