So first of all, let's make one thing clear. with two young kids and no help (it's just me and my wife),my time is extremely limited so this is not going to be a full super detailed review, it makes no sense to replicate few absolutely amazing reviews already done
I will try to provide my own experiences and opinions, some may replicate or contradict above reviews.
My current media client is Amlogic 905X based Khadas Vim Pro (gen 1) unit with 2gb ram and 16gb storage. What I did with it, is installed 3rd party LibreElec OS which is very thin Linux layer only meant to start a Kodi software platform.
Here are some of the differences from Khadas Vim to Zidoo Z9S media clients:
- Z9S comes with similar ARM Cortex A53 architecture SOC but made by Realtek but has a faster video processor
- 1Gig network interface vs 100Mbps
- More powerful Wifi chip with dedicated dual WiFi antennas
- A Bundled full remote with some learning functions (this is not full blown universal remote) - with Khadas vim remote is optional and not learning
- Very nicely machined aluminum case on z9s vs flimsy clear plastic on KV
- DC Power supply is bundled vs optional on KV
- More USB ports and 2x SATA ports
- Biggest differences though would be with bundled software. Zidoo GUI looks much more polished and offers several easy to use apps for configurations, media playback, and file management.
- GUI and all apps are very responsive and never noticed any GUI lag.
- Price
After a quick initial setup, I fired up bundled
Home Theater app, made to be somewhat of replacement of Kodi - it does the job mostly but falls short in few places, more noticeably scanning of my movies folder on NFS share (a breeze to add btw) is crashing the application. You could see the last movie/file name it was scanning and do a custom scan, skipping that file, but it is a clumsy way and I didn't bother with it after making one exception and the second time it crashed on another movie in my library.
Installing ZDMC (Kodi 17.6) isn't hard, just a quick download from Zidoo website, but the installation of it is possible either from web remote install (didn't work well for me, possibly due to an issue with Flash) but did work with a USB install. Wish file share source for install of apps would be an option. I added the official Plex client without issues, but the playback in Plex was choppy (it's not choppy on my KV/Kodi/Plex box). It's probably an easy fix, but I haven't had a chance to fiddle more with it.
One minor point: Guys at Zidoo - At this price point of "premium" media client target, don't shy away from including the AAA batteries for the remote.
So far I had only very limited time with the device and I'll add later on.