Top 5 New SBCs 2021

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers this time it's my ranking of the top five new single board computers of the past 12 months to be precise i'm going to be including boards here that have been released and which i've reviewed on this channel between the 1st of november 2020 and the 31st of october 2021 so let's go and get started right here we have my five top usbcs of 2021 which are in fact the only five new sbcs with this kind of make a board form factor that i've reviewed in the past 12 months the past year has not been an easy time to bring new computer hardware to market and so the manufacturers of all of these boards should be congratulated for making them available during a difficult period before we turn to the ranking let's just run through what these boards all are and so in no particular order at this stage we have the one gigabyte orange pi zero two which became available in december 2020 next we have the raspberry pi zero 2w which was released just a few days ago in october 2021 and the radzer zero which started to be delivered in late august 2021 after that we have the banana pi m5 which was introduced to the world in january 2021 and lastly there's the odroid hc4 which in theory launched in october 2020 but which in practice actually started to ship a month or two after that and so there we are our five new sbc maker board contenders so let's now look at them individually in ranking order right at number five on my list is the banana pi which currently sells for about 67 or 51 pounds this is a very solid usbc in the classic raspberry pi form factor as you can see and it's based on a quad-core amlogic s905x3 system on a chip with four a55 cores running at up to two gigahertz as well as an arm mali g31 mp2 gpu we also have four gigabytes of low power ddr4 ram and on the end of the board for taipei usb 3 ports there's also a full size hdmi socket supporting 4k output at up to 60 frames a second a usbc connector for power and critically on this board we have got 16 gigabytes of onboard emmc flash storage this said on the negative side there's no onboard wi-fi or bluetooth on this board no wireless networking that is a real shame and we also don't have a csi camera connector or a dsi lcd screen connector in terms of software support is not as good as it is for a raspberry pi this said it's not that difficult to get an android image up and running from emmc although it's a minimal install for development purposes there's also a decent ubuntu mate image that runs rather nicely from emmc and which offers good performance and even pretty reasonable 1080p youtube playback this said in my tests rendering video in caden live and also applying the lava filter in results were worse than for a four gigabyte raspberry pi 4. so overall the banana pi m5 is a solid if more expensive alternative to a raspberry pi 4 if you don't need wi-fi and which has the advantages of a full-size hdmi socket and being able to run its operating system from onboard emmc flash storage next at number four on my list we have the one gigabyte orange pi zero two which is a very distinctive a very interesting usbc that currently sells for about twenty eight dollars or twenty one pounds for that we get a quad core sbc with its all winner 8616 system on the chip offering four 64-bit a53 cores running at up to 1.5 gigahertz coupled with an arm mallet g31 mp2 gpu fairly obviously there is one gigabyte of ram on this one gigabyte orange pi zero 2 although an earlier release of the board had 512 megabytes of memory in terms of connectivity there's a lot going on here you've probably spotted down here we've got the usb c port this is for powering the board and next to that we've got a micro hdmi connector which offers up to 4k output we've then got one type a usb 2 connector but the fantastic thing about this board is we've also got headers on the gpio pins here for two more usb 2 ports so effectively we've got three usb 2 ports on this board once we've wiped them up and that i think is a fantastic feature we've also got great networking we've got a wireless module here as you can see and we've got a wireless antenna with the board so clearly we've got wi-fi here and bluetooth and it's 80211abg and an ac wi-fi and bluetooth 5.0 but on top of that as you can't have missed we've also got an ethernet port a one gigabit ethernet port so this is a great board for iot applications and also things like for example digital signage given that we've got 4k output from its micro hdmi connector now sadly you know what i'm going to say next which is on the software side things are somewhat disappointing although to be fair the documentation and support for this orange pie is better than for some previous orange pine models and when you get debian up and running it is pretty solid and so there we have it the one gigabyte orange pi zero two a very distinctive new low-cost sbc i like the fact it's got its own form factor it doesn't try to look like a raspberry pi model and i think it's a good purchase for an sbc enthusiast particularly someone who wants a small low price board with an ethernet port greetings here i am back again with at number three on the list the odroid hc4 this currently sells for about 73 or 78 pounds and it's a specialist sbc designed for storage applications such as building a nas when you purchase the board it comes in this toaster design case into which you can insert in the top here one or two two and a half or three and a half inch drives however as i discovered in my initial review this mounting system is hardly stable i certainly wouldn't myself build a nas or a small server with the drives wobbling around on the top and i therefore think it's far more sensible to judge the hc4 as a bare board like the other sbcs in this list and in this context this is a fantastic piece of hardware as it's got two sata data and power connectors on the top here as you can see that allow it to control one or two two and a half inch or three and a half inch sutter drives in terms of other specifications the hc4 is pretty similar to the banana pi m5 we just looked at as it's got an amlogic s905x3soc with four a55 cores running at up to 1.8 gigahertz and an on mali g31 mp2 gpu there's also four gigabytes of ddr4 ram there is an hdmi port a full size one no less here on the base of the board and we've got one usb 2 port we need a lot of connectivity on the board fourth peripherals on something to be used to build a nasa or a small server and we've also got a gigabit ethernet port which is quickly critical to the function of this board in my own tests i've mounted the hc4 in a rig like this with two two and a half inch drives connected through to the sata data and power points fire cables obviously in the back like that and i've installed on here open media vault and i've set up the drives in a raid configuration and the whole thing works very well indeed i'm very impressed with this setup and so if you're looking to build a two drive nas with an sbc you should very strongly consider the odroid hc4 right we're now down to two boards and i had no hesitation in placing the razer zero and the raspberry pi zero two w at the top of this list both of these are tiny quad-core sbcs but are both a lot more powerful than the original raspberry pi zero models but sharing the same form factor however deciding between these two boards was a very difficult choice although in the end i've decided to place the radza zero at number two on my list in terms of specification this has got an amlogic s905y2soc with 4f53 cores running at up to 1.8 gigahertz as well as an omali g31 mp2 gpu we also have 80211abg lnac wi-fi bluetooth a4k micro hdmi connector and two usb c ports one of which offers usb 3 connectivity with the other being for powering the board whilst these are all standard features there are then different versions of the board with between five twelve megabytes and four gigabytes of ram and up to 128 gigabytes of onboard emmc flash storage prices start at fifteen dollars for a 512 megabyte rad to zero with no emmc writing to 85.80 at the current time for a four gigabyte model with 128 gigabytes of emmc flash storage this said whilst at least seven versions of the board are advertised most are not available and the cheapest model i can now find on sale is a two gigabyte radius a zero with no emmc for 30.80 in hardware terms the radzer zero is without doubt a very well featured small form factor sbc and it ought to do very well indeed however software support still needs to be improved and having so many models available means that this board is a nightmare for retailers to stock and with a very wide range of price points it's also slightly difficult to judge the target market and so overall this is a great piece of hardware if you can get hold of the model you want and are prepared to put time skill and patience into the software install right it's now no surprise that the raspberry pi zero two w is number one on my list in comparison to the radar zero whilst this is a quad core board the remainder of the specification is pretty modest but so too is the price at 15 and one of the reasons i really like this sbc is that it's got a tight market focus on being a highly accessible small low-cost maker board specifically in terms of specifications we have an rp3a0 sip or system in a package that contains four a53 cores running at up to 1 gigahertz 512 megabytes of ram and a video core 4 gpu there's then a mini hdmi connector a micro usb 2 connector for powering the board and another micro usb 2 connector for peripherals unlike on the rada zero we also have a camera serial interface or csi connector for adding a camera as well as an unpopulated 40 pin gpio header as you would expect software and border support for the raspberry pi zero 2w is excellent and as i showed in my recent review video performance is three or four times faster than the previous raspberry pi zero models so if you're looking for a small low-cost sbc for iot robotics or other project work the raspberry pi zero two w is very hard to beat which is why i've placed it at number one on my list of the top new makerboard sbcs of the past 12 months over the past 12 months new single board computers and indeed many other items of computer hardware have been a bit thin on the ground we've also had new sbcs which have been announced but which have never arrived on the market for example we've had the beagle 5 which has sadly been cancelled and the hack board 2 which has been delayed and delayed and delayed on the positive side though we've seen some very interesting related product launches for example we've had the release of the raspberry pi pico microcontroller which is not a general purpose computer like the boards have been looking at here but the raspberry pi pico is a fantastic new product for makers and we've also had the launch of this the raspberry pi 400 effectively a raspberry pi 4 suits up a bit inside a keyboard again this is not a classic make a board sbc but it is probably my favorite new product launch of the past 12 months more broadly i think that 2021 has been the year in which the make aboard sbc marketplace has matured and so going ahead i think the development of makerboard sbcs is going to be far more evolutionary rather than revolutionary but what do you think of a state of play in the sbc marketplace and what do you make of my list of the top five usbc's of the past 12 months please let us all know down in the comments section but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed what you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and i hope to talk to you again very soon [Music] you

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 120,983

Rating: 4.9611139 out of 5

Keywords: Top SBC 2021, Top single board computer 2021, Best SBC 2021, SBC 2021 review, ExplainingComputers Top SBC, ExplainingComputers best SBC, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt

Id: u7F2INkWQ5E

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 31 2021

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