Even if the CPU is only at 1GHz, the Toucan SX runs decently in most of the applications we have installed; we must be careful though which apps we install since some of them will have processes running in the backgroud which could slow down the system when we need the processing power the most (like playing full HD video). As we could see from the performed benchmarks, the system runs well at the maximum supported resolution, so there is no need to downscale with the impression that everything will start running at a higher fps. However, when putting it next to the Galaxy S2 mobile phone, we can see quite a noticeable performance difference, especially in 3D applications so we won't recommend the Toucan SX for playing games.

Not all video players are well optimized for the platform; for example, BS Player Free insists on running in software mode even after applying the necessary patch. mVideoPlayer has a nice Media Center interface and after media indexing we will see the covers of the detected movies on-screen but when playing 1080P content we could observe some hick-ups down the road. On the other hand, MX Player ran flawlessly with anything we thrown at it after enabling hardware decoding.

IconBit have also developed a Media Center application; its development is at the beginning and its functionality will be enhanced down the road; for now, the app allows us to play videos and stream radio and video from the Internet. The preloaded content is from Russia but we can always add our own stream links.

Here are some app shots:

MediaCenter Main Menu

MediaCenter Explorer

MediaCenter Video Player

MediaCenter Settings

MediaCenter Internet TV

Media Center Internet Radio

This Android box supports most of the applications we usually install on our mobile phones with the same OS so we have a large selection of players available like Winamp, Tune In Radio and many more.

For navigating we can use the supplied remote but for more advanced activities like chatting, writing on Facebook, we would recommend connecting a regular USB keyboard and mouse to the system.

The only disturbing fact about this system is the small space left for installing applications; since the applications also tend to place their caches on the internal storage, we would recommend using a free app which moves the apps from internal storage to a connected microSD card. Be careful though when updating the apps, since after the process they will move back to the internal storage and have to be moved again to external.

The Toucan SX is available online for about 129 Euros.

The Toucan SX Android Mini PC gets gets our recommendation because of the multitude of applications that we can install, in comparison with the regular, cheaper players on the market.

I would like to thank again to IconBIT for making this review possible!