At first I would like to thank iconBIT for offering a sample of their Toucan SX Android Mini PC for testing and reviewing.

 

 

About iconBIT:

"iconBIT team is focused on multimedia solutions for content recording, storage, editing and playback: music, photo and video... Our ultimate idea is to integrate effective and easy way an "digital lifestyle" environment around modern open platforms and hardware components. At home, on the road, or while working -- iconBIT didn't push You towards one exact product, but ensures freedom of selection among best possible technologies and solutions, at best price/performance/feature value."

Product Highlights:

Powerful engine with HDMI 1.3 and Ethernet/Wi-Fi network

External Flash/HDD drive connection through standard 3 x USB 2.0

Android 4.0 with Android market

Dolby licensed

IPTV and VoD services

 

Product Hardware:

 

CPU: ARM Cortex A9 2400 DMIPS, 1Ghz

GPU: ARM Mali-400 MP, 2D/3D video core, support OpenGL ES2.0/OpenVG 1.1

VPU: Hardware Full HD 1080p video decoder

APU: Hardware MPEG audio and Dolby Digital decoder

RAM: 1024Mb

ROM: 2048Mb Nand Flash

Hardware Flash accelerator

USB: 3xUSB 2.0

Card Reader: SDHC slot

Video output: HDMI 1.3

Audio output: HDMI 1.3

Network: WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, 100/10M Ethernet

IR Remote Control

 

The new Toucan Nano SX Android Mini PC is shipped inside a small cardboard box, with a photo of the product on the top of the box:

 

 

 

A small product description can be also found on one of the box sides:

 

 

 

On the bottom, we will see the list of Specifications, along with the product ports and remote:

 

 

 

Right after opening the box, we will see the Mini-PC sitting next to the included remote:

 

 

 

The accessories can be found on the bottom layer:

 

 

 

Besides the previously mentioned computer and remote, iconBIT also supplies us with a HDMI cable and a power adapter:

 

 

 

The small adapter is rated on the output 5V, 2000mA and the manufacturer is Shenzen Fujia Appliance Co.:

 

 

A thin jack plug is used to power the device:

 

 

 

The iconBIT remote is pretty simple and easy to use; it does not feature a lot of buttons like the more advanced and expensive models (Toucan Nano SX Plus comes with a gyro QWERTY remote and the Toucan Nano SX Pro has a gyro S-Control remote):

 

 

 

On the bottom side we can see the battery compartment:

 

 

 

The lateral side of the remote comes with the Volume controls, which are quite easy to access:

 

 

 

The Mini PC chassis is covered with a plastic rubberized texture, which is pleasant to the touch, but scratches (mostly in the area of the ports) can be seen quite easily:

 

 

 

The front comes with two activity LEDs, one which signals network activity and the other Status LED tells us the current state of the device:

 

 

 

On the right side we'll find a TF card reader for storage space expansion and two USB 2.0 ports:

 

 

 

On the back, we can locate a LAN port, the third USB 2.0 port, one HDMI and the DC-in port; here we can also find an On/Off button (which is necessary since with the remote we can only place the PC in standby):

 

 

 

The bottom side is covered with rubber material; on the left we can spot a small Reset button:

 

 

The initial firmware the device came with had some bugs so we could not use the product efficiently; with the new update, most of the things have been fixed and we can enjoy the ICS interface. The default installation has a rainbow wallpaper on the desktop and most of the applications can be found when accessing the drawer:

 

 

 

Besides AirDroid and App2SD, the rest of the apps come preinstalled with the firmware like Browser, Calculator, Calendar and so on:

 

 

 

We can navigate through the file system with the ES File Explorer application:

 

 

 

The MoviePlay app also comes with a file browser, through which we can navigate for finding the video files:

 

 

 

 

In the same manner, the Music app comes with an interface that helps us locate the audio files:

 

 

 

The Network app will allow us to find the shared folders inside the local network:

 

 

 

Most of the settings can be modified from the “Settings” app, which looks like on any other Android tablet; besides Wi-Fi, the device can be also be configured for LAN Ethernet:

 

 

 

 

Some of the settings in the “More” tab have remained from mobile phones like “Mobile networks”:

 

 

 

From the “Sound” tab we can choose the Digital audio output signal type:

 

 

Inside the “Display” tab, we can change multiple settings regarding the current wallpaper, resolution, display position, font size and more:

 

 

 

The device can render a maximum resolution of 1080p:

 

 

 

The Storage section will let us see how the storage space is distributed; the device has only 512MB available for applications, which can become full really quickly if we do not offload some of them on a microSD card:

 

 

 

Inside the Apps menu, we will see the currently installed ones, which are stored onto the SD card, the ones active, along with the storage space status bar:

 

 

 

Some more settings regarding passwords, installation of non-Market apps and certificates can be found in the “Security” tab:

 

 

 

We can also adjust different Language & Input settins from the respective menu:

 

 

 

A Factory reset can be performed from the “Backup & reset” tab:

 

 

 

The “Date & time” can be also adjusted from a separate menu:

 

 

 

Miscellaneous options can be set from the Developer options section; one useful option is “Show CPU Usage” and with its help we can see if one of the installed applications is slowing down the system:

 

 

 

 

Finally, in the “About MediaBox” tab, we can see detailed information on the installed software:

 

 

To test out the performances of the mini-PC, we have installed some freeware benchmark applications from the Google Play Store in the internal memory (did not transfer them to the Sdcard). Afterwards, the applications were ran one-by-one, and we recorded the final results; the obtained scores were also compared with the dual-core Samsung Galaxy S2 mobile phone, to see the performance differences.

 

AnTuTu

 

 

 

Basemark GUI

 

 

 

Passmark PerformanceTest

 

 

 

GPUMark

 

 

Even if the CPU is only at 1GHz, the Toucan SX runs decently in most of the applications we have installed; we must be careful though which apps we install since some of them will have processes running in the backgroud which could slow down the system when we need the processing power the most (like playing full HD video). As we could see from the performed benchmarks, the system runs well at the maximum supported resolution, so there is no need to downscale with the impression that everything will start running at a higher fps. However, when putting it next to the Galaxy S2 mobile phone, we can see quite a noticeable performance difference, especially in 3D applications so we won't recommend the Toucan SX for playing games.

 

Not all video players are well optimized for the platform; for example, BS Player Free insists on running in software mode even after applying the necessary patch. mVideoPlayer has a nice Media Center interface and after media indexing we will see the covers of the detected movies on-screen but when playing 1080P content we could observe some hick-ups down the road. On the other hand, MX Player ran flawlessly with anything we thrown at it after enabling hardware decoding.

 

IconBit have also developed a Media Center application; its development is at the beginning and its functionality will be enhanced down the road; for now, the app allows us to play videos and stream radio and video from the Internet. The preloaded content is from Russia but we can always add our own stream links.

 

Here are some app shots:

 

MediaCenter Main Menu

 

 

MediaCenter Explorer

 

 

MediaCenter Video Player

 

 

MediaCenter Settings

 

 

MediaCenter Internet TV

 

 

Media Center Internet Radio

 

 

This Android box supports most of the applications we usually install on our mobile phones with the same OS so we have a large selection of players available like Winamp, Tune In Radio and many more.

 

For navigating we can use the supplied remote but for more advanced activities like chatting, writing on Facebook, we would recommend connecting a regular USB keyboard and mouse to the system.

 

The only disturbing fact about this system is the small space left for installing applications; since the applications also tend to place their caches on the internal storage, we would recommend using a free app which moves the apps from internal storage to a connected microSD card. Be careful though when updating the apps, since after the process they will move back to the internal storage and have to be moved again to external.

 

The Toucan SX is available online for about 129 Euros.

 

The Toucan SX Android Mini PC gets gets our recommendation because of the multitude of applications that we can install, in comparison with the regular, cheaper players on the market.

 

 

I would like to thank again to IconBIT for making this review possible!