Dangbei Box H1 review: only priced at 299, it can bring the 4K HDR and HIFI experience that only flagship TVs have

Although the smart TV industry has continued to be popular in the past two years, considering that the lifespan of a TV can easily be five or ten years, there must still be many traditional TVs on the market that only support digital signals.

In order to meet the needs of this group of people for decentralized, full-platform content, Dangbei, which focuses on large-screen content, has brought us a "bridge-oriented" product - the TV box.

At the end of April 2020, the new generation of Dangbei Box H1 came out. Compared with the previous generation of products, H1 has undergone a comprehensive upgrade in both appearance and performance. More importantly, after adding functions such as 4K HDR, wireless screen projection, and voice control, Dangbei Box H1 will no longer be limited to the "bridge" function, but may give traditional TVs a new form.

Family-style rounded rectangular appearance

Overall, the Dangbei Box H1 continues the family-style design of Dangbei products, made of frosted plastic, with the Dangbei logo printed in the middle of the body. Although the appearance of the Dangbei Box H1 is very plain and elegant at first glance, considering that this is a product placed in the living room, the versatile and simple design direction is undoubtedly the right direction.

On the front and right sides of the body, Dangbei Box H1 has a black strip at the golden section point. On the one hand, this strip can enhance the dynamic feel of the entire body, and on the other hand, it can also receive WiFi and Bluetooth signals. It is a perfect combination of function and design.

In terms of interfaces, Dangbei Box H1 has 3.5mm headphone, HDMI, USB and power interfaces from left to right, which can basically cover most of the interface needs in our daily life.

It is worth noting that the dimensions of the Dangbei Box H1 are only 95mmX95mmX16mm, but the weight reaches 145g, which is quite heavy when held in the hand. From this angle, it can also be seen that the materials used in the Dangbei Box H1 are indeed sincere.

Similar to its simple appearance, the connection of Dangbei Box H1 is also very convenient. When using it, we only need to connect the Dangbei Box H1 to the power supply, and then connect the box and the large screen respectively via HDMI high-definition cable, and then we can use Dangbei Box H1. Whether it is the elderly or children, it can be easily done.

In short, Dangbei has fully considered the application scenarios and target audiences of H1. Therefore, from the perspective of consumers, on the one hand, it has tried its best to "de-box" it, and on the other hand, it has simplified the connection method, allowing consumers to focus on the large-screen optimization and massive content provided by H1 - and content and interaction are the biggest advantages of Dangbei Box H1.

Performance is close to flagship TV

Generally speaking, influenced by product positioning and size, the most direct product orientation of most TV boxes is to bring intelligent experience to traditional TVs, but Dangbei is no longer satisfied with this.

In terms of configuration, the Dangbei Box H1 is equipped with a HiSilicon quad-core 64-bit processor, Samsung 2GB+26GB storage, supports 2.4G/5G dual-band WiFi, and also adds low-power Bluetooth 4.2 technology.

Thanks to its powerful hardware, Dangbei Box H1 can easily achieve 4K HDR in terms of picture quality. In terms of sound effects, Dangbei Box H1 can achieve HIFI-level stereo audio electrical signal output. According to Dangbei’s official introduction, the bottom noise of H1 is even less than 10uVRMS, and the smoothness of the frequency response 20-20KHz curve is higher than 95%.

In actual experience, we connected the Dangbei Box H1 to a 4K TV to play 4K video content. We found that the 4K content presented by the Dangbei Box H1 has no delay, the color and saturation are very rich, and the sound is also very layered.

Although it is just a "box-type" product, combining the configuration and actual testing, it can be found that the Dangbei Box H1 is not just a TV box in the popular sense, but more like a "high-performance brain" that is composed of the core configurations of flagship TVs. Because of this, it can bring out the full strength of traditional TVs on the basis of acquiring content.

Don’t worry if you can’t find the remote control, your phone will help you find it

Different from traditional smart TVs that only support remote control, Dangbei Box H1 brings us the functions of mobile phone remote control and voice remote control based on mobile Internet and emerging technologies.

If you want to use the mobile phone remote control, you only need to download the Dangbei Remote Control App, open the application, and then connect to the Dangbei Box H1 via WiFi. In addition to conventional control, Dangbei has also added new features such as "remote home watching", "message board", and "remote video push" for mobile phone remote control. Taking the "message board" function as an example, you only need to send a message on the mobile phone, and the TV will display the message after connecting to the Internet, which is convenient for us to communicate with our family.

Interestingly, perhaps realizing that remote controls are often lost, the Dangbei Box H1 has thoughtfully added the FindMe remote control retrieval technology for users. Just click the "Find Remote Control" button on the mobile phone, and the remote control of the Dangbei Box H1 will make a "beeping" sound.

In addition to these conventional interaction methods, intelligent voice is also a highlight of Dangbei Box H1. When actually using it, we only need to press and hold the voice button on the Dangbei Box H1 remote control and state our needs, such as "I want to watch Stephen Chow's movies." Dangbei Box H1 can automatically find Stephen Chow's movies and present them to us, helping us to access content or services with one click.

Looking at the three interaction methods of Dangbei Box H1 remote control, mobile phone remote control, and intelligent voice, we can find that Dangbei is obviously aware of the inefficiency of traditional remote controls in space and time, and thus has built a full-dimensional, full-scenario interaction method. More importantly, Dangbei Box H1 does not allow these three interaction methods to develop in isolation, but rather interweaves them. For example, a smartphone can find the remote control, and the remote control can wake up the intelligent voice. Therefore, this can greatly improve the efficiency of users using the TV.

It has all the resources you want.

When talking about a TV, the most important issue is the richness of the content - and the first reason we buy TV boxes is the lack of content on traditional TVs.

According to Dangbei, Dangbei Box H1 covers multiple video platforms such as iQiyi, Tencent, and Youku, with more than 80,000 movies, more than 100,000 TV series, and more than 60,000 animations, with a total resource length of up to 7 million hours. It also supports watching top events such as NBA, CBA, and the Champions League, and can almost meet the content needs of all age groups.

More importantly, in order to ensure user experience, Dangbei OS has also proactively abandoned the industry's chronic disease - startup ads. After clicking the power button, Dangbei Box H1 will only display the startup interface without adding any annoying ads.

Of course, no matter how rich the content library is, Dangbei Box H1 may not be able to meet some personalized content needs. In order to solve this problem, Dangbei Box H1 has also added a wireless screen projection function.

For example, if we want to play mobile games on the big screen, we can directly cast the mobile games to the big screen through the screen projection of Dangbei Box H1, which cleverly expands the content library of the TV from the user's perspective.

Summarize

Although TV boxes are not a popular device at present and most products on the market are oriented towards "market share", Dangbei still sees the contradiction between consumer demand and the lack of content. Through top-level technology, it has brought users "brain" products comparable to flagship TVs.

From a market perspective, we can clearly feel the vitality of Dangbei Box H1 - after only 20 days of sales, it ranked third on JD.com's online box sales ranking, leaving its competitors far behind.

Therefore, if you have a traditional TV at home and want to turn it into a smart device, then Dangbei Box H1 is definitely the best choice.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.