Xiaomi Launches New Affordable Mi TV Stick in Europe and India

• Xiaomi has presented its new aggressively-priced Mi TV Stick for select markets in Europe and India.
• The new stick could sell a lot in India, where many are missing the means to access streaming platforms.
• Buying a smart TV may be the wiser choice, though, since they’re so inexpensive now.

The streaming services market in India is exploding right now, as huge numbers of people are entering this world of entertainment by taking advantage of various lucrative plans. To be able to enjoy all this content, however, one needs the hardware, and smartphones don’t quite cut it.

For this reason, Xiaomi comes to save the day with a new Mi TV Stick that will turn any TV into a smart TV, able to connect to Netflix, Disney+, or Amazon TV. The stick isn’t exactly a powerhouse, but it doesn’t need to be, and the whole point was to make it affordable anyway.

So, it’s got a quad-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of onboard storage, and it runs Android TV version 9. Xiaomi limited the video output quality to 1080p (FHD) - which should cover most of the TVs that people in India have in their homes.

After all, if you need anything higher than that, your TV should be a smart TV model anyway, so there’s no point in buying a stick. Other than that, the new Mi TV supports dual-band WiFi (2.4 or 5GHz), Bluetooth 4.2, and it’s powered through micro USB.

And here comes the best part, which is the price of the device. In India, it’s set at ₹2,799, which is about $37.4, so this stick should be the cheapest available in the market, excluding no-name offerings. To make it even more alluring, Xiaomi includes a 15-day free trial for ‘Zee5’, a full month of free trial for ‘Hungama Play,’ and a 50% discount for an entire year for ‘Aha Entertainment.’

Xiaomi said the device would land on select European markets too, but the price there will be €39.99 (about $47.4).

Should you buy the new Mi TV Stick then? To be honest, if you are looking to turn an aging TV into a smart TV, you’d better just buy a smart TV right away. Smart TV vendors have dropped the costs so much nowadays that buying TV sticks and set-top boxes isn’t the amazing investment it used to be. This is why more and more people are turning their backs to streaming devices and just pick a smart TV model instead.

Manufacturers of smart TVs managed to bring their prices down dramatically by turning to advertisement profits, having pre-loaded apps, or simply by collecting and selling user viewing preference data. All that said, the people who should actually consider buying Xiaomi’s new Mi TV Stick would be those who travel a lot.