We talked about the HiSilicon Hi3798C V200 SoC this year on MiniPCDB and it looks like we'll still be talking about it for a while.

As I mentioned on our Egreat A5 announcement article, choosing the Hi3798C V200 SoC for the newest Egreat "flagship" Mini PC is looking to be a great move so far (in any case, much better than the RTD1195 SoC Egreat bet on last year).

So, we have a powerful SoC on a device designed and launched by one of the well-known media players manufacturer from China - would this device meet the expectations? This is the question we'll try to answer on our detailed review.
Today we start with the unboxing.

I would like to thank Egreat for kindly offering the Egreat A5 for a review. The device is available for sale right now on GeekBuying - use coupon code PUCNMXCE to get $70 off.

Egreat A5 unboxing

As you can see in the pictures, the device is a bit larger than most devices we've seen lately, and the first clue about it's size is given by the giftbox.

Egreat A5 comes with a giftbox that shares the visual identity with the Egreat A9 model we've seen more than one year ago - same colors, same falcon and the "Make different" slogan.
We find the most important details about the device right from the box -it's no surprise that Egreat chosed to emphasize the main features as some of them are quite rare on an Android-based TV box.
The box suggests that there might be two versions for this device: one meant for the local (Chinese) market and one slightly different version for the "overseas" markets - so if you plan on buying one from a Chinese retailer you might want to ask about this.

What's inside the box?

Quite a lot, actually! Egreat provides several accessories that will help connecting the device to the buyer's home theater - there's the HDMI cable, the SATA cable to connect the Egreat A5 to an HDD, the coaxial cable (is anyone still using this?), the US/EU power adapter and the standard IR remote (which comes with a "learning function", so it can be taught to turn on/off the TV as well, or to change the input source on the TV or volume, or whatever else the buyer might need).

Egreat A5 is a sturdy device, with a black-painted aluminum casing that would look good in most environments. At this size, I would have expected to have a 2.5'' HDD bay inside, but it doesn't.
Egreat does have another model that can accomodate an HDD internally, the Egreat A10, which we'll probably cover in a future article.
But there's a good outcome from the size and the metal casing - the device should have a good air ventilation, no fans necessary, so no noise and the temperature will be kept at bay.

On top there's an "Egreat" white imprint and the bottom has just the rubber pads and a product label (which was in Chinese, even if the product was labeled as "Egreat A5 EN" version).

There are quite a few ports o the device, and Egreat has spread them effectively, each side has something.

On the front we have the power button and the LED dot-matrix panel, which will display info about the state of the device when powered on.

On the left side we have the Micro SD port, one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 port, so we can easily add there an external HDD and an airmouse adapter.

On the right side we have the external SATA port and another USB 2.0 port.

It's no surprise that most connectors are located on the back - optical, coaxial, AV outputs, the HDMI 2.0 port, Gigabit Ethernet and the wi-fi antenna are all there. There's also a tiny "reset" pinhole next to the DC-in connector.

All in all, the device looks quite promising. The SoC really shines when it comes to supported file formats, the hardware looks sturdy and connector options are quite exhaustive.

We'll come back with another article about Egreat A5 after we put it to the test.

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As usual, if you want anything specific tested, just leave a message.