Nano Pi M4V2 is a 6 core Pi Clone with PCIE, I bought one 2020, got the 4 Sata Ports Daughter board, still going as a NAS (4x8TB Seagates)... PS, I still have a couple of 3a Pi, handy bit of kit ...
David Attenborough: "Ah yes, very interesting. We are observing a wild UA-camr grazing the fields of a rival's comment section. The non-confrontational communication is a sign these pastures are peaceful and undisturbed by the ferocious drama channels, whose diet consists of weaker channels who've fallen out of favor with the herd. We have yet to see reciprocation of the comment in the form of non-verbal acknowledgement in the form of a hearted comment."
Radxa ROCK 5 ITX+ goes for a cheap $370 Australian. Sweet SBC. I just use CPP based boards for component IOT and stuff - they are down at $2-$4 and can do everything you need. As soon as it gets into 4k or computing/ serious multi-tasking immediately switch to a mini or 2nd hand. Literally no point in this madness.
More than 32 € plus extras for the 2F from AliEx in Germany. So it is rather a small investment for quite serious projects (e.g. NAS, SmartHome) than for tinkering or just getting in touch to SBCs. Quite nice video, but in my not "low cost" from my location.
It's an excellent SBC for maker projects and remarkably affordable. The SBC landscape is evolving rapidly, making it challenging to stay informed about all the latest advancements. We appreciate how you consistently keep us updated and highlight the most significant developments. Greetings from Calcutta! Thank you for your efforts, and have a great day!
Thank you for another fine presentation of a SBC! No one could ever have a reason to not understand what these boards are for, thanks to your great job!! Have a great week Mr. Barnatt!!
Nice to see very low-end innovation hasn't stopped! (Though I'm a little worried about a $15 price if my country's tarrifs change :-(). We all do know, of course, that we'd need the 2F to support _at least_ PCI Gen2 single lane wardrobes, in order for Narnia I/O to work at all! Great content, every Sunday I look forward to your videos, though my wife gets suspicious when I chuckle during your videos!
@@TheDanEdwards I'd have thought using surplus parts to make a desirable product shows considerable ingenuity and innovation--just not *technical* innovation.
I like the pi zero 2W. For the same price a much more useful board with 2 Gig of Ram? That's impressive. I like that you showed it having good software support. Thanks for keeping us informed and up to date.
This board is twice the price of the Pi Zero. The $15 price tag is always accompanied with a $15 postage. SO unless you buy in bulk its a complete rip off.
Thanks for another great video Chris. Yet another low cost but powerful SBC to add to the Cornucopia of SBC boards! Thanks for all your hard work Chris! Take Good Care!
@@ExplainingComputers I really appreciate all the great content you provide. Even when I am familiar with a topic, you always manage to shed some light on an aspect of it I had overlooked, or just plain forgotten. You are the only UA-cam channel I consistently watch. Thanks to you My Friend!
Now that is an actual SBC. $15 is affordable for a SBC...and it is even in stock! The whole point of a SBC is for personal tinker projects and embedded industrial environments where you don't want moving/noisy components like fans. When the original Pi Zero came out, it was constantly out of stock because embedded hardware vendors were putting them into production as control boards for industrial hardware and so hobbyists were generally out of luck.
Thanks a lot for covering GPIO. I recently had to cough up the extra money for a raspberry pi for a project that heavily relied on GPIO, even though the orange pi alternative was cheaper and faster, purely because of the lack of documentation and examples for GPIO.
I relate to this -- GPIO software support and documentation is poor for many Arm boards. For this board I thought the GPIO functionality was critical, so I delved into it. And it worked!
Great review, covered all the bases :) Great board too, full size hdmi and usb is a big plus over the Pi Zero, whilst usb 2 is enough for 90% of what I do with sbc's, all the more so since pcie is provided. Ditto the RAM. And cheap as chips. So many projects don't need lots of memory and clock speeds, it's great to see such boards getting support on this channel. Hope the sun shines up your way too, London is positively radiant this afternoon.
Too many times during the video that I was getting overexcited, Chris. Thank God that Mr Scissors was used sparingly and the results from htop were cut short... As always, thank you for the video.
Some of the machines at my brother's metal shop still need dos for any connectivity, unless he wants to manually enter g code. I know someone else who worked at a storage module business and the acces control/gate and such did as well. DOSbox is necessary in a crazy large number of places, I'd imagine.
DOSBox is a full-system emulator that provides BIOS interrupts and contains its own internal DOS-like shell. This means that it can be used without owning a license to any real DOS operating system. ~FYI-WIKI~
I was watching a smaller stream the other day and we're entertaining a theory that larger youtube channels are automatically louder, regardless of what compression or other normalising you do your end. Your channel is the loudest of all the ones I watch! Coincidentally, the loudest one I listen to? Nice to see low cost SBC's using the same form factor as the rpi3
I'm very surprised at the loudness feedback. I normalize to standard TV broadcast specifications. I often check how my audio is coming out relative to other channels, and have not found the issue you cite. Many channels I watch are louder than mine! :)
@@ExplainingComputers Maybe that's it, as you're comparing it to standard broadcasting. It's been a while since I watched telly and I was surprised at how loud it is! . As someone pointed out, there's a feature that standardises volume across channels, so I'm going to try it out.
@@ExplainingComputers I'm going to assume google likes them because it inflates platform signup and usage statistics... The accounts are always like a day or two old. Can't be THAT hard to detect, therefore I'm going with they are allowing it :)
As a guy in the mid 60th i can't help to be impressed when i see the specifications of these tiny and cheap computers. The price is equivalent to a bottle of fair wine. 2Ghz, 2GB RAM, HDMI, PCI and GPIO, Wifi, BT - it's actually insane. :)
It's inexpensive because it's mostly made from parts from the excess supply bins, assembled on a line with spare capacity. No real research, and minimal support.
Radxa makes some really interesting stuff, I'm glad that there are still some companies out there who are manufacturing products that are affordable and targeted towards those of us who are still interested in tinkering around and making things without having to spend thousands of dollars on hardware. Raspberry Pi "foundation" should be ashamed of themselves, tbh.
I got one of the HP elite desks you recommended a while back. It was a brilliant purchase. It is my primary Proxmox node and performs beautifully. Thanks!
Really like this board. I've been looking at getting at a Pi for a 3d printed handheld game console. It's the right size and much better price. The extra RAM. Thank you for the video.
Looks like a very interesting pc for headless operation, thank you Chris for your thorough review! Also I can't help but notice a missing bracket at 9:37 for the orange pi 5
Certainly feels more like a hobbyists board than some of the recent offerings. I could almost hear you grinning at the prospect of a full size HDMI connector!
Very interesting how many notes Radxa has hit (which are pain points on the Raspberry Pi ecosystem): full sized HDMI connector, PCIe connectivity. The just dongle from micro HDMI to full-sized HDMI can often cost more than this board! Unfortunately no Ethernet or USB3, so I guess you have to draw the line somewhere to hit the price point needed.
I was eyeing Radxa boards like this one and the Rock 3C for a while and now there are new models like the Rock 3A which might be worth it. However, I decided to pick up a local refurbished ProDesk G2 Mini (45€) since aside from power consumption is an upgrade on every aspect over these single board computers. Thanks for the video Chris. This seems to be a good makers board since it is so inexpensive but realistically, I would love for it to have Armbian support.
Another great video Chris. Thank you. With special appearances from Mr scissors, the duckies and Stanley (all be it in name only) keep up the great work ❤
At around 8:00 it shows the GPU driver is llvmpipe (a software rasterizer), which means, it's missing the Mali 450 GPU driver. I would assume that's what making the 4K playback so choppy, cause otherwise there's no reason for the playback to be this bad. I don't have this at hand yet to play with, but installing Utgard driver would be the first thing to try & see if that makes a difference.
Great video on a new entry level SBC. Hopefully Radxa keep up the support for this board. I wonder where this board will be in 6 months. Would have liked to see some comparisons against the other two boards as hardware specs are not everything thing. Performance and bench tests, whilst not the same as real world do give a good understanding on where it sits in the market as replacements to other boards. both on performance and efficiency.
"The ducks are erratic!" ... You don't hear THAT on many videos about computers! 🤣 Very exciting video indeed, as always, Chris! It's amazing, thanks to China, how inexpensive computing has become. I've been computing very happily and successfully on a shoestring budget for years ... We've never had it so good? ... I sound like my late father! 🤣
I've just found the entrance to Narnia, it's underneath my desk I just need my miners lamp & I'll be off :) This is an excellent project board with plenty of scope, the price isn't unreasonable even with shipping! I'm glad to see Mr Scissors made a quick appearance, thank you for another interesting Sunday video
Thanks for all the reviews! For some reason, whenever I watch these SBC videos, I can't help but think if any of these will be good enough for distraction-free studying desktop PCs 😄 Even though that's obviously not what they're for... But who knows what will come out in the next five years?
Good timing Chris. I have a few projects lined up, I was planning to use a RP4 but this SBC should work well. If I can find one I will test it out. Thanks for sharing
I think I need to look into replacing the Raspberry Pi 3 I'm using for home assistant. It runs it but barely. This wonderful video reminded me there's a lot of low cost options out there. The HA Yellow is tempting, but a chunky spend at the moment.
Very exciting indeed! Given the Zero 2W at the same price it seems like the Rock 2F is a much better and more powerful SBC in every way, not to mention the convenience of the full size connectors. I miss the $5 zeros but the $10 1GB version of this one is very compelling!
Great video as always. Can you make a video showing step by step instructions to do all the cool open source AI on Linux Mint?You could end the video with an AI version of your intro!
Super das ist genau der Weg den Raspberry leider schon lange verlassen hat.😢 Für den Preis ist dass der absolute Hammer. Genügend Geschwindigkeit und Speicher um kleinere serverdienste auszuführen und um ein bisschen damit rum zu basteln. Spielt kein 4k Video ab? Total egal dafür braucht man das Ding ja auch nicht und für den Preis einfach nur zum rumspielen ist das doch einfach super. Gerne mehr davon😊
Looks really promising tinkering board. Prince is not bad to test out things. Current line of Pi's are getting so expensive. Huge bonus of having USB C power, 3,5mm audio jack and full size HDMI all in same inexpensive board.
Strange that people are finding out about this board from the video, even though it's been out for months! I've been waiting for them to release versions with soldered eMMCs but they never did. Maybe they finally will because demand might be higher after the video. Thanks for testing the pcie speed. I have a project in mind to use this board with a 2xNVME HAT and two 2242 16 GB Intel Optanes in RAID 0. I did not know if the board will be fast enough not to bottleneck them but the combined write speed should be ~360 MB/s, so it shouldn't be a problem.
I love that raspberry pi is getting some proper competition, looking at the specs it should be able to decode the 4K video atleast, can't want to get my hands on this board once it is available in my country.
My sincere hope is that this does not end up like most boards: Promising at first, but without proper official software & hardware support nor documentation, and without community development.
This is an amazing contender in the digital signage scene, I'm interested to see how much better it performs with something like PiSignage or Yodeck video playback. Cheaper than a Pi 3 A+ with better specs with more RAM and modern I/O is amazing. It's a Pi 3 A+ killer for sure. This is the Pi 4 A+ we needed.
I love this sbc format. I'd never thought I'd see another one being made. After the RP3 A+ and the Yuzuki (H616), this one fixes most issues like old wifi, low RAM and the most precious of all: storage. 👍
Oh wow... This, me like! With the optional hat with dual 2.5G Ethernet ports this could make a really capable router running openwrt. I'm definitely keeping an eye on it!
Your fanfare at the end is what made me like your video (I liked it anyway), but you put it in such a charming way I couldn't resist. You are a legend , my man.
That AV out port is exactly what I've been looking for. On Raspberry Pis I've usually had to a lot of frustrating config file alterations to get it working (which it rarely did). If you do get it working I hope you make a video about it
Have you seen the modular handheld SBC with a physical keyboard from CES? If something like that becomes widely available I think a lot of people would go nuts over that. I think small RISC-V and ARM-based SBCs as handheld Linux machines make much more sense than whatever the Raspberry Pi 500 is trying to be. Whenever I watch you review Radxa boards I can’t help but think that they’re much closer to delivering my dream device: a FOSS-friendly computer in a handheld form factor focused on privacy and productivity (x86 handhelds are growing in popularity but are clearly gaming-focused). I just want a computer in my pocket that lets me send emails, organize my calendar, type up word documents while commuting on a bus or train and look up the occasional meme but doesn’t record my every move.
Thank you for the great video. Just because you didn't try a UA-cam video on this board I want to see one, even at a very low resolution. Cmon... Give the little guy a chance.
I was excited to hear it's a $15 board (comes to $23 CAD on the site... bit higher than 15 USD). I was very bummed to open Aliexpress and see they are charging $27 CAD shipping. Yes it's still affordable, but after a case of some sort and power supply if I don't have a spare. It's a bit less interesting. I also don't have a project in mind. I only own a Raspberry Pi 3, which has micro USB power.
Now this is a good low-cost maker SBC right here! And it's really nice to see not just Mr. Scissors and the ducks, but the hamster too! Does he still like to eat nuts?
i dont know if any ody noticed but it seems like the debian image didnt have proper gpu drivers as they were using llvm pipe rather than something like lima or panfrost
Ahoy, thanks for the video. I couldn't help but compare the RK3528 to the Amlogic S905X chip, specs are almost the same. I've used that chip on a lot of boards. I think the 4G/32G board for $31 is super nice. This would probably soar using Android either tablet or TV versions. Android should play 4K vids no problem is my guess. One thing: how are the thermals? Does it stay cool with just a small heatsink or should it use a fan? Thanks and cheers, daveyb
I really like the Radxa SBCs, the main issue I find with then is the OS support os a bit hit and miss; with Radxa provided images coming wih apt repo issues from the factory IIRC. If you don't mind the OS issues/them being a bit older than everybody else, you get a hell of a lot of machine for your money with these boards.
Menu selection especially is absurdly laggy. I see that the Radxa Zero 3W you reviewed a year ago was pretty much the same and you commented on it there. There has got to be something wrong there with Radxa, they really should sort that out and it would be a big improvement. If you compare to for example the Orange Pi Zerio 2W, admittedly you reviewed the 4G model of that rather than 2G, but the responsiveness was night-and-day better on it (under Ubuntu XFCE).
Weird that they launched this now because they just launched the Radxa Cubie A5E as well that should blow this one out of the water for almost the same price.
Thanks for the video. That's what I am looking for a Pi "4A+" like board. More memory and USB over Pi 3A+. Just wondering if you have the scores of coremark or sysbench of this little cutty 2F? Appreciate! Oops... there is no CSI nor DSI?.....
the first thing i thought about when u said, "let's find a Linux for this" was the universal OS of course, Debian, and naturally, it was. so, i am i wrong to assume that antix would run on this thing?
This is an Arm board -- non standard hardware -- so for Antix to run (as on any Arm SBC) a custom image will be needed. And I don't think it does exist. Just because a distribution is available for x86 does not mean it is available for Arm, let along a specific Arm SBC. :)
for boards to compare it with you should have added/used the pine A64+ used to cost €15. and also has 4 cores and 2gb ram. is a very old board by now however so perhaps not even made anymore, but in some ways quite comparable, ofcource this new board is better as the cpu supports a higher speed, pci, wifi, etc.
Good review thanks. Would be great to see what the power consumption is on these, both for off grid use, and if also (if run 24/7) the lifetime power bill might exceed the cost in a few years.
It's so amazing how Mr. Scissors always seems to save the video. Otherwise, Stanley the Knife would have to come into action -- and he's not always such a nice guy as Mr. Scissors.
Thanks a lot, interesting card for new projects. I was interested by python-periphery but it seems the last version of the library is from 2023, so no more active? Thank you for the video!
I wish Raspberry Pi hadn't dropped the A from the lineup as I do like this form factor. Neat to see Radxa include PCIe!
Hi, Jeff! :)
totally agree with you
Nano Pi M4V2 is a 6 core Pi Clone with PCIE, I bought one 2020, got the 4 Sata Ports Daughter board, still going as a NAS (4x8TB Seagates)... PS, I still have a couple of 3a Pi, handy bit of kit ...
David Attenborough: "Ah yes, very interesting. We are observing a wild UA-camr grazing the fields of a rival's comment section. The non-confrontational communication is a sign these pastures are peaceful and undisturbed by the ferocious drama channels, whose diet consists of weaker channels who've fallen out of favor with the herd. We have yet to see reciprocation of the comment in the form of non-verbal acknowledgement in the form of a hearted comment."
@@JeffGeerling technically they haven't, but technically they also haven't updated it in....many years 😂
Good to see them going back to what a SBC used to be.
These $200 SBC's are ridiculous.
Radxa ROCK 5 ITX+ goes for a cheap $370 Australian.
Sweet SBC.
I just use CPP based boards for component IOT and stuff - they are down at $2-$4 and can do everything you need. As soon as it gets into 4k or computing/ serious multi-tasking immediately switch to a mini or 2nd hand. Literally no point in this madness.
@@audas none seem to have much grunt. Found suitable for nas with storage options?
More than 32 € plus extras for the 2F from AliEx in Germany. So it is rather a small investment for quite serious projects (e.g. NAS, SmartHome) than for tinkering or just getting in touch to SBCs. Quite nice video, but in my not "low cost" from my location.
Your Sunday post arrives at 6 AM here on the west coast of the US. Always a real treat.
It's an excellent SBC for maker projects and remarkably affordable. The SBC landscape is evolving rapidly, making it challenging to stay informed about all the latest advancements. We appreciate how you consistently keep us updated and highlight the most significant developments. Greetings from Calcutta! Thank you for your efforts, and have a great day!
I’ll always appreciate Chris’s love for single board computers
Thank you for another fine presentation of a SBC! No one could ever have a reason to not understand what these boards are for, thanks to your great job!! Have a great week Mr. Barnatt!!
Impressive for the price. Always nice to see Mr. Scissors and in spirit, Stanley the Knife.
I'm just surprised how EC manages to stay consistent with the reviews.
To the point and no nonsense.
Keep on going ❤
This is pretty much the only channel I can like before watching, insanely good quality stuff.
Nice to see very low-end innovation hasn't stopped! (Though I'm a little worried about a $15 price if my country's tarrifs change :-(). We all do know, of course, that we'd need the 2F to support _at least_ PCI Gen2 single lane wardrobes, in order for Narnia I/O to work at all! Great content, every Sunday I look forward to your videos, though my wife gets suspicious when I chuckle during your videos!
"innovation"
@@TheDanEdwards Haters gonna hate, proud?
@@TheDanEdwards I'd have thought using surplus parts to make a desirable product shows considerable ingenuity and innovation--just not *technical* innovation.
I like the pi zero 2W. For the same price a much more useful board with 2 Gig of Ram? That's impressive. I like that you showed it having good software support. Thanks for keeping us informed and up to date.
This board is twice the price of the Pi Zero. The $15 price tag is always accompanied with a $15 postage.
SO unless you buy in bulk its a complete rip off.
Wow that is quite affordable and nice to see it can be expanded for more storage too. Thank you for showing us this hardware.
Thanks for another great video Chris. Yet another low cost but powerful SBC to add to the Cornucopia of SBC boards! Thanks for all your hard work Chris! Take Good Care!
Greetings my friend.
@@ExplainingComputers I really appreciate all the great content you provide. Even when I am familiar with a topic, you always manage to shed some light on an aspect of it I had overlooked, or just plain forgotten. You are the only UA-cam channel I consistently watch. Thanks to you My Friend!
I love that you tested maker and commercial uses rather than your usual “desktop PC” tests!!! Well done!!!
Now that is an actual SBC. $15 is affordable for a SBC...and it is even in stock! The whole point of a SBC is for personal tinker projects and embedded industrial environments where you don't want moving/noisy components like fans. When the original Pi Zero came out, it was constantly out of stock because embedded hardware vendors were putting them into production as control boards for industrial hardware and so hobbyists were generally out of luck.
You're about 2 years late on the stock comments. Everything is in stock now. The Zero is still available. I don't get your comment?
I agree. I think some of the sbc have simply lost their way. They were never meant to be populated with xeon like performance, retailing over 100$
waiting for the next SBC review! and thank you very much for the good content.
I use rpi5 as my desktop. It works very well, and I'm quite happy with that. I wouldn't do the same with rpi4
Excellent review Chris. Mr Scissors seems to be in fine fettle and it was good to see Stanley forging a new career as a Python object.
Some would object to the objectifying of Stanley.
and nvme drive
Thanks a lot for covering GPIO. I recently had to cough up the extra money for a raspberry pi for a project that heavily relied on GPIO, even though the orange pi alternative was cheaper and faster, purely because of the lack of documentation and examples for GPIO.
I relate to this -- GPIO software support and documentation is poor for many Arm boards. For this board I thought the GPIO functionality was critical, so I delved into it. And it worked!
Great review, covered all the bases :) Great board too, full size hdmi and usb is a big plus over the Pi Zero, whilst usb 2 is enough for 90% of what I do with sbc's, all the more so since pcie is provided. Ditto the RAM. And cheap as chips.
So many projects don't need lots of memory and clock speeds, it's great to see such boards getting support on this channel.
Hope the sun shines up your way too, London is positively radiant this afternoon.
Too many times during the video that I was getting overexcited, Chris. Thank God that Mr Scissors was used sparingly and the results from htop were cut short...
As always, thank you for the video.
DOSbox is working. That's the most crucial thing to me. 👍
I thought this might be important for some people. :)
Does that mean with the adapter we might be able to attach something like a voodoo to this? That could make for a very interesting project
Some of the machines at my brother's metal shop still need dos for any connectivity, unless he wants to manually enter g code.
I know someone else who worked at a storage module business and the acces control/gate and such did as well.
DOSbox is necessary in a crazy large number of places, I'd imagine.
DOSBox is a full-system emulator that provides BIOS interrupts and contains its own internal DOS-like shell. This means that it can be used without owning a license to any real DOS operating system. ~FYI-WIKI~
I was watching a smaller stream the other day and we're entertaining a theory that larger youtube channels are automatically louder, regardless of what compression or other normalising you do your end.
Your channel is the loudest of all the ones I watch!
Coincidentally, the loudest one I listen to?
Nice to see low cost SBC's using the same form factor as the rpi3
I'm very surprised at the loudness feedback. I normalize to standard TV broadcast specifications. I often check how my audio is coming out relative to other channels, and have not found the issue you cite. Many channels I watch are louder than mine! :)
UA-cam has introduced a new feature "Stable Volume" Click on your gear icon, set it to taste.
@@ExplainingComputers Maybe that's it, as you're comparing it to standard broadcasting. It's been a while since I watched telly and I was surprised at how loud it is! .
As someone pointed out, there's a feature that standardises volume across channels, so I'm going to try it out.
Thanks for keeping updated always learning something new
The Narnia reference was awesome.
Nice SBC too bad the underware spam bots got here first.
I will knock them out. I really don't understand why Google's AI cannot do this.
@@ExplainingComputers I'm going to assume google likes them because it inflates platform signup and usage statistics... The accounts are always like a day or two old. Can't be THAT hard to detect, therefore I'm going with they are allowing it :)
@@ExplainingComputers "AI"
I think Google is running the bots themselves. It would explain why they turn a blind eye to the bots.
@@Robbie-mw5uu what would be the point? What in the world could google gain from bots that post random garbage?
As a guy in the mid 60th i can't help to be impressed when i see the specifications of these tiny and cheap computers. The price is equivalent to a bottle of fair wine. 2Ghz, 2GB RAM, HDMI, PCI and GPIO, Wifi, BT - it's actually insane. :)
It's inexpensive because it's mostly made from parts from the excess supply bins, assembled on a line with spare capacity. No real research, and minimal support.
@@TheDanEdwards Maybe, but it's still a complete and real computer.
Shame its competition doesn't use the same excess supply bin!
Radxa makes some really interesting stuff, I'm glad that there are still some companies out there who are manufacturing products that are affordable and targeted towards those of us who are still interested in tinkering around and making things without having to spend thousands of dollars on hardware. Raspberry Pi "foundation" should be ashamed of themselves, tbh.
Thanks Chris for another exciting new SBC video...and to see that "Mr Scissors " has not been redundant on the dole...!
Have a great week!
Finnaly an SBC where i can replace my old raspberry pi 2 in my little arcade cabinet. As always thanks for the Video. Have a nice Day🥰
Glad to see that a full-size HDMI and audio jack are still available in some SBCs. Great video and a lightweight low-cost board. 👍
Now we need a video comparing this board and all the other "Zero" boards like Orange Pi Zero 3 and Banana Pi P2 Zero. 🙂
Astonishing what a $15 computer can do. Thanks as always
Excellent video, Chris. Yet another new SBC. Thanks for sharing.
I got one of the HP elite desks you recommended a while back. It was a brilliant purchase. It is my primary Proxmox node and performs beautifully. Thanks!
"I can never get in!" Geez, you just described my life in that statement. I feel that hard.
Really like this board. I've been looking at getting at a Pi for a 3d printed handheld game console. It's the right size and much better price. The extra RAM. Thank you for the video.
Looks like a very interesting pc for headless operation, thank you Chris for your thorough review! Also I can't help but notice a missing bracket at 9:37 for the orange pi 5
An entrance to Narnia should be a standard feature on all modern SBCs these days. What is this world coming to? Looking forward to your next video!
Certainly feels more like a hobbyists board than some of the recent offerings. I could almost hear you grinning at the prospect of a full size HDMI connector!
These look like they are really neat computers for not too much money! If I already didn’t own so many raspberry pi 4s I’d get one!
Very interesting how many notes Radxa has hit (which are pain points on the Raspberry Pi ecosystem): full sized HDMI connector, PCIe connectivity. The just dongle from micro HDMI to full-sized HDMI can often cost more than this board! Unfortunately no Ethernet or USB3, so I guess you have to draw the line somewhere to hit the price point needed.
Ethernet probably was left out, because WIFI is so very common these days, and a wifi chip either with or without an antenna takes up less space.
8 Am ,Sunday morning in Chicago-Time from another interesting video. I'm never disappointed.
Morning!
I was eyeing Radxa boards like this one and the Rock 3C for a while and now there are new models like the Rock 3A which might be worth it.
However, I decided to pick up a local refurbished ProDesk G2 Mini (45€) since aside from power consumption is an upgrade on every aspect over these single board computers.
Thanks for the video Chris. This seems to be a good makers board since it is so inexpensive but realistically, I would love for it to have Armbian support.
Another great video Chris. Thank you. With special appearances from Mr scissors, the duckies and Stanley (all be it in name only) keep up the great work ❤
At around 8:00 it shows the GPU driver is llvmpipe (a software rasterizer), which means, it's missing the Mali 450 GPU driver. I would assume that's what making the 4K playback so choppy, cause otherwise there's no reason for the playback to be this bad.
I don't have this at hand yet to play with, but installing Utgard driver would be the first thing to try & see if that makes a difference.
I'm sure you are right, there is no GPU driver for video playback, as common on many Arm SBCs . . .
Sunday Greetings Chris. Now this is some affordable SBC certainly going to attract more hobbyists.
Great video on a new entry level SBC. Hopefully Radxa keep up the support for this board. I wonder where this board will be in 6 months. Would have liked to see some comparisons against the other two boards as hardware specs are not everything thing. Performance and bench tests, whilst not the same as real world do give a good understanding on where it sits in the market as replacements to other boards. both on performance and efficiency.
software support = community projects. Since ever and 4ever.
@igorpecovnik I must admit Armbian support is something I look for in non raspberry pi boards
An interesting little board. The segment using Python to communicate with and operate GPIO was most instructive.
"The ducks are erratic!" ... You don't hear THAT on many videos about computers! 🤣
Very exciting video indeed, as always, Chris!
It's amazing, thanks to China, how inexpensive computing has become. I've been computing very happily and successfully on a shoestring budget for years ... We've never had it so good? ... I sound like my late father! 🤣
These seem perfect for kiosks and video-display menus at restaurants (among other things). Very cool!
I've just found the entrance to Narnia, it's underneath my desk I just need my miners lamp & I'll be off :) This is an excellent project board with plenty of scope, the price isn't unreasonable even with shipping! I'm glad to see Mr Scissors made a quick appearance, thank you for another interesting Sunday video
Thanks for all the reviews! For some reason, whenever I watch these SBC videos, I can't help but think if any of these will be good enough for distraction-free studying desktop PCs 😄 Even though that's obviously not what they're for... But who knows what will come out in the next five years?
Good timing Chris. I have a few projects lined up, I was planning to use a RP4 but this SBC should work well. If I can find one I will test it out. Thanks for sharing
I think I need to look into replacing the Raspberry Pi 3 I'm using for home assistant. It runs it but barely.
This wonderful video reminded me there's a lot of low cost options out there.
The HA Yellow is tempting, but a chunky spend at the moment.
(not that this board is a great choice, I don't think, but it is a good spring board for thought.)
Very exciting indeed! Given the Zero 2W at the same price it seems like the Rock 2F is a much better and more powerful SBC in every way, not to mention the convenience of the full size connectors. I miss the $5 zeros but the $10 1GB version of this one is very compelling!
Great video as always. Can you make a video showing step by step instructions to do all the cool open source AI on Linux Mint?You could end the video with an AI version of your intro!
Nice video idea -- noted! :)
Thank you for demonstrating that the GPIO ports are accessible from Python! That’s usually a difficulty on some SBC’s.
Super das ist genau der Weg den Raspberry leider schon lange verlassen hat.😢
Für den Preis ist dass der absolute Hammer. Genügend Geschwindigkeit und Speicher um kleinere serverdienste auszuführen und um ein bisschen damit rum zu basteln. Spielt kein 4k Video ab? Total egal dafür braucht man das Ding ja auch nicht und für den Preis einfach nur zum rumspielen ist das doch einfach super.
Gerne mehr davon😊
Vereinbart!
Aahh At last, thank you, there's nobody who has done a review on it yet
This board does sadly seem to have slipped under the radar.
As always - greetings 😊. Interesting SBC.
As always your video makes me calm. 😊 Thanks.
Looks really promising tinkering board. Prince is not bad to test out things. Current line of Pi's are getting so expensive. Huge bonus of having USB C power, 3,5mm audio jack and full size HDMI all in same inexpensive board.
Strange that people are finding out about this board from the video, even though it's been out for months! I've been waiting for them to release versions with soldered eMMCs but they never did. Maybe they finally will because demand might be higher after the video.
Thanks for testing the pcie speed. I have a project in mind to use this board with a 2xNVME HAT and two 2242 16 GB Intel Optanes in RAID 0. I did not know if the board will be fast enough not to bottleneck them but the combined write speed should be ~360 MB/s, so it shouldn't be a problem.
One of lifes great dilemmas, scissors or knife to cut through cling film?
So true!
I love that raspberry pi is getting some proper competition, looking at the specs it should be able to decode the 4K video atleast, can't want to get my hands on this board once it is available in my country.
Looks good for how cheap it is. I'm glad to see a full sized HDMI port too - no need for a mini-HDMI adaptor.
A decent board for the price. Thanks for the video.
My sincere hope is that this does not end up like most boards: Promising at first, but without proper official software & hardware support nor documentation, and without community development.
This is an amazing contender in the digital signage scene, I'm interested to see how much better it performs with something like PiSignage or Yodeck video playback. Cheaper than a Pi 3 A+ with better specs with more RAM and modern I/O is amazing. It's a Pi 3 A+ killer for sure. This is the Pi 4 A+ we needed.
At 5:55
The entrance to Narnia....
Too bad we didn't find Aslan, we could use his benevolent wisdom in these trying times....
My entrance to Narnia was always in my cupboard. I was lied to.
I love this sbc format. I'd never thought I'd see another one being made. After the RP3 A+ and the Yuzuki (H616), this one fixes most issues like old wifi, low RAM and the most precious of all: storage. 👍
Oh wow... This, me like!
With the optional hat with dual 2.5G Ethernet ports this could make a really capable router running openwrt.
I'm definitely keeping an eye on it!
The big takeaway is the continued viability of the Model A form factor. It looks like there is some great potential still there.
Agreed!
Your fanfare at the end is what made me like your video (I liked it anyway), but you put it in such a charming way I couldn't resist. You are a legend , my man.
That AV out port is exactly what I've been looking for. On Raspberry Pis I've usually had to a lot of frustrating config file alterations to get it working (which it rarely did). If you do get it working I hope you make a video about it
Have you seen the modular handheld SBC with a physical keyboard from CES? If something like that becomes widely available I think a lot of people would go nuts over that. I think small RISC-V and ARM-based SBCs as handheld Linux machines make much more sense than whatever the Raspberry Pi 500 is trying to be. Whenever I watch you review Radxa boards I can’t help but think that they’re much closer to delivering my dream device: a FOSS-friendly computer in a handheld form factor focused on privacy and productivity (x86 handhelds are growing in popularity but are clearly gaming-focused). I just want a computer in my pocket that lets me send emails, organize my calendar, type up word documents while commuting on a bus or train and look up the occasional meme but doesn’t record my every move.
Thank you for the great video. Just because you didn't try a UA-cam video on this board I want to see one, even at a very low resolution. Cmon... Give the little guy a chance.
I was excited to hear it's a $15 board (comes to $23 CAD on the site... bit higher than 15 USD).
I was very bummed to open Aliexpress and see they are charging $27 CAD shipping.
Yes it's still affordable, but after a case of some sort and power supply if I don't have a spare. It's a bit less interesting.
I also don't have a project in mind.
I only own a Raspberry Pi 3, which has micro USB power.
Now this is a good low-cost maker SBC right here! And it's really nice to see not just Mr. Scissors and the ducks, but the hamster too! Does he still like to eat nuts?
i dont know if any ody noticed but it seems like the debian image didnt have proper gpu drivers as they were using llvm pipe rather than something like lima or panfrost
True. Almost no Arm SBCs have GPU drivers in Linux.
oh. i always thought they had but oh well
Looked like it was using software rendering? It listed llvmpipe as the GPU
I'm sure you are right. There is an Android image for this board, which may well include a GPU driver.
rarely a new sbc has gpu drivers that work, this has always been the problem with sbcs, drivers, part of the reason the adoption is so slow
I’m still looking for the entrance to Narnia 😝
I've hidden it . . . !
@@ExplainingComputers In the cupboard? Or someplace new?
Never had an SBC but this one makes my hands itchy :)
Seems like a little step up above the RPI3B+
I love the idea of these type of boards. However shipping for me is also 15$. I will just stick with cheap garage sale laptops. Thanks for the video!
Ahoy, thanks for the video. I couldn't help but compare the RK3528 to the Amlogic S905X chip, specs are almost the same. I've used that chip on a lot of boards. I think the 4G/32G board for $31 is super nice. This would probably soar using Android either tablet or TV versions. Android should play 4K vids no problem is my guess. One thing: how are the thermals? Does it stay cool with just a small heatsink or should it use a fan? Thanks and cheers, daveyb
the cpu a53 is trash
I really like the Radxa SBCs, the main issue I find with then is the OS support os a bit hit and miss; with Radxa provided images coming wih apt repo issues from the factory IIRC.
If you don't mind the OS issues/them being a bit older than everybody else, you get a hell of a lot of machine for your money with these boards.
Menu selection especially is absurdly laggy.
I see that the Radxa Zero 3W you reviewed a year ago was pretty much the same and you commented on it there. There has got to be something wrong there with Radxa, they really should sort that out and it would be a big improvement.
If you compare to for example the Orange Pi Zerio 2W, admittedly you reviewed the 4G model of that rather than 2G, but the responsiveness was night-and-day better on it (under Ubuntu XFCE).
Weird that they launched this now because they just launched the Radxa Cubie A5E as well that should blow this one out of the water for almost the same price.
It really does need to do the dishes for fiteen dolla....Nice review thanks
Thanks for the video. That's what I am looking for a Pi "4A+" like board. More memory and USB over Pi 3A+.
Just wondering if you have the scores of coremark or sysbench of this little cutty 2F? Appreciate!
Oops... there is no CSI nor DSI?.....
That thing runs slower than my Amiga 500 did in 1987 with 512kB of RAM and 7MHz processor. From a floppy disk. Progress is a fascinating thing, innit.
the first thing i thought about when u said, "let's find a Linux for this" was the universal OS of course, Debian, and naturally, it was. so, i am i wrong to assume that antix would run on this thing?
This is an Arm board -- non standard hardware -- so for Antix to run (as on any Arm SBC) a custom image will be needed. And I don't think it does exist. Just because a distribution is available for x86 does not mean it is available for Arm, let along a specific Arm SBC. :)
@@ExplainingComputers ah ok! right, i see, thank you
for boards to compare it with you should have added/used the pine A64+ used to cost €15. and also has 4 cores and 2gb ram. is a very old board by now however so perhaps not even made anymore, but in some ways quite comparable, ofcource this new board is better as the cpu supports a higher speed, pci, wifi, etc.
Good review thanks. Would be great to see what the power consumption is on these, both for off grid use, and if also (if run 24/7) the lifetime power bill might exceed the cost in a few years.
It's so amazing how Mr. Scissors always seems to save the video. Otherwise, Stanley the Knife would have to come into action -- and he's not always such a nice guy as Mr. Scissors.
I always get nervous that you'll never get in during the unboxing!
It could happen . . . a failed unboxing video!
@@ExplainingComputers I look forward to that one! :)
We don‘t have to forget that we moved the whole world with Amiga 500 and i486, so what are we going to move with the 15 bucks thing? 🎉🎉
Thanks a lot, interesting card for new projects. I was interested by python-periphery but it seems the last version of the library is from 2023, so no more active? Thank you for the video!
As far as I'm aware, Python periphery is still maintained. Not everything needs constant updates. :)
Too bad it's that weak on the GUI. I don't know if it's the GPU (or its driver) or Xfce, but it looked surprisingly slow compared to LXDE on Raspbian.
Hi Chris, have you ended your Amazon affiliate program? Noticed the link isn't on your videos anymore. Is it because of the Honey saga?
No, nothing has changed. I've obviously omitted it in error. Will correct! :)