Xiaomi TV Stick 4K is official with Android TV 11 and AV1 support

Xiaomi has sold affordable Android TV devices for a few years now, from the Mi Box series to the cheaper Mi TV Stick. Back in September, an updated version of the TV Stick was spotted at the FCC, and now it has been made official. Following Xiaomi’s announcement from August that its future products wouldn’t use the ‘Mi’ brand, the new device is simply called the Xiaomi TV Stick 4K.

Xiaomi seemingly hasn’t published a product announcement for the new TV Stick, but a product page has appeared on the company’s global website (via Android TV Guide). It looks exactly like the FCC photos from earlier this year, with the stick and remote sharing the same black design. The remote has two branded buttons, one for Prime Video and one for Netflix, but those could vary by location/country.

The main upgrade this time around is 4K playback, as the earlier Mi TV Stick was only capable of 1080p video. That makes the Xiaomi TV Stick 4K a viable competitor to the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and Chromecast with Google TV, complete with Android TV 11 and hardware decoding support for AV1 and VP9. Xiaomi didn’t specify exactly which SoC is used, but previous leaks pointed to the Amlogic S905Y4, which matches Xiaomi’s “Quad-core Cortex-A35” description.

Even though this is an upgrade over the older Mi TV Stick, there are still some downsides. Xiaomi didn’t include an SD card slot or extra USB port, so there’s no easy way to add storage — you’ll have to live with just 8GB of internal storage. The stick is also running Android TV 11 and not the latest release, but considering Google only released Android TV 12 this month, that’s probably to be expected.

It’s not clear when (or where) the Xiaomi TV Stick 4K will be available to purchase. It will presumably be around the same price as the previous stick, which is $54.99 in the United States and ₹2,999-3,499 in India.