[FEATURE] Just got a freshly in Xiaomi Box 3rd Generation Enhanced version. Time for low-high, inside-out on this one of the prettiest Android TV box around (pretty on the inside and outside). First draft as of 14 May 2015.
Buying Xiaomi Box:
Xiaomi Box is officially sold by Xiaomi in China. Globally there is not a second country that Xiaomi is selling the box. This is primarily because the Xiaomi box content (the movies and dramas etc) are only for distribution in China. Xiaomi box is on sale in China for RMB 299 or SGD 60.
You can buying Xiaomi Box in Singapore from the likes of Hardwarezone Forums, Carousell, Sim Lim Square. Of course you can also get it from other sources except for the Singapore Xiaomi website because as mentioned, Xiaomi does not sell Xiaomi officially in Singapore.
Hence all sellers of Xiaomi Box are resellers, they would all earn a margin, and as of 14 May 2015, the best price I have seen is approximately S$100 to S$120. So the math is S$120 – S$60 = $60! Resellers earn S$60 on each unit? No quite.
Resellers also have to pay for shipping from China to Singapore and it’s not a lot, approximately S$7 depending on how much they are bringing in. Finally, usually a Xiaomi Box going for more than S$100 will include other apps pre-installed for you so you get a Xiaomi Box that will work very well for you out of the box.
A Xiaomi box from China will not work out of the box in Singapore. By default, a Xiaomi Box comes with Xiaomi preconfigure channels to watch the national TV and all province channels in China. Those will not work out of the box in Singapore and you find the menu are all in Chinese.
Hence, resellers would provide the additional service to install APKs (ie. Apps you see on your phone except that there are apps made specially for TV boxes) that would allow you to watch nearly all the streaming available out there, sports, TVB, movies etc. Usually they would say something like they install thousands of channels for you but the channels are scattered across many APKs If there are particular channels you want to watch, ask them for it!
Version of Xiaomi Box:
This page sums it up so well: http://geek.miui.com/content-12-899-1.html
But the page is in Chinese, in short, you need to know there are 3.5 generations of Xiaomi boxes; Generation 1, 2, 3 and a Generation 3 enhanced. There is also a Xiaomi Small Box, without going into details, you should know its really small but has slower processor, no 4K output and USB port.
Generation 3 Enhanced is the current version on sale in China. Funny thing the Enhanced version has 1GB RAM less and is RMB 100 cheaper than the original Generation 3 and almost everything else is the same. Having just 1GB RAM is not a disadvantage though, Xiaomi says its this 1GB is a dual channel RAM thus can perform as well as have the ordinary 2 GB RAM. 
Change UI to English:
Change of UI to English does not translate to having everything in the box in English. It just meant that the basic menu have been changed to English. Chinese apps will remain Chinese.
- Download Shafa market - http://www.shafa.com/
- Download XH Home from the market
- Go to settings
- Find “Language and Input” on the list
- Choose “English”
