Looking back, 2021 was the peak era for the Amlogic S905L2 as a budget contender. While it lacked the raw power of the S905X3 or S905X4, it offered incredible value for money. However, the firmware situation remains a mixed bag of unstable OEM releases and brilliant community fixes.

If your primary goal is local media playback or running a dedicated Kodi setup, 2021 Linux-based distributions like CoreELEC are superior to Android. They boot directly into Kodi, consume minimal system resources, and support perfect audio passthrough and automatic frame-rate switching. 3. EmuELEC (v4.0+ Releases)