A board like the Pi is defined by these attributes (order irrelevant):
Price
Performance
Exposed I/O
Device Size
Community Size
I don't know of any board that beats the Pi on more than 3 of these attributes.
The allwinner sticks you mentioned are comparably priced, but have a smaller development community and very limited I/O. If all you want is a little media player, I think they are a good choice though.
Can you recommend one or give hints on what you have to consider when shopping for a board like this? I mean, the thing about the Pi is that you know what you will get and what use cases are supported.
I mentioned it above, but just to reiterate- there are lots of great hardware boards out there and many beat the Pi (though the 4 makes up the different finally). However, they ALL have terrible software support: old OS's, bad drivers, out of date or incomplete documentation.
Your right, the rpi4 is hardly the best in many ways, but it is the one board that likely isn't going to be abandoned in a couple years. Which despite its very long list of failings has basic support in many places today.
OTOH, for double the money, the ODROID-H2+ kicks the pants off all these devices, by having dual 2.5Gbit Ethernet, actual sata ports _AND_ usb3, expandable ram, nvme boot options, out of the box software support for pretty much anything you can imagine, including particularly freenas, crashplan, plex, and various other things people want to "just work".
I'd also say it's that the RPis are generally much cheaper and also offer (subjectively) better I/O.
For example, A BeaglePlay costs about twice what a Pi 4 Model B/4GB does in my local market. The BeaglePlay has half the ram, only one USB 2 port to the Pi's two, none of the Pi's USB 3 connectors, way fewer GPIOs, only one HDMI, no audio, etc. I do like that BeagleBoards have onboard flash though.
> It looks like the GPU on the RasPi is still more powerful, so the cheaper board might still be better for things like a media center application.
Has either of them actually good (foss) drivers? At least Mali400 has "limadriver" project going on, quick googling didn't find anything for raspi.
Overall I'd love that Allwinner A10 got more attention, it seems fairly popular chip in cheapo chinese tablets. Getting GNU/Linux instead of Android for those would be neat.
Agreed, I use Pis a lot not because it's the fastest or cheapest or whatever but because of its popularity. If a not-quite-compatible board came out at the same price point that was twice as fast and had twice as much memory I might use it if I had a specific use case and enough time to sink into making it work.
From the other testimonials it sounds like the Orange Pi is a reasonable choice but the performance premium doesn't convince me.
Unless you know exactly why you have a strong preference for any of the others, and availability concerns notwithstanding, I'd suggest the Pi CM4 model based on the larger ecosystem surrounding the board.
It looks like the GPU on the RasPi is still more powerful, so the cheaper board might still be better for things like a media center application. I'm very curious though about what appears to be a SATA port on the Cubieboard.
Also, the RasPi has a huge initial advantage in that it was in the space first. They have a leg-up in publicity, marketing, and simply an initial user-base. If the Cubieboard benchmarks don't absolutely trounce the Raspberry Pi for almost every type of computation, I don't see the Cubieboard overtaking the Pi anytime soon.
There are so many SOC boards that pretend that they are Raspberry Pi rivals. If they are double the price, and consume more than twice the power (the one listed takes 12V instead of 5V power supply), and more than double the footprint size in area (same length, almost triple the width), then of course they will have better performance for those things that aren't even Raspberry Pi targets. They are not rivals because they aren't even directed at the same market.
There are many actual rivals, in the same price range, in the same performance range, same power economy, same relative footprint size, targeting the same audience. But this one isn't one.
Having said all that, I might actually get one if the price is reasonable.
No board recommendations--there are soooo many now I have zero clue about "best" or if it even matters. I'm a little wary of the RPi 3 because of the heat issues; there are very competitive boards available at more or less the same price point, often with features I need (like actual SATA instead of via USB).
There was a "strong" product, the Beagleboard X-15. It came out before the Pi4 and had better performance than a Pi3B. However, it was on the expensive side at over $200.
Video playing through Kodi and nothing else. Nearly all other "competing" boards are either cheaper or more powerful or both, and more open, but the PI has the best CEC imlementation along with good video acceleration which makes it ideal for the task.
The freshly announced PI4 seems a step in the right direction price and performance wise, although I don't expect the Pi Foundation (aka Broadcom) to solve the openness problem anytime soon, so although it could soon become my main video player I won't consider it for anything else, especially if security related.
Depends on how well those alternatives bank on the situation. I've always been disappointed by the lack of support and functionality on any non-Pi board I bought.
There are more "pro" oriented boards than the Pi series. ODROID, e.g. It indeed has faster I/O and better CPU. You lose out on the scale benefits from Pi.
Few if any of them have "enterprise" grade quality IMO. The ones that strive for this (HP Moonshot, e.g.) are significantly more expensive than $50-100.
Note that the topic at hand is binary blobs and trust and Pi and other ARM SoC fall short there.
What boards would you consider "better" and for what reasons (gpu and crypto extensions, or are there other factors)? I run a few raspberry pis and always looking for new/better toys.
Price
Performance
Exposed I/O
Device Size
Community Size
I don't know of any board that beats the Pi on more than 3 of these attributes.
The allwinner sticks you mentioned are comparably priced, but have a smaller development community and very limited I/O. If all you want is a little media player, I think they are a good choice though.
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