The best-known SBC is, without uncertainty, the Raspberry Pi. It’s known globally for its versatility, low power consumption, dependability, and comfort of use.
But there are numerous alternatives to the Raspberry Pi available in 2022 that can produce their uniqueness to a project, whether you want more performance, AI, VR support, or a board rated for industrial automated use.
Let’s check out a selection of the Best Raspberry Pi Alternative in 2022 for all your single-board Computer (SBC) needs for a project. For many projects, dedicating an entire PC to a project is overkill. It is where single-board computers come in handy.
Odroid XU4
Powerful with energy-efficient, this would be a nice choice if you enjoyed replacing a desktop computer with an SBC. This board can run diverse flavors of Linux, including the latest Ubuntu and the flexibility to drive Android. Samsung Exynos 5422 Cortex-A15 2 GHz and Cortex-A7 Octa core CPUs with Mali-T628 MP6. It contains 2GB LPDDR3 RAM PoP stacked and eMMC5.0 HS400 Flash Storage. It contains 2 x USB 3.0 Host, 1 x USB 2.0 Host with a Gigabit Ethernet port. It has HDMI 1.4a for display.
ASUS Tinker Board S
This board has several nice touches that make it great for hobbyists. It has a color-coded GPIO header, making it easy to recognize respective pin headers. You will like the detailed silk-screen print on the face of the board that makes it clear where everything goes. It includes Rockchip Quad-Core RK3288 processor, Arm Mali-T764 GPU with 2GB Dual-Channel DDR3 and 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth V4.0 + EDR.
UDOO BOLT V8
There’s not considered that the UDOO BOLT V8 can’t handle, from AAA games, high-end VR, cryptocurrency mining, AI, IoT, edge computing, and much more. But at $459, this is a costly board. It has AMD Ryzen Embedded V1605B quad-core/eight-thread at 2.0GHz (3.6GHz boost) with AMD Radeon Vega 8 graphics. It consists of 2x DDR4 Dual-channel 64-bit SO-DIMM sockets with ECC support up to 32GB 2400 Mt/s with 32GB eMMC 5.0 High-Speed Drive.
Nvidia Jetson Nano Developer Kit
The Nvidia Jetson Nano Developer Kit is a single-board computer that allows you to work with multiple neural networks in parallel for applications like image classification, object detection, segmentation, and speech processing. It also supports many popular AI frameworks, like TensorFlow, PyTorch, Caffe, and MXNet. There’s also a complete desktop Linux environment to make it even easier to work with. It has a Quad-core 1.43 GHz ARM A57, 128-core Maxwell GPU, and 4 GB 64-bit LPDDR4 RAM. In addition, it has 4x USB 3.0, USB 2.0 Micro-B, Gigabit Ethernet, M.2 Key E, and HDMI and DisplayPort.
Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4
Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 contains a quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 processor, dual video output, and a broad selection of other interfaces with 4-Core 1.5GHz 64-bit CPU, 8GB LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM Densities, 2x 4K HDMI interfaces 60fps H.265 (HEVC) video, Gigabit Ethernet PHY with IEEE 1588 support, Single-lane PCI Express 2.0 interface, Dual MIPI DSI display, and dual MIPI CSI-2 camera interfaces. In addition, it has VideoCore VI graphics, supporting OpenGL ES 3x, 28 GPIO pins, with up to 6 × UART, 6 × I2C, and 5 × SPI.
Libre Computer Board AML-S905X-CC
It features a 1.5 GHz CPU ARMv8 Cortex-A53, 2 GB of DDR3 RAM, and 750 MHz Mali-450MP GPU. The layout will be friendly to anyone who dabbled with the Pi with approximately the same arrangement of four USB 2.0 ports, HDMI 2.0 port, audio, micro USB port, 100 Mb Fast Ethernet port, SC Card slot, and 40-pin GPIO header for HAT add-ons. These serve many applications and projects, completing Le Potato, an extremely versatile Raspberry Pi alternative. The Libre Computer Board AML-S905X-CC bundles in a handy eMMC Interface and capital of encoders/decoders for 4K media delivery and playback, incorporates VP9 P2 H.265 and H.264. We like Le Potato for its broad compatibility with various operating systems, including Ubuntu, Android, Debian, Raspbian, RetroPie, LibreELEC, and Armbian, to cite but a few.
Arduino Uno
The Arduino Uno is a perfect option for beginner and budget-conscious makers and those looking for an ultra-compact Raspberry Pi alternative. The Arduino Uno is substantially more diminutive than the Raspberry Pi. It features an ATmega328P microcontroller running at 16 MHz, 32 KB flash memory, 2 KB of SRAM, 14 digital input/output pins (including six compatible with PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs. On the port side of things, it’s relatively limited with one USB port, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button. The Arduino Uno is best suitable for electronic assignments, experimentation, and learning programming. As such, its implementation and functionality are proportionate to these applications. The Raspberry Pi is a much more significant board than the Arduino Uno.
Orange Pi One
The Orange Pi One features a Quad-core 600 MHz Mali-400MP2 GPU, Cortex-A7 1.2 GHz CPU, and 1 GB DDR3. The specifications are underpowered when compared to those of the Raspberry Pi 4. However, a reasonable compromise gave the lower asking price, and it does well to make the most of the hardware it does accommodate on the board. The Orange Pi One is well fitted with an SD card space (up to 32 GB), CSI input for a camera, HDMI output, 3 USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, a power switch, and a Pi-like 40-pin GPIO header to secure all technique of HAT expansion modules. Once again, not quite as wide as a genuine Pi, but enough for reasonably tricky applications. Operating system compatibility expands to Android, Ubuntu, and Debian.
Things To Consider
- Form Factor: One of the most significant differences between the Raspberry Pi and its options is the form factor. While many adhere to the almost standardized measurements of the Raspberry Pi, many choices embrace a far different shape and size. Long, slim, thin, square, short – there’s an alternative for all sorts of projects, whether you require an ultra-compact single-board computer to fit into a tight space at a cost to performance or a giant board that sacrifices compactness for more raw power.
- I/O and Ports: The main attraction of the Pi, beyond its price, form factor, and comfort of use, is the flexibility it delivers through a generous selection of I/O and ports: Ethernet, GPIO, HDMI, USB, and so on. While many alternatives do well to emulate this versatility with their spread of ports, it’s worth checking beforehand if it has what’s needed for your project. For example, check for USB slots, storage options, GPIO pins for expansion module HATs, Ethernet, video, and audio. And, for projects that require wireless functionality, check whether a single-board computer includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.
- Specifications: The latest Raspberry Pi 4 is the standard against all single-board computers are measured with a quad-core CPU Broadcom BCM2711 1.5 GHz and 8GB of LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM. Here are the two main specifications to hold in mind.
- CPU: The brainiac of the single-board computer, the CPU dictates how much processing power is understood. The size constraints of single-board computers mean the CPUs on request tend to cap out at quad-core variants with a maximum clock speed of about 2-2.5 GHz for the most powerful options.
- RAM: Random-access memory is where you’ll see the most contrast between models, from an anemic 128 MB for the smallest SBCs out there to a generous 32 GB for the most effective Raspberry Pi alternatives.
Pros of Raspberry Pi
- Multiple Sensors: It comes with many GPIO Pins so that it can support multiple sensors at once. You can attach various modules, displays, sensors, etc…to it. Unless it’s not analog.
- Applied as a Portable Computer: This is the best part of the Raspberry Pi. Assume if you connect a display to it, and it will convert into a pocket computer. You can do all kinds of tasks a computer can do. You can review sites, attach to WiFi, do computational jobs.
- Vast Peripheral Support: You can link multiple digital sensors due to the unbelievable number of GPIO pins being provided. It supports virtually all the peripherals supported by Arduino. It has a lot of accessories ready for it in the business. You will find several Raspberry Pi cases with several designs, Raspberry pi HATs, Heat Sinks, Fans, etc.
- Faster Processor: Speaking about the core. When we relate it with Arduino and other boards, you receive a faster processor. Arduino appears with a controller, while Raspberry Pi arrives with a 1.6 GHz Processor in the 4B alternative of Raspberry Pi. A more accelerated processor means good performance. The price of the variant of the Raspberry Pi board is excellent. It can be a bet you won’t get that much version on any board at such price.
- Supports all types of Codes: This Support for all kinds of code performs this board famous; one of the main goals of the raspberry pi foundation was to provide cheap computing to people so that they can learn to program. They have reached their goal of providing affordable computing to people to learn to program efficiently.
Cons of Raspberry Pi
- Overheating: As the board doesn’t arrive with any heat-sinks pre-applied or a cooling fan. The Raspberry Pi 4 appears with a mighty processor and multiple features, and it starts to heat up after some time due to the identical board size; the heat dissipation is not stuffy as expected. If you apply it for continuous 6-7 hours without air-conditioning or heat-sink. It will heat higher 70 ° C very much if you are in a South Asian country.
- Graphics Processor Missing: The graphics processor is crucial if you’re into video editing, photo editing, and gaming. Without it, your Computer is just a vegetable. Many of us require a graphics processor so we can do specific tasks. While the Raspberry Pi doesn’t occur with a GPU unit. The processor does all the work for it, which is inefficient.
- Missing eMMC Internal Storage: Since the raspberry pi doesn’t have any internal storage, it requires a micro SD card to serve as internal storage. We all know that SD cards are not that fast. Even if we compare a class 10 High-Speed micro SD card with an eMMC internal storage. It lacks performance, so this increases the boot time of the board and the reads/write speed of the raspberry pi.
Wrap Up
When dealing with a cheap SBC, it’s a case of buying a board and getting on with the project. However, if you are thinking about spending more money on hardware, you want to ensure that you’re not throwing money away.