If everyone around you is watching Netflix and Showmax, but you’re not ready to pony up for a smart TV, then a set-top box provides a neat solution. South African company Mediabox offers two models: the MBX4K Ranger and the more advanced MBX4K Maverick. Both are lightweight, pocket-sized computers running the Android TV operating system, but the Maverick is slightly larger and has some better specifications.

It supports all the latest video and audio standards so it’s highly compatible with dozens of multimedia formats, and will also work with most PC peripherals including mouses, keyboards, and fast USB 3.0 drives. It also uses the latest AC WiFi standard optimised for streaming media, and has a gigabyte speed LAN port too.

The Maverick boots into Android TV and runs all the mainstream video apps or plays multimedia files across your home network. Connect it to your TV using HDMI and you’re ready to stream. We found the picture quality to be on par with a today’s budget TVs. Of course, while the Maverick will happily play back UHD video files, it doesn’t offer the bells and whistles of sophisticated image processing or the advanced HDR10+ offered on the better TVs. as those picture enhancements would not be visible when played on an older TV, which is what the Mediabox is typically plugged into.

Maximum UHD (4K) output, HDR, Dolby Audio, LAN/WiFi/Bluetooth, 1× HDMI 2.1, 2× USB, Android TV 10, R1 600