Kogan announces Agora smart TV HDMI dongle refresh

Its second foray into HDMI dongles that convert your boring old TV into a smart TV, Kogan has refreshed its new $99 Agora smart TV HDMI dongle – now with a quad-core processor.

Kogan launched its original smart TV dongle last year August for the same price, though it's pulled it from its site for the new, quad-core model, which should help boost usage speeds.

The new dongle touts a Cortex A9 quad-core chip and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, a mini USB charting port, 8GB of internal storage, but with a USB 2.0 and microSD card slot to expand memory

There's also a 2.4GHz "Air Mouse" remote to control what's happening on the screen, or you can also get the Kogan-branded Android Deluxe Wireless Keyboard and Trackpad for an extra $39 that sports a full QWERTY key set and can pair up with the dongle.

Android TV

For TVs new enough to have an HDMI port, but too old to include a lot of the new smart TV capabilities, this would be a cheap and easier way to boost your TVs uses.

It gives you access to apps and functions like internet browsing, games, music, movies and basically any of the thousands of apps available through Google Play, like Quickflix, Skype, YouTube, Kindle and Spotify, all on the big screen.

Of course, there are other options to smarten up your TV, like Apple TV or any number of PVRs and set top boxes.

• Check out our thoughts on Apple TV.