A closer look at the Pivos XIOS DS
Opening up the box you get your standard affair of accessories. The Xios DX , a remote, HDMI cable, power brick and instruction manual round out the accessories. Nothing super exciting but the addition of a HDMI cable is a nice touch.
The unit itself is a nice little square with an android on top of the case. I have to say that this unit is not a pivos-only design and there are near identical versions floating around out there with the same hardware and accessories. I was somewhat disapointed to see that this was the case especially since the price was really close to being half as cheap. Of course you don’t get the same support, but if going from a hardware-only standpoint the Pivos needs work at its pricerange.
The size really allows it to be placed pretty much anywhere. Since it is roughly the size of a cell-phone it fits perfectly in a home theatre setup. Throughout my testing it fit nicely on top of my HTPC and looked tiny even when comared with an external DVD drive.
Operating System
The Xios DS ships with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich if you get the newer hardware revision. Older units ship with Android 2.3 Gingerbread but have the ability to easily update to 4.0. My unit came with the most updated ICS build and comes with instructions on how to update to a newer revision if your box is not at the newest revision out of the box.
One of the best things about the OS on this device is that it comes rooted out of the box. For those who do not know what rooting means. it basically means the operating system is unlocked in an administrator mode. It allows you to make changes to system files and install add-ons that cannot normally be installed in Android. I was able to just go to the play store and install SuperSU without any hoops to jump through.
The OS is bare-bones stock with the Xios DS. No touchwiz, sense UI or whatever other companies install on their boxes. One thing I felt lacking was the apps that are installed. Many of the normal google apps that are normally installed on most android devices are not there out of the box. Pretty much every google app can be installed though if you feel like going into the play store and downloading them.
XMBC
A huge feature of the Xios DS is that it natively supports XMBC. If you have not heard of XMBC it is basically an easy to use interface for watching videos and managing multimedia. It is more geared toward a home-theatre experience where it is easy to browse videos and other media forms using a single remote control. The Xios DS does not actually come with XMBC installed when you first turn it on, but there is a card that gives instructions on how to download it and how to install it. As long as you’ve got a computer it is pretty easy to throw the .apk file onto a micro SD card and then install XMBC to the Xios DS.
Media Playback
To test the Xios DS I loaded up an External USB 3.0 hard drive full of 1080p and 720p mp4 and MKV Blu-ray movie rips. Watching movie files is a good experience with this device. I never had any slowdowns or hickups playing back mp4 or MKV files. No matter the quality of the disk rip everything seemed like a good experience. Quality is as good as running the files on a much more powerful HTPC. Sound quality was good as well. I tested the Pivos hooked into my Onkyo reciever and speaker setup and could not tell any difference in sound quality from my HTPC over HDMI. If you want to use this device to watch Netflix on the Pivos look elsewhere with the updated hardware revision (pretty much all devices ship with the updated hardware as of now unless you can find a retailer with old stock). Pandora and Spotify apps also encountered lag and various issues such as not being able to see album art. After a few seconds of lag (this can range from 10-60 seconds) songs do eventually play but this is hardly an ideal situation.
Web Browsing
No matter which browser I used everything seemed to lag a bit with the Pivos DS. Firefox, chrome, and the deafult browser gave a medicore browsing performance. Although the hardware in the Xios DS should be more than enough for web browsing it still manages to come up short even when compared to phones that use nearly identical hardware such as a Samsung Galaxy S2.
