At $144 for JUST the SBC, you might as well just buy a small form factor mini pc which have a case and start at about $15 more ($165). The reason Pis are so popular is the standardized headers, standard form factor (which the pi 4 did break), and the low cost. With the current high prices on Pis the hobbyist market has pretty much dried up, but once prices come down it would be hard to stomach this SBC's price.
@@jaydee5472 Ummm no. The hardware on this board is top of the line, which is why it costs a lot. Hardware on a pi was selected to meet a price point. The only reason price is high for Pi's now is scarcity. These are not scarce...But hey, I only own every single pi ever made, and purchased them all at MSRP or below...What do I know. You sound like an idiot
Most companies are really pushing the limits of SBC's these days, but I do think I'm gonna hold out for rpi 5 if it ever gets released. The Raspberry Pi Foundation knows they need to step their game up, so I think it's just a matter of time.
Why would you do that when you can do the same thing with other sbc but better. Don't be naive, the raspberry pi was a good sbc but not the best anymore.
I think the TakiJr reviews are great, really passionate about micro electronics and handheld gaming, and not to mention great observations. His description of the LED board being described as "The blue one" really makes you think about the manufacturing and engineering processes that must've gone into deciding to use a blue PCB over a green one, what decisions led to that choice, etc. Also like his unbiased opinions on the products reviewed, describing it as "the best" really helps us consumers be informed on whether we should or should not be purchasing.
After my dismal experience with the Rock64 and the amazing experience with the Pi Zero W, if I need an ARM based SBC, I’ll either buy a Raspberry product or just find an x64/x86 alternative. The software on the Rock64 was constantly crashing, not booting, etc. The Pi worked first time out.
I got an orange pi 5 a while ago and have been running it as a mastodon server. Pretty awesome how much power you can get out of these RK3588S boards especially for server applications. The opi5 has an m2 slot which is nice for fast storage.
@@Girvo747 No doubt we need those SBCs to go back to the sub 30-60 €$ mark to be interesting again. At this price point I'd just buy an old Thin Client and a GPIO adapter which indeed exists for PC.
that's still a very expensive one compared to the orange pi 5, which can be had for 89€ with shipping (compared to this one being almost 140€ with no shipping)...
almost 200 usd on aliexpress. The extremely overpricing make it useless, like most PI boards in the last years. For 2/3 the price I can get a modern Android tablet with more storage and ram and a screen.
Maybe it would be good to start with it in the heat sink case meant for it to get a bassline of thermals. It has contacts on all the important hot components.
Another e-waste without proper GNU/Linux support: No open-source OpenGL/GLES/Vulkan implementation is available for the G610 GPU that the RK3588 SOC has. I have a couple of RK3588 boards collecting dust. Android for emulation sucks BIG time, and in GNU/Linux you are tied to kernel 5.10 if you use closed-source drivers, or use the slow Panfork MESA drivers. Stay away from RK3588 until there is proper support in MESA...
And it’s compatible with all the awesome Raspberry Pi based products like PiBoys and such??? Because if it’s not then it’s just another tiny computer and doesn’t even really need to be suggested as an alternative to Raspberry Pi if it can’t fulfill the reasons that many people want the raspberry pi to begin with. (And commercial developers/non-end consumers already get priority order fulfillment from RaspberryPi anyways and have less of a difficult time finding them for MSRP than end consumers who want to do that unique niche stuff with it like sticking it in a box that makes it look like an old handheld) Unique, niche products like that are usually why end-consumers will want to buy a Raspberry Pi in the first place. However, whenever I see “Raspberry Pi Killer!” videos promoting better spec’s products… they’re not in a cool retro PiBoys like product… they’re just sitting there AS-IS or shoved into a project box or generic casing with none of the desirability of a Raspberry Pi… …so what current alternative products are out there that are compatible with all the currently available Raspberry Pi accessories that people love and want to buy Raspberry Pies just to use said accessories? Is this one? Are there any? If so can we see them in action with those various purpose-made-accessories like game cases from ExperimentalPi and not by themselves?
CNX Software reports ADLINK Technology’s SMARC 2.1 compliant LEC-MTK-I12000 system-on-module (SoM) features the MediaTek Genio 1200 octa-core Cortex-A78/A55 AIoT processor coupled with up to 8GB RAM and 256GB UFS storage, and powers the I-Pi SMARC 1200 development kit designed for robotics and AIoT applications.
Raspberry pi foundation has shot them selves in the foot lack of supply lack of upgraded/decent SOCs raspberry pi are garbage now with all these better alternitaves
i dont get the justification of spending almost $150 for this when u can get a used x86 system with a small form factor cheaper and a much better performance.
There were some contradictory and out of date comments regarding the case price and type available. However, this board did come out of the blue and it was good to see that they directly involved devs with boards to aid software development, although much of it was also already underway with all of the other boards that had been released. I guess that trying to retain the same kind of form factor as the Pi 4 might well be a good marketing move for those that are looking for alternatives. So all looked good until earlier on today, when the NanoPC-T6 was announced and will undoubtedly take the crown of best value Rockchip SBC, with the full RK3588 and great I/O onboard for a very strong price. For me, eMMC is not only slower than M.2 SSD/NVME but also very expensive in comparison. The choice of whether to have onboard WiFi/BT vs mass storage is a choice of priorities to a large degree. The NanoPC-T6, at it's base level price for the 4Gb model essentially removes any need to have one or the other. So vendors like Orange Pi, Radxa and Indiedroid are going to have to rethink pricing to compete with FriendlyELEC.
You'll find the board has been around a while as 9Tripod Pico PC V2.0 with poor Chinese documentation, only to team up with AmeriDROID who have done a rebranding and marketing but to their credit the support is much better and it delivers many great specs but still overly priced if you opt for the higher RAM and eMMC but an improvement over earlier boards that Taki reviewed from Firefly & Khadas that were/are way too expensive. FriendlyELEC, Radxa and Orange Pi offer the best value and support with the Nano-PC-T6 proving that a full RK3588 SBC doesn't need to cost a fortune and the most exciting news is that the Orange Pi 5+ is due to release in the next few weeks with RK3588 16Gb RAM for $129 USD which is insane price as you get all the bells and whistles but for those looking for another Raspberry Pi 4 clone look at Radxa Rock 5A which is very near the Indidroid for looks and has started shipping to early backers. Great time for RK3588 lovers!!!
It has a Single Core equivalent to Snapdragon 845, A multicore equivalent to Snapdragon 855 GPU equivalen to Snapdragon 865. If the CPU single core were a little bit stronger, say Geekbench 5 single core around 1000 then it would have been awesome!
Just received mine. This is a crazy amount of power for a Pi sized board! RK3588 looks awesome. GPU driver is a bit glitchy still with a flickery mouse cursor but otherwise it's running fantastic and it doesn't even really get that hot with the included cooler and fan.
Do you know if there are any analog video out options? From reviewing their specs I'm only seeing digital out and I would love to hook this up to a CRT.
why would you publish in 60fps so the video is unwatchable on older equipment, why should i take any tech advice from someone who doesn't know any basics of videography let alone something else
I've pretty much give up on the SBC market. when you could buy one for $39-49 it was cool.. now, not so much. once you go over 75-100 you might as well buy an old Dell thin client. I just don't care anymore.
That was a lot of effort put into a deep dive analysis comparing the board that shares a very similar form factor to the stock raspberry pi4 when the blue one is quite obviously the best one.
Today nano pi t6 came out and at lower price they make everything else look poorly. Its RK3588 without s and for $150 you can get 16GB with 256GB eMMC. Looks like Rock5 with usb ports exchanged for another 2.5Gbit and 5g module but its way cheaper with that eMMC.
Orange Pi 5+ beats its for price and specs with CNX Software reporting release date of next week? 4GB RAM for $89.90 8GB RAM for $109.00 16GB RAM for $129.00
@@Razor_Burn yep, it's cheaper for bare board with lower rk3588s SOC. With NanoPC You already get quite good eMMC as well as much more i/o including 8x faster nvme slot. This is so far best choice now if You don't need smaller pi form factor (but OP5 is not that small).
@@Razor_Burn oh sorry, I missed OP5+ version, so today it got update and it's very similar to nanopc-t6 except that eMMC which is already included. Forget my last reply, yes, it's cheaper and some people would not need eMMC because of faster nvme drive. Choice is always great thing to have, both boards are very competitive and I expect that everything else with -s version should be cheaper now :)
Yup, the blue one with lights is best 💙 . As far as any SBC, like you said, the community around it is the most important thing, right after it, though, is predictability. I really want the Rockchip boards to get there, but historically, if a project builds off of one cool non-pi board, they might have to start from scratch on their second and third generations. The drought of Raspberry Pi's has left an opening for a new player, but unless there is a promise of future releases being mostly backwards-compatible, and great online resources, Raspberry Pi is going to be the best choice the second they get back to MSRP and in stock.
At $150 for the lowest model I'll pass on this one.
I feel that my friend
At $144 for JUST the SBC, you might as well just buy a small form factor mini pc which have a case and start at about $15 more ($165). The reason Pis are so popular is the standardized headers, standard form factor (which the pi 4 did break), and the low cost.
With the current high prices on Pis the hobbyist market has pretty much dried up, but once prices come down it would be hard to stomach this SBC's price.
You could get an orange pi 5 for 50-70 bucks less for the same chip
@@jaydee5472 Ummm no. The hardware on this board is top of the line, which is why it costs a lot. Hardware on a pi was selected to meet a price point. The only reason price is high for Pi's now is scarcity. These are not scarce...But hey, I only own every single pi ever made, and purchased them all at MSRP or below...What do I know.
You sound like an idiot
Most companies are really pushing the limits of SBC's these days, but I do think I'm gonna hold out for rpi 5 if it ever gets released. The Raspberry Pi Foundation knows they need to step their game up, so I think it's just a matter of time.
Why would you do that when you can do the same thing with other sbc but better.
Don't be naive, the raspberry pi was a good sbc but not the best anymore.
I think the TakiJr reviews are great, really passionate about micro electronics and handheld gaming, and not to mention great observations. His description of the LED board being described as "The blue one" really makes you think about the manufacturing and engineering processes that must've gone into deciding to use a blue PCB over a green one, what decisions led to that choice, etc. Also like his unbiased opinions on the products reviewed, describing it as "the best" really helps us consumers be informed on whether we should or should not be purchasing.
"Rock pi" is not a company. The company is Radxa. They even stopped naming their SBCs "Rock Pi".
After my dismal experience with the Rock64 and the amazing experience with the Pi Zero W, if I need an ARM based SBC, I’ll either buy a Raspberry product or just find an x64/x86 alternative. The software on the Rock64 was constantly crashing, not booting, etc. The Pi worked first time out.
Hey Taki, are you planning to review the KT-R1 handheld?
I got an orange pi 5 a while ago and have been running it as a mastodon server. Pretty awesome how much power you can get out of these RK3588S boards especially for server applications. The opi5 has an m2 slot which is nice for fast storage.
For you saying "just buy an intel mini pc", the RK3588 has a GPU that is many times faster than the Intel IGPU. RK3588 can emulate PS2 in 4K.
Hope we get more SBCs which are compatible with the Pi ecosystem and work ottb with mainline Linux as well.
Needs to be cheaper than this one though, this is nearly $150 USD!
@@Girvo747 No doubt we need those SBCs to go back to the sub 30-60 €$ mark to be interesting again.
At this price point I'd just buy an old Thin Client and a GPIO adapter which indeed exists for PC.
WTF, is up with these prices. I'll pass
take a shot every time he says Raspberry Pi and you'll die of alcohol poisoning halfway thru the video
Adding your son at the end of the video made feel so happy.
that's still a very expensive one compared to the orange pi 5, which can be had for 89€ with shipping (compared to this one being almost 140€ with no shipping)...
This is a really interesting board. I would love to throw Android TV on this to replace my Shield TV. I don't see it available for most SBCs thought.
No Android TV build at this point for this board, but it is available for Rock 5B and Nano Pi R6C.
@@TakiUdon I just received my R6C board. Hope we get more distros for it soon. Batocera? Maybe?
$200 for the top end one with 16GB RAM is not too bad.
Not too shabby but 16gb is overkill
almost 200 usd on aliexpress.
The extremely overpricing make it useless, like most PI boards in the last years. For 2/3 the price I can get a modern Android tablet with more storage and ram and a screen.
Maybe it would be good to start with it in the heat sink case meant for it to get a bassline of thermals. It has contacts on all the important hot components.
Are you gonna play Doom in that OLED screen?
I can’t believe it runs Doom 3! We need the software support to catch up with the RK3588
There is no reason to buy SBCs for more than 100$ just to stick a full OS on it, since you can get a lenovo or intel mini-pc for that.
So which board would you suggest? :D
man I love to watch your stuff after gummies !!! Thank You !!!!
Another e-waste without proper GNU/Linux support: No open-source OpenGL/GLES/Vulkan implementation is available for the G610 GPU that the RK3588 SOC has.
I have a couple of RK3588 boards collecting dust. Android for emulation sucks BIG time, and in GNU/Linux you are tied to kernel 5.10 if you use closed-source drivers, or use the slow Panfork MESA drivers.
Stay away from RK3588 until there is proper support in MESA...
instead of using Box86 (with the emulation overhead) for Doom3 you could also try get it working natively with Dhewm3 :P
I think the Geekworm NASPi Gemini 2.5 New Version with X882 V2.0 would be perfect for this board.
I have a NESPie+ case, and this video was exactly what I was looking for! but that price is OUCH.
So does this Clone fit properly and be compatible with the PiBoy DMG or PiBoy XRS ?
We need a taki udon x retro game corps video
And it’s compatible with all the awesome Raspberry Pi based products like PiBoys and such???
Because if it’s not then it’s just another tiny computer and doesn’t even really need to be suggested as an alternative to Raspberry Pi if it can’t fulfill the reasons that many people want the raspberry pi to begin with. (And commercial developers/non-end consumers already get priority order fulfillment from RaspberryPi anyways and have less of a difficult time finding them for MSRP than end consumers who want to do that unique niche stuff with it like sticking it in a box that makes it look like an old handheld)
Unique, niche products like that are usually why end-consumers will want to buy a Raspberry Pi in the first place. However, whenever I see “Raspberry Pi Killer!” videos promoting better spec’s products… they’re not in a cool retro PiBoys like product… they’re just sitting there AS-IS or shoved into a project box or generic casing with none of the desirability of a Raspberry Pi…
…so what current alternative products are out there that are compatible with all the currently available Raspberry Pi accessories that people love and want to buy Raspberry Pies just to use said accessories? Is this one? Are there any? If so can we see them in action with those various purpose-made-accessories like game cases from ExperimentalPi and not by themselves?
So does this Clone fit properly and be compatible with the PiBoy DMG or PiBoy XRS ?
At $150 USD, there’s little reason to consider it. The RPi is popular because it’s cheap.
Cortex A77/A78 SBCs when?
Next year perhaps
CNX Software reports ADLINK Technology’s SMARC 2.1 compliant LEC-MTK-I12000 system-on-module (SoM) features the MediaTek Genio 1200 octa-core Cortex-A78/A55 AIoT processor coupled with up to 8GB RAM and 256GB UFS storage, and powers the I-Pi SMARC 1200 development kit designed for robotics and AIoT applications.
I would love to see Tiny windows 11 on this Pi Clone
I couldnt agree more. How nice would a Piboy or Pistation be with the power of PS2 instead of a pi.
So does this Clone fit properly and be compatible with the PiBoy DMG or PiBoy XRS ?
@@BogalaSawundiris Forget about compatibility just fit into the plastic shell.
Would this work with something like rgb-pi?
I want one of these boards with a snap dragon processor...
Raspberry pi foundation has shot them selves in the foot lack of supply lack of upgraded/decent SOCs raspberry pi are garbage now with all these better alternitaves
More is going on. Waiting for the total China-boycot.
i dont get the justification of spending almost $150 for this when u can get a used x86 system with a small form factor cheaper and a much better performance.
the gpu in this is many times faster than cheap intel pc
eeeeeeee Taki Jr!!
also that looks like an exciting board, can't wait for the drivers to settle out!
So, Can you confirm that we can use this board with Retroflag Cases?
Can you link that wireless screen ?
A swappable emmc is cool. How's the software support?
There were some contradictory and out of date comments regarding the case price and type available. However, this board did come out of the blue and it was good to see that they directly involved devs with boards to aid software development, although much of it was also already underway with all of the other boards that had been released. I guess that trying to retain the same kind of form factor as the Pi 4 might well be a good marketing move for those that are looking for alternatives. So all looked good until earlier on today, when the NanoPC-T6 was announced and will undoubtedly take the crown of best value Rockchip SBC, with the full RK3588 and great I/O onboard for a very strong price. For me, eMMC is not only slower than M.2 SSD/NVME but also very expensive in comparison. The choice of whether to have onboard WiFi/BT vs mass storage is a choice of priorities to a large degree. The NanoPC-T6, at it's base level price for the 4Gb model essentially removes any need to have one or the other. So vendors like Orange Pi, Radxa and Indiedroid are going to have to rethink pricing to compete with FriendlyELEC.
You'll find the board has been around a while as 9Tripod Pico PC V2.0 with poor Chinese documentation, only to team up with AmeriDROID who have done a rebranding and marketing but to their credit the support is much better and it delivers many great specs but still overly priced if you opt for the higher RAM and eMMC but an improvement over earlier boards that Taki reviewed from Firefly & Khadas that were/are way too expensive. FriendlyELEC, Radxa and Orange Pi offer the best value and support with the Nano-PC-T6 proving that a full RK3588 SBC doesn't need to cost a fortune and the most exciting news is that the Orange Pi 5+ is due to release in the next few weeks with RK3588 16Gb RAM for $129 USD which is insane price as you get all the bells and whistles but for those looking for another Raspberry Pi 4 clone look at Radxa Rock 5A which is very near the Indidroid for looks and has started shipping to early backers. Great time for RK3588 lovers!!!
Yeah, but can it run Crysis?
What's the wireless monitor?
6:09 Wow. What is this “wireless screen”? Looks cool.
YES! I knew my ignorance of not buying a case for my rpi 4 would bear fruit someday.
Orange pi 5 here we gooooo
ouh, i love that wireless screen! where can i get one?
rk358s EASY PEACY!!!!
$150. not bad at all
9:42 She has no idea what she’s missing
Pi5 must have a lot better soc.
Can you test Vita3K?
no ty
rog ally ?
It has a Single Core equivalent to Snapdragon 845,
A multicore equivalent to Snapdragon 855
GPU equivalen to Snapdragon 865.
If the CPU single core were a little bit stronger, say Geekbench 5 single core around 1000 then it would have been awesome!
Just received mine. This is a crazy amount of power for a Pi sized board! RK3588 looks awesome. GPU driver is a bit glitchy still with a flickery mouse cursor but otherwise it's running fantastic and it doesn't even really get that hot with the included cooler and fan.
nice
Do you know if there are any analog video out options? From reviewing their specs I'm only seeing digital out and I would love to hook this up to a CRT.
I'd like to see Windows 11 via Windows-on-ARM testing done on this board.
finally someone do it!
iam gone colected them!
thank you very much sir taki udon for making this video..
greeting from Indonesia sir 🙏👍🇮🇩
why would you publish in 60fps so the video is unwatchable on older equipment, why should i take any tech advice from someone who doesn't know any basics of videography let alone something else
get good lol
Nice
I've pretty much give up on the SBC market. when you could buy one for $39-49 it was cool.. now, not so much. once you go over 75-100 you might as well buy an old Dell thin client. I just don't care anymore.
That was a lot of effort put into a deep dive analysis comparing the board that shares a very similar form factor to the stock raspberry pi4 when the blue one is quite obviously the best one.
Today nano pi t6 came out and at lower price they make everything else look poorly. Its RK3588 without s and for $150 you can get 16GB with 256GB eMMC. Looks like Rock5 with usb ports exchanged for another 2.5Gbit and 5g module but its way cheaper with that eMMC.
Orange Pi 5+ beats its for price and specs with CNX Software reporting release date of next week?
4GB RAM for $89.90
8GB RAM for $109.00
16GB RAM for $129.00
@@Razor_Burn yep, it's cheaper for bare board with lower rk3588s SOC. With NanoPC You already get quite good eMMC as well as much more i/o including 8x faster nvme slot. This is so far best choice now if You don't need smaller pi form factor (but OP5 is not that small).
@@Razor_Burn oh sorry, I missed OP5+ version, so today it got update and it's very similar to nanopc-t6 except that eMMC which is already included. Forget my last reply, yes, it's cheaper and some people would not need eMMC because of faster nvme drive. Choice is always great thing to have, both boards are very competitive and I expect that everything else with -s version should be cheaper now :)
He's absolutely right. The blue one does have the best lights!
this is over $100. Just buy a used PC.
Yup, the blue one with lights is best 💙 . As far as any SBC, like you said, the community around it is the most important thing, right after it, though, is predictability. I really want the Rockchip boards to get there, but historically, if a project builds off of one cool non-pi board, they might have to start from scratch on their second and third generations. The drought of Raspberry Pi's has left an opening for a new player, but unless there is a promise of future releases being mostly backwards-compatible, and great online resources, Raspberry Pi is going to be the best choice the second they get back to MSRP and in stock.