- The launch of the Raspberry Pi
started a chain reaction of innovation
(exploding effects)
- 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 Pi, your Orange Pi
your RockPi,
Le 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 wanna save a buck,
I think we're gonna have something to pi-que your interest.
Okay, that was a labored joke.
Just like this labored segue to our sponsor.
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- 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 8 gigs of memory, flexible high speed IO,
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 Pi OS.
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 Pi OS, like LibreElec, for example,
is designed for media center use,
while Retro Pi is all about game emulation.
And it's also enabled the manufacturers
of other Pi's as we'll be calling them to quickly roll
out versions of Raspberry Pi OS for their own hardware.
Let's look at our first alternatives.
The drop-in replacements.
At 55 US dollars, the Banana Pi 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 Wifi
and Bluetooth, along with its dual display outputs,
but at least its single HDMI port is full size
and still capable of 4K 60 hertz output.
Also at $55, the Odroid C4 includes the same four
USB three 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 Wifi 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 a 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 Retro Pi.
While neither of our drop in alternatives
managed 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 a win here
or at least I would if I didn't know
that I could go even lower.
At just 30 US dollars, Le Potato from Libre Computing
is almost cheaper than actual pie.
Like the M5 and the C4 that we just discussed,
It uses high efficiency ARM course, but unlike those ones
they're an older design and can't run
clock speeds higher to compensate.
Hence 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 USB-C for power
and DDR3 memory in whatever
capacity you want as long as it's two gigabytes.
Le 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 Wifi and Bluetooth.
One pleasant surprise was hardware H265 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 LibreElec or CoreElec.
For just $5 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 encoding
for up to two H265 streams.
For the $5 difference from Le 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 course with the higher clock speeds.
On this one, we've got two USB 2s into single USB 3.
We're back to using USB-C for power, though.
With gigabit ethernet and onboard Wifi and Bluetooth
and while it uses DDR3 for its memory
it's still managed solid performance
and the 3 LTS even includes 8 gigs of eMMC storage
that comes preloaded with a custom Android 9 image.
This is the first device we've looked at, though,
that only has the 26 Pin general purpose IO 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+ 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 heat sink 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+ has a high quality 32 bit stereo out
with better than a hundred decibel signal to noise ratio
and less than 0.006% 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+ is a popular option
for media players and for emulation.
Back to an almost. (bleep)
Back to an almost Raspberry platform factor,
we've got our second offering from Orange Pi.
The Orange Pi 5, starting at $75.
You get eight RMV 2 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 IO, both USB 3.1 type C and
display Port 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 four amps at five volts on the USB-C connector,
so you're gonna need to budget for an adequate wall wart.
With that said, it blows away the rest
of our boards in performance getting the top score
in, well, everything and usually by a pretty good margin.
Now I know that both of these premium Pi's
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 4s.
Now, in any roundup, there's bound to be an oddball or two.
So, meet the missus, not that kind.
(plush throwing and crashing)
That kind. Back down at 60 US dollars.
We've got the RockPi 4C+, which frankly
we expected to perform quite a bit better than it did.
Combining two high performance course, the same A72 course
from the Pi 4 with four high efficiency course,
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 USB 2s and two USB 3s.
It also includes Wifi 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 RockPi 4C ended up getting let
down by poor performance from its DVR4 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 RockPi, but at higher clock speeds.
And in addition to its 40 pin GPIO
the M4B has a PCIE by two interface that can be used
for daughter boards that can add features
like extra USB 3 ports, an NVME SSD adapter
and even a four port Sayta 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 MIPI DSI ports enabling dual cameras
for robotics or AI use
and even includes 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 two interface.
Next up is the Seeed that's with three E's, ReRouter.
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 IO ports on it
and then a daughter board that is actually
a Raspberry Pi compute module 4, or CM 4 for short.
Essentially, it's a Raspberry Pi 4
without the physical IO 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 for the package, so,
it's not really a great alternative.
The Link Star 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 2.5 gig land ports
and then two more 1 gig land ports,
alongside support for Wifi 6
and a basic NPU for simple AI tasks.
With 32 gigs of eMMC storage onboard
and SD card slot and a USB-C port,
you've got plenty of storage options
and a device with pretty similar performance
to the Banana M5 or the Odroid C4.
But at $129, the best value argument for it is,
hey, at least it looks a lot better than the Seeed 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 SBC, 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 Pi 4, 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.
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- If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe go check out
our Pi KVM video where we show you how to turn a Pi
into a remote access KVM,
so you can do anything you would need to do
on a remote computer.
Even things like updating the bios.