Asus Tinker Board takes on Raspberry Pi with 4K video and Rockchip processing power

[Becky]

Asus have announced a new microcomputer to rival the Raspberry Pi - the Tinker Board. It is currently available to pre-order for £55 ($68) and will be capable of 4K output via HDMI.

Asus' offering is powered by a quad-core 1.8GHz Cortex-A17 Rockchip processor alongside a hefty 2GB of DDR3 RAM. By comparison, the Pi 3 is kitted with a 1.2GHz CPU and 1GB of DDR2 RAM. While initially the Tinker Board seems to offer a mammoth processing boost over the RPi, the former only offers support for 32-bit programs, while 2016's Raspberry Pi 3 Model B has a 64-bit CPU.

The Tinker Board also comes with 24-bit audio support, a Gigabit LAN connector, four USB (2.0) ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a HDMI 2.0 port with support for 4K video (as well as a port for standard HD resolution media). A built-in Wi-Fi module and Bluetooth 4.0 round out the package in the connectivity stakes.

Read more here.

 

[Ian]

That looks like a really useful little board - especially having wifi/BT built in. I imagine this could be very popular for homebrew Plex streaming... however the price is a bit steep! If it was ~£35 then I can see it being popular, but for £55 (plus another £15 in ancillary bits), it doesn't seem as good a deal.