Best Competitor for Rasperry Pi - Asus Tinker Board

Just when you thought Raspberry Pi couldn' t be knocked from its market-leading perch, along comes Asus with a rival device that may give the Pi a run for its relatively little money.

Asus just launched its own low-cost computer, the Tinker Board, which is being sold in the UK and continental Europe for about US$57. Its features could interest open source enthusiasts in doing a little comparison shopping before deciding on a new device.

The Tinker Board features a quad-core 1.8GHz ARM Cortex A-17 CPU with ARM Mali-T764 graphics.

The device includes four USB 2.0 ports, a 3.5 mm audio jack connection, CSI port for camera connection, a DSI port for HD resolution, a micro SD port and contact ports for PWM and S/PDIF signals.

The Tinker Board supports the Debian OS with Kodi.

A power supply is not included.

The release comes about a week after the release of the Compute Model 3 from Raspberry Pi. That model is aimed squarely at expanding the range of the device to industrial uses and for the growing IoT audience.

The Compute Model 3' s standard model is priced at $30, and the Compute Model Lite is priced at $25. It has the same processor and RAM as the standard, but brings the SD card interface to the module pin, which allows users to connect it to an eMMc or SD card.

The original Raspberry Pi' s price was reduced to $25 when the Compute Model 3 launched.

There has been demand in certain industries for a low-cost open source computer that provides robust capabilities for manufacturing and technical demands.

" We don' t see much mainstream enterprise demand for this type of compute model," said Jay Lyman, principal analyst at 451 Research, following the Compute Model 3' s release last week.