The Raspberry Pi is by far and away the most popular single-board computer on the market today, helped by the fact it only costs $35. That hasn't stopped other manufacturers trying to compete with it, however, and the latest company to join the fray is Asus.
The board you see above looks very similar to the Raspberry Pi, in fact, it's almost the same size, but this is the Asus Tinker Board. It costs around $60, and while that's $25 more than a Raspberry Pi 3, it offers more features and more performance.
CPC lists the full spec for the Tinker Board, but here's the highlights:
- Rockchip RK3288 Quad-core 1.8GHz ARM Cortex-A17 CPU
- Quad-core 600MHz ARM Mali-T760 MP4 GPU
- 2GB LPDDR3 RAM (dual channel)
- Gigabit LAN
- 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
- Bluetooth 4.0
- HDMI 2.0 port supporting 4K output
- Micro SD card slot
- Micro USB (for power)
- Debian Linux support
For comparison, the Raspberry Pi 3 runs a 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A53, 1GB RAM, and HDMI 1.3. So the Tinker Board should easily outperform the Pi while also supporting the 4K resolution your new (or next) monitor boasts.
As Liliputing points out, the one area where the Tinker Board will fall short compared to a Raspberry Pi is software support. There's a very active community focused on the Pi, which is unlikely to be the case for the Tinker Board. However, it runs Linux out the box and offers a lot of performance for $60. If Asus supports it properly and throws some marketing money at it, it could do well.
For now, the Tinker Board is available in the UK and across Europe. Stock for the US should hopefully appear soon.
Source: pcmag.com
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