YoloBox, an Android-based tablet with live production software and hardware-based connectivity, marries the capabilities of software, the I/O of hardware, and the portability of a tablet. The all-in-one tablet-based streaming solution market also has entries from Magewell (Director and Director One) and Cinetreak. YoloLiv is not only the pioneer in this segment; it also offers the most diverse solutions, from the single-input Mini to the new device I’ll be looking at here, the eight-input Extreme.
Since I’ve previously reviewed other YoloBox devices, I won’t detail the features common to all YoloBox models but will instead refer you to my YoloBox Pro and YoloBox Mini reviews for a more complete rundown of their capabilities. To sum up, the YoloBox is a production studio in a tablet. Physical inputs, NDI, SRT, RTMP, web inputs, stills, video playback, and PDFs can all be mixed individually or in self-created multiviews. Built-in titles, graphics, scoreboards, audio mixing, viewer comments, remote guests, background music, and instant replay are all handled inside the YoloBox.
Extreme Features
The Extreme can record internally, both program and ISO feeds (up to frame rate/data limits); encode for streaming; multicast (one stream to three destinations); leverage optional integrated bonding capability; and auto-switch between inputs, including switching the video to follow audio. The internal audio mixer handles each input separately. You can turn channels off, solo an audio input, and even do a mix minus, which means if you’re self-hosting, you won’t hear yourself with a delay in your headphones.
The Extreme (Figure 1) is based around a large 11″/28 cm OLED screen offering 1,000 nits of brightness. It has eight HDMI inputs; five are auto-sensing 4K inputs, and three are manually set HD inputs. There are also two
Figure 1. YoloBox Extreme
You can record to an internal SD card or USB. The USB ports can also be used to add SDI via a USB converter. Given the flexibility of the USB ports, I wish there were more than the two USB-A ports and one USB-C. The second USB-C is for 45-watt power input only. Stereo mic and line inputs, as well as a stereo headphone port, round out the I/O (Figure 2).
Figure 2. YoloBox Extreme I/O
HDMI outputs that can be assigned as Program, Mirror (the YoloBox’s screen), or a customizable MultiView or used to monitor one of the individual input sources. Connectivity includes the Gigabit Ethernet, internal cellular, and Wi-Fi, plus the YoloBox will leverage USB-connected sources like a USB modem or a USB-to-Ethernet dongle for bonding. The Extreme has user-replaceable antennas on either side. You can use the included antennas or something bigger or directional.
Feedback Loop
New with the Extreme, in addition to the many HDMI ports and the external antennas, is more functional feedback from the YoloBox itself. This includes on-screen CPU load in the menu bar and a pull-down status screen that shows temperature and memory load as well as encoding and streaming details (Figure 3). For me, this is a welcome addition because it’s still an Android tablet.
Figure 3. The YoloBox Extreme’s pull-down status screen
You’re not going to add RAM, upgrade the GPU or the CPU, or augment it with anything beyond what it came with. Knowing how hard you’re pushing it—and what its limits are—is key.
YoloLiv has also taken big steps in this regard, with posted limitations as you go to adjust various settings. For example, the dual HDMI out warns about plugging and unplugging cables while in use, using both outputs at 4K, that audio only comes out one of the outputs, and more (Figure 4).
Figure 4. HDMI out warnings
There are pop-up warnings about exceeding the frame rate processing of the chips inside because they can only process so many total frames, and your ISO records, your replay, and your streaming all count against that tally. There are also warnings about exceeding the total data rate since the Extreme can handle multiple 4K sources and ISOs. Again, you’re not going to open it up and drop in a 4,000 MB/sec NVMe drive. You’re limited to SDXC (UHS-I) cards or USB 3.0 external storage.
In addition, there are warnings about exceeding the total CPU load, at which point the Extreme will most certainly start dropping frames (Figure 5). That makes for sad video producers, me included. No one likes frame doubling.
Figure 5. CPU limit warning
Pros and Cons of Going (Extremely) Portable
Thanks to these warnings, streaming producers come away with a clear understanding that the Extreme is not a $10,000 gaming PC that has an i9 processor with 24 cores and 32 threads. It does not have an Nvidia 5090 or A4000 GPU. It also doesn’t suck 2,000 watts of power. It’s “just” an Android tablet, so the end user needs to adjust their expectations accordingly. At the same time, you’re not going to slip that
$10,000 gaming PC into a tiny laptop sleeve. It’s not going to run off a battery for hours and doesn’t include eight video inputs, nor the well-designed YoloBox software.
User Interface Irregularities and Improvements
The YoloBox excels at portability and ease of use. The interface itself continues to be revised and updated. However, there are still a few user interface irregularities. For example, changing the setting for Video Source Switch or Streaming Mode gives you a pop-up, but other settings take you to a dedicated page, depending on the amount of content or conditions you need to be aware of.
There are also several top-level access panes that control things that really ought to be buried in settings: bonding, stream destinations, recording settings, transition settings, etc. All of these parameters are set once for a project. After that, I want them out of my way. During a show, I need access to inputs, overlays, comments, the audio mixer, and—if I’m doing sports—replay and the scoreboard. Almost nothing else needs to be in a top-level ready-access pane.
Otherwise, the YoloLiv team continues to provide a very intuitive user interface that, despite its simplicity, delivers considerable power and capability to even the first-time user. Want to do green screen? It takes only seven taps, including picking the replacement background. Side-by-side multiview with borders and background? Also seven taps. Invite remote guests? Enter the email address and six taps. You’d be hard-pressed to find anything simpler. And each of those features works well. New for the Extreme interface is a Director Mode that gives you a preview and program monitor (Figure 6). While I am personally still lobbying for separate Cut and Auto transition buttons, even without them (as of this writing), this mode enables
Figure 6. YoloBox Extreme Director Mode
the YoloBox to be used in more professional settings where a director will want to see the next shot before it goes live without having to single-tap anything in the input list.
Akin to that, the Extreme also carries forward the multiview of the YoloBox Ultra, so that a director can see Preview, Program, and inputs in five different layouts, where they can pick what goes into each of the boxes, as well as borders, source names, and audio meters (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Multiview
YoloBox Extreme in the Field
In May, I chose the Extreme to produce a 2-hour multi-camera live stream at the Texas Production Expo (Figure 8) for several specific reasons. The first was that the Extreme offers the ability to connect five NDI|HX cameras. I was bringing three Tail Air cameras with me (which have internal batteries for backup), but I also wanted the option to leverage a cellphone or two with NDI if I needed additional views. (See my OBSBOT review for more on the Tail Airs.)
Figure 8. The YoloBox Extreme at the Texas Production Expo
The second reason was that the Extreme’s 11″ screen made it easier to have larger input icons and more viewer comments on the screen at the same time (Figure 9). I didn’t want to try to do this on a small screen and have to scroll around a lot to find things.
Figure 9. Monitoring viewer comments on-screen with the Extreme
Third was the functionality of the wired YoloDeck (USB) control surface (Figure 10). It’s like Elgato’s Stream Deck, but it connects directly to the YoloBox. This means I do not need a separate computer or device in between the switcher and the “deck,” which lightens my setup. I gave the YoloDeck to Kirk Riley, a fellow YoloBox user, to co-switch the show with me.
Figure 10. YoloBox YoloDeck
The Extreme workflow made it easy for me to host the show and speak directly to the camera while Kirk brought up my title, went to the two-shot, and then went to the guests. At the same time, I could cut to the close-up camera, if I wanted, by tapping on the YoloBox that was in front of me.
The fourth benefit was the dual video outputs. I set up a multiview monitor for Kirk to see the camera inputs to know when it was good to switch to different cameras. And I also set up a program monitor so each of the guests could see what the audience sees, which is especially important when showing off gear (Figure 8). No splitters or additional gear bits were needed.
I had a lot of videos to play—showing sponsors, local organizations, etc.—and that gave us time to go between live guests in the show. Having an icon displaying the runtime for each video made it easy to pick a long or short video “bumper” between guests.
The Extreme has external Wi-Fi antennas, but I chose to not use the Extreme as “the” Wi-Fi hotspot for the NDI I was slinging around. I felt safer using an ASUS gaming router designed to handle 2.5Gbps of data through it. It handled several 30Mbps NDI streams just fine.
Audio Issues
The show went quite well, but doing a live, on-location event like this, in a challenging, noisy environment, once again reminded me of how important audio is. Unfortunately, audio is not one of the YoloBox’s strengths. For instance, it can’t mix a mono microphone to both left and right channels. It doesn’t have EQ. It doesn’t have a limiter. So, I needed an external audio mixer.
I used the Zoom LiveTrak L-8 that I own and like because of the meters on each input and its ability to also act as a multi-channel USB interface to my vMix, if necessary. But what I discovered I needed at the show was limiters on each channel, and the Zoom LiveTrak L-8 doesn’t have that. Checking audio levels before the expo opened meant that when we went live hours later—in a loud, crowded expo hall—we were all shouting over the crowd, and we were clipping the audio levels. Lesson learned. The YoloBox doesn’t have a limiter either, so I asked if that could be added to it in the future via a software update.
Another issue with audio and the playback of the videos is that there was no way to automatically mute the mics when we played a video. This is another feature I’ve requested from YoloLiv. Having a dedicated audio op would have saved us on both the clipping and the audio mixing, but audio is the forgotten child, and hindsight is 20/20. If the videos could be set to auto-mute everything else, that alone would have made it work much better.
The Extreme has a background music playlist feature, and after this show, I noted that a video playlist feature would be handy to help “automate” the playback of the videos so that we could ensure everyone got at least one play by going through the list and also having it automatically continue to the next video until we were ready to come back to show.
Tablet to the Limit
Having used the Extreme for this and other shows, I can confirm that it delivers on the YoloBox goal by going about as far as you can in the tablet form factor. While earlier models were limited by CPU and GPU chip capabilities, designing the Extreme to such a degree means that using it for HD production is so under the threshold that you’d be unlikely to hit its limits.
With the design constraints YoloLiv has put in place, I had to work hard and use a few tricks (like 13 overlays) to push the Extreme over 90% CPU. Earlier models could easily be pushed past their capabilities without even the user knowing, and the frame rate would drop drastically. So, I appreciate both the over-engineering and the restrictions that make it hard to do the same with the Extreme.
The Extreme is not a camera-top or “pocketable” production solution, unlike the smaller YoloBox Mini. It’s comparatively heavy and big. Add the protective cage that I’m told is on the way, and it’ll be more of both. But it’s a fine tabletop solution that delivers on the goal of an all-in-one tablet production solution.
What I hope will come next are software updates for the earlier models to help users know when their Extreme reaches its performance limits. As for hardware, I hope YoloLiv takes the lessons learned from the Extreme and delivers updated Mini and Pro models similarly over-engineered to ensure optimum operation. Not everyone needs eight inputs. So, the three-input Pro and the one-input Mini (two if you use the USB) still have their markets and deserve better products that deliver true 60 and 50 fps reliably, every time.
Also, YoloLiv’s quiet little remote guest feature is impressive, but requires the mix minus capability on the latest Ultra and Extreme to be usable with any self-hosted production. The Mini and Pro don’t have the audio mixing capability to enable a host/producer to hear the guest and not themselves. New units with a CPU upgrade would make remote guest shows with the smaller boxes a reality at last. I don’t know where YoloLiv’s naming convention goes from here, but I don’t think this market segment has a need for a more extreme tablet with more than eight inputs. The Extreme will be at the top of its class for a while. Now YoloLiv can focus on upgrading the other units and standardizing the software and capabilities across its product line.
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