Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “I Can Save You Money! – Raspberry Pi Alternatives”.
The launch of the Raspberry Pi started a chain reaction of innovation, and today it offers more functionality than ever before. For next to nothing, you can play old games, build a media center block Internet advertising on your network, build up your own digital camera, learn to program remotely access your PC, even replace your computer all together, but there’s one small problem: it’s been almost impossible to buy A Raspberry Pi 4 at MSRP for three years and while the Raspberry Pi Foundation assures us, it should get better in six months. We’Ve heard that before, luckily for us and anyone else with cool project Envy, the success of the Raspberry Pi has inspired an entire Bakery of CopyCat arm-based single board, computers or sbcs. There’S your banana pie, your orange pot, your rock pie, La potato, who is running this Bakery anyway. The names aren’t important. What is important is that some of the Raspberry Pi’s competitors are so cool that the original name brand one may not be your best option anyway. So, whether you’re looking for a drop-in replacement, something that’s more performant or even if you want to save a buck, I think we’re going to have something to Pike your interest, okay, that was a labored joke. Just like this labored Segway to our sponsor hetzner hetzner offers high performance Cloud servers for a great price. They Now cover the east and west coast of the United States, with their latest location in Hillsboro Oregon use code ltt23 at the link below for 20 euros off before we can explore Alternatives. It’S worth doing a brief overview of the latest name brand SBC, the Raspberry Pi 4 model B.
It packs a quad core arm processor SOC up to eight gigs of memory, flexible high speed i o and support for up to two 4K displays, and it does all of this without betraying the Raspberry Pi foundation’s mission of democratizing Technology by making computers affordable to everyone. It starts at just 35 US dollars. Of course, Hardware is nothing without software, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation has got you covered there too, with raspberry pios, it’s based on Debian Linux and comes bundled with a web browser development tools, some educational software and a user-friendly package manager for installing additional programs. Most importantly, it’s open source and free. This has led to the proliferation of specialized versions of raspberry pios, like Libra elect, for example, is designed for Media Center. You, while retropie, is all about game emulation, and it’s also enabled the manufacturers of other pies as we’ll be calling them to quickly Roll Out versions of raspberry pios for their own Hardware. Let’S look at our first Alternatives: the drop-in Replacements at five US Dollars. The banana pie M5 starts off strong upgrading all of the onboard USB ports to USB 3.. It has a similar amount of processing power on tap and adds an IR receiver and 16 gigs of onboard storage as an alternative to the MicroSD slot. Unfortunately, it trades away the Raspberry Pi’s, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, along with its dual display outputs, but at least it’s single HDMI port is full size and still capable of 4K 60hz output. Also at 55, the odroid C4 includes the same four USB 3 ports IR receiver and full-sized HDMI port capable of 4K 60..
It doesn’t have onboard storage, but it does have a connector on the bottom for an emmc module. Should you wish to add your own like the M5 Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities are not included, but it has a slight Edge in CPU performance over the banana thanks to its higher clock, speeds and included passive CPU Cooler. The single micro USB port on the board is for usb OTG, making the C4 one of the few models we tested. That cannot get power via a USB connector.
Instead, it uses a DC Barrel Jack that can take anywhere from 5.5 to 12 volts DC worth. Noting is that the odroid is the only non-raspberry flavored Hardware, that’s officially supported by retropie, while neither of our drop-in Alternatives manage to hit the impressive 35 starting price of the Raspberry Pi 4 model B. Given that those are only available through scalpers for over a hundred dollars, I consider 55 open here, or at least I would, if I didn’t know that I could go even lower at just 30 US dollars. Look potato from Libra Computing is almost cheaper than actual Pi.
Like the M5 and the C4 that we just discussed, it uses high efficiency arm cores, but, unlike those ones, they’re an older design and can’t run clock speeds higher to compensate and the name. This model is actually from 2017, which is why it feels a little last gen. Four USB ports is good. Usb 2.0, not so good. Ethernet is good. 100 megabit ethernet, not so good.
You get the idea. It also uses micro USB instead of USBC for power and DDR3 memory, in whatever capacity you want. As long as it’s 2 gigabytes, the potato was meant to take on the Raspberry Pi 3. So it’s not surprising that it doesn’t quite stack up against the pi 4, but still it does bring some interesting features to the table, an IR receiver, an emmc port for storage, and it even includes a USB dongle in the Box for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. One pleasant. Surprise was Hardware h.265 decoding at up to 4K 60, which made it stand out against the pi 3 and would help it still be serviceable as a media player running something like libra-elec or coralek for just five dollars.
More though Libre Computing also offers the Renegade given the name. It is surprisingly similar to its starchy cousin, though with micro USB for power, but at least it trades two of those USB 2 ports for a single USB 3 and in exchange for a slightly lower clock. Speed it bumps the ram up to 4 gigs of ddr4 adds gigabit Ethernet and even adds hardware and coding for up to two h.265 streams for the five dollar difference from the potato. It’S a pretty big upgrade though either would do you just fine as a media player.
The last of our lower cost options is the 35 orange Pi 3 LTS, which is yet another unit that uses efficiency cores with the higher clock speeds. On this one, we’ve got two usb2s and a single USB 3 we’re back to using USBC for power, though with gigabit, Ethernet and onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and while it uses DDR3 for its memory, it still managed solid performance and the three LTS even includes 8 gigs Of emmc storage that comes pre-loaded with a custom Android 9 image – this is the first device we’ve looked at, though that only has the 26 pin general purpose. I O header, which could limit your DIY project and making matters worse. It doesn’t appear to be pin compatible with the first gen Raspberry, Pi 26 pin IO, so you’ll have to take a close look at the documentation before you plug things into it.
While none of these offer the whole package flexibility of the pi 4, whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish at least one of them – should be able to get you there at the same price. That is, unless you’re trying something really ambitious. Then you might need to spend a bit more at 85, the odroid N2 plus is the first model.
We’Ve looked at that doesn’t basically copy the Raspberry Pi form factor, it’s roughly twice the size of the pi 4 and has a giant passive heatsink on the bottom that cools the first SOC we’ve seen that combines both performance and efficiency cores in a four plus two Configuration it also has the most powerful GPU that we’ve seen so far by the way, if you’ve seen our GPU plush available at ltdstore.com, it’s adorable, in addition to its excellent CPU and memory performance, the N2 plus has a high quality 32-bit stereo out with better than 100 decibel signal to noise ratio and less than .006 total harmonic Distortion put together with four USB 3 ports and a micro usb OTG, an IR receiver and an emmc port for additional storage. It’S no wonder that the N2 plus is a popular option for media players and for emulation back to an almost back to an almost Raspberry Pi form factor. We’Ve got our second offering from Orange pie the orange Pie, Five starting at 75.
You get eight arm V2 cores again in a big little configuration and up to 32 gigs of ddr4 memory and a built-in npu for machine learning acceleration. There’S a ton of i o both USB 3.1 type c and DisplayPort 1.4 are making their first appearances here, and the full sized HDMI 2.1 Port can push 8K at 60 hertz. There are also enough mipi connectors for another. Two 4K 60 displays and three cameras: an m.2 slot supports nvme ssds or Wireless modules, and a 26 pin gpio rounds things out. All of this comes with a fairly Hefty power draw, though it requires 4 amps at 5, volts on the USBC connector, so you’re going to need to budget for an adequate wall. Ward with that said, it blows away the rest of our boards and performance getting the top score in well everything and usually by a pretty good margin.
Now I know that both of these premium pies are significantly more expensive than the pi 4 model B. Almost to the point where including them as Alternatives could be considered kind of disingenuous. But I still think they belong in our list because both were significantly better than the pi 4 in a number of ways, while costing less than what scalpers are charging on eBay for freaking Pi Force. Now in any Roundup, there’s bound to be an oddball or two. So meet the misses: not that kind, that kind back down at 60 US Dollars.
We’Ve got the rock Pi 4C plus, which, frankly, we expected to perform quite a bit better than it did combining two high performance cores the same a72 cores from the pi 4 with four high efficiency cores. This is a board that we thought would be close to the original like the pi 4. It has two micro HDMI ports, but it can’t run both of them at 4K, 60., like the pi 4.
It has two usb2s and two USB 3s. It also includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on board and even one UPS, the pi 4, with a connector for an external antenna and emmc port and an m.2 slot. They even color coded the 40 pin gpio. So you don’t go and plug things in where you shouldn’t, but ultimately The Rock Pi 4C ended up getting let down by poor performance from its ddr4 memory and poor CPU performance that just couldn’t quite match the four high power cores in the pi 4. at 75. The nanopi m4b uses the same two plus four core architecture as the Rock pie, but at higher clock speeds and in addition to its 40 pin gpil, the m4b has a pcie by 2 interface that can be used for daughter boards. That can add features like extra USB 3 ports, an nvme SSD adapter and even a 4 Port SATA controller that can turn it into a nice little Nas device for your home network. This board also supports emmc storage, though it uses a different layout from the others that we’ve seen so far.
It’S got dual nippy CSI ports, enabling dual cameras for robotics or AI use and even include switchable Android, ADB support. But again the m4b falls short of the pi 4 and CPU performance and its aging DDR3 didn’t make up that lost ground, making it a tough sell compared to the rest of the competition. Unless you really want that pcie by 2 interface. Next up is the seed.
That’S with three E’s re-router, its most obvious standout feature is obviously its dual network Jacks because, as you no doubt guess from the name, it’s meant to be used as a tiny router running something like open wrt. Now it can run any OS. The Raspberry Pi can and it can be used for random projects like any other board. We’Ve tested so far.
The rerouter even managed solid performance coming in almost identically to our PI 4, which is probably because it actually is a pi 4. kind of inside the casing. You’Ll see that we have this kind of motherboard with i o ports on it and then a daughter board that is actually a Raspberry, Pi, compute module 4 or cm4. For short, essentially, it’s a Raspberry Pi 4 without the physical i o and it’s meant to be embedded in other devices providing the brains for things like digital signage, thin clients, Industrial Automation and yes, routers, but just like the normal pies. These are basically impossible to get right now and they want 160 dollars for the package. So it’s not really a great alternative.
The linkstar h68k is an interesting one, though it’s sort of a traveling Network, Appliance media player, Nas, router and server all rolled into one robust little package. While it too can run more general purpose operating systems, it’s obviously meant for networking with dual two and a half gig Lan ports and then two more one gig Lan ports. Alongside support for Wi-Fi 6 and a basic npu for simple AI tasks, with 32 gigs of emmc storage on board, an SD card slot and a usb-c port, you’ve got plenty of storage options in a device with pretty similar performance to the banana M5 or the odroid C4, but at 129 dollars the best value argument, for it is hey at least it looks a lot better than the seed router now to be clear. All of these were good enough to be included. We just didn’t feel that they fit in with the rest of the pi 4 Alternatives as well as we might have liked.
As for our picks, if we had to buy just one for our first SPC, it’s hard to say no to the orange Pi 3 LTS at 35, bucks decent overall performance, plenty of wired and wireless connectivity and built-in emmc storage means you don’t have to go and Buy a Micro SD card: on the other hand, if you were already considering paying the scalper inflated prices for a Raspberry Pi 4, then our pick has got to be the orange Pi 5. at 75 bucks for the 4 Gig model. It is a big jump in price from the MSRP of the pie for, but it blew away all of our other contenders in terms of performance and with the additional connectivity and expansion options over the pi 4. It seems like a no-brainer like this Segway to our sponsor Samsung and their s95b quantum dot, OLED TV powered by quantum dot OLED technology. The s95b improves color accuracy over traditional oleds, while maintaining the true Black Performance with individual pixel by pixel.
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Even things like updating the BIOS .