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 alt 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 pie your
rock pie the potato who is running this
Bakery anyway the names aren't important what is important is that some of the
raspberry pies competitors are so cool that the original name brand one may not
be your best option anyway so whether you're looking for a dropin 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
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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 s so up to 8 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 of course Hardware is nothing without software but the Raspberry Pi
Foundation has got you covered there to with raspberry pios it's based on debb
and 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 Libra
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 pies 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 dropin Replacements at
$55 the banana P M5 starts off strong up
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 micro SD slot unfortunately it trades away the
Raspberry Pi's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth along with its dual display outputs but at
least its single HDMI port is full size
and still capable of 4K 60 HZ output also at $55 the ooid C4 includes the
same four USB 3 ports 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 and 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
usbg 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 ooid is the
only non- raspberry flavored Hardware that's officially supported by retropie
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 $100 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 Li potato from Libra Computing is
almost cheaper than actual pie 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 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 USBC for power and DDR 3
memory in whatever capacity you want as long as it's 2 GB lip 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 h265 decoding at up to 4K 60
which made it stand out against the pi 3 and would help it still be servicable as
a media player running something like libc or coral for just $5 more though
Libra 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 bumped
bumps the RAM up to 4 gigs of ddr4 adds gigb Ethernet and even adds Hardware
encoding for up to 2 h265 streams for
the $5 difference from Li 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 higher clock speeds on this one we've
got two USB 2s and a single USB 3 we're
back to using USB PC for power though with gigabit Ethernet and onboard Wi-Fi
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 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 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 2 six 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 pi4
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 ooid 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 pi4 and has a giant passive heat sink on the
bottom that cools the first s so we've seen that combines both performance and
efficiency cores in a 4 plus2 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 LTD store.com it's adorable in addition to its excellent CPU and
memory performance the N2 plus has a highquality 32-bit stereo out with
better than 100 DB signal to noise ratio and less than
.6% 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 piie
the orange piie 5 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 IO 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 HZ there are
also enough myy 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 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 pies are significantly more expensive than the pi4 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 fours 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 we've
got the rock Pi 4C plus which frankly we
expect it 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
pi4 it has two micro HDMI ports but it
can't run both of them at 4K 60 like the pi4 it has two USB 2s and two USB 3s it
also includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on board and even one UPS the pi4 with a
connector for an external antenna an emmc port and an m.2 slot they even
colorcoded the 40 pin gpio so you don't go and plug things in where you
shouldn't but ultimately The Rock pie 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 nanop m4b uses the
same 2 plus4 core architecture as The Rock Pi but at higher clock speeds and
in addition to its 40 pin gpio the m4b
has a PCIe by2 interface that can be used for daughter boards that can add
features like extra usb3 ports an NVMe
SSD adapter and even a four 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 mppy CSI ports enabling dual cameras for robotics or AI use and even
includes switchable Android ADB support but again the m4b falls short of the pi4
in 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 PCI E by2 interface next up is the
seed that's with three e router its most
obvious standout feature is obviously its dual network Jacks because as you no
doubt guessed from the name it's meant to be used as a tiny router running
something like open wrrt 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 pi4
which is probably because it actually is a pi4 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 cm4 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 um these are basically impossible to get right now and they
want $160 for the package so it's not
really a great alternative the linkstar h68 K 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 and 1/2 gig land ports and then two more 1 gig
land 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 USBC Port you've got plenty of storage options in a device
with pretty similar performance to the banana M5 or the ooid C4 but at
$129 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 just didn't feel that they fit in
with the rest of the pi4 Alternatives as
well as we might have liked as for rpix if we had to buy just one for a 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 7 bucks for the 4 Gig
model it is a big jump in price from the MSRP of the pi4 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 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