Earlier this year, when I was isolating because of Covid-19, I bought a second hand Vero 4K+. In terms of hardware, it’s very similar to other media players, but it’s the software that sets it apart.
Most cheap media players nowadays seem to run Android. Usually an older version, without any updates and security patches from three years ago. In contrast, the Vero runs OSMC, a lightweight Linux distribution with Kodi on top. And it gets five years of guaranteed software updates.
The 4K+ has been on the market since 2018, but since it’s still being sold I assume updates will keep coming for some time.
Pros
Kodi plays pretty much all media files, and it runs beautifully on the Vero. It’s very responsive. I use it to play files from my NAS, and image and sound quality are great. The remote is also much more convenient than the clunky media keyboard I was using with my old media PC.
Cons
Last month, my Vero started to regularly lock up, and eventually it wouldn’t boot. On the OSMC forums, I found that this is usually a power supply problem. This does indeed seem to be the case, because the replacement power supply I ordered fixed the issue. It’s wonderful being able to troubleshoot issues with help of the community.
The Vero 4K+ uses very little energy, but I find it weird that there’s no real standby mode and no way to turn the device off. There’s a “faux” suspend mode, but that pretty much only turns off the video output.
Open source media player
This little box is the only truly open source media player I know of. It’s a little more expensive than competing products, but the frequent updates and trusted OS make well worth the premium. Highly recommended.
