Please post some links for the magnitude better things of the same features (no fan, small systems, comparable ports, Intel)
If I was to make a NAS (which is what I would be interested in) I would pay triple for something like the NAS killer 6 [3]. To be fair the Zimacube might be more of a challenge to this (but its not out yet).
I think its interesting though for a small, fanless sever. But (understandably, it's cheap) if you wanted something more, an extra $200 would be get you much more. I guess it depends on what you are looking for.
As for alternatives 1: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/uptimelab/compute-blade ($60 + need pi) 2: Zimablade (lol).
Here's a solid blog post on it: https://www.martinrowan.co.uk/2023/01/is-a-zimaboard-the-rig...
[1]: https://shop.zimaboard.com/collections/all-products/products...
[2]: https://versus.com/en/intel-celeron-n3350-vs-intel-celeron-n...
[3]: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-nas-killer-6-0-ddr4-...
Another reason why there aren't that many alternatives is that you can't use it for that much. It's like buying a car that can carry 50 kg. Great if thats your use case, but if you want anything more, there's no point. I can't really use it as a NAS, firewall etc. I think it certainly has uses, they are just ones that the average NAS/server people can do with a stronger server that can also do nextcloud, pi-hole, etc, in one, rather than have a device for each (which is way more costly).
Better yet: any NUC will be better, except maybe the first three generations lowest end models if you want to go that far back.