This is a great little board. So far I have one running as an Octopi (3dprinter) server and one running as an educational game box/websurfer and one running as a Minecraft server. A Pi will work in these applications, but the Tinkerboard does it more smoothly and overall better.
You'll see complaints about drawbacks when compared to other products. These are more trade-offs rather then drawbacks.
It sports twice the memory and nearly twice the processing power of a Raspberry Pi. It shouldn't be a surprise that it consumes more power and puts out more heat. So, you're going to need a fan if you max out all 4 cores. The supplied heatsink is a little anemic, but it'll do the job for basic projects and desktop use, especially when a fan is used. I'm relatively certain that it is not possible to max the processor out for more then a few seconds without a fan. This said, it will throttle to save it's self.
The board can be overclocked to 2.2Ghz, but you're going off-road and will have to find your own path. You'll need to work out the fan, headsink, and power. Asus went with micro USB on this board which is a limiting factor. This said, they likely did this to maintain the Raspberry Pi's footprint.
Most Raspberry Pi cases and accessories will work with this board, but you'll have to work out some things. Often times a little google work will give you the exact solution you need.
A battery powered application will not have the same battery life as the Raspberry Pi. You're not going to get the same fuel economy from a Ford Focus RS as you will a Fiesta (for the same obvious reasons).
This product is not a Raspberry Pi. Don't expect it to be one. It's a solid product with much more power and memory, but it doesn't have the same community support or power efficiency. This said, it's a great product if you want something more powerful then a Pi.
It's more expensive then a Raspberry Pi, but you get what you pay for. I'm not sure you'll find a similar or higher performance board under $100.
My only complaint is that they haven't kicked out a 4 GB RAM model. I'd love to see one sporting a newer processor, more memory, and USB3. Such a product would dominate the market if they kept it under the $100 mark.
| Standing screen display size | 0.01 Inches |
|---|---|
| Processor | 1.8 GHz rockchip_rk3288 |
| RAM | 2 GB DDR3 |
| Memory Speed | 1.8 GHz |
| Hard Drive | 16 GB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 4 |
