And they aren't even really that great. The OrangePi line for example is a lot better for the price.
Their lower end board is in a more similar price point to the Raspberry Pi, the Orange Pi 3B with a Rockchip RK3566. And it is slower than the Raspberry Pi 5 in benchmarks I've seen. Though if you don't mind ordering from Aliexpress, it's more in the Pi 4's price range there and does beat out that in performance. It also has an NVMe slot which is why I picked it for my use.
Unfortunately it's also lacking a maintainer for Armbian: https://www.armbian.com/orangepi3b/ . With how fast they drop board support, I'm wary about long-term support from Orange Pi without Armbian. I've got an Orange Pi 4 (not the 4B or 4 LTS which are different) that they haven't released a new image for in years. Meanwhile Raspberry Pi OS still supports the rPi 1. Also ignore the order of numbers, the Orange Pi 4 is older and slower than the Orange Pi 3B.
Next I messed around with an old OrangePi just to realize they never updated the Armbian (even though I got the device tree into the Kernel!). Downloaded the ancient image from their Google Drive, got BalenaEtcher running again (its not in my repos) and then figured the SBC must be fried anyway.
Luckily I remembered that I still had a RPi1 that was collecting dust and should work with any old USB charger. Checked `rpi-imager` and indeed, it supported that old thing! Created the SD card (config was still saved), grabbed an old USB WiFi adapter and powered the thing up. And it just worked :)
The emergency was: My 20m USB extension cord with the zigbee coordinator failed after 2y, and I could not turn on a few of our lights. Using `usbip` I now forward it to the automation server from that RPi1 (I initially didn't think about the RPi1 since I wanted to run zigbee2mqtt on the device, but eventually found out about usbip). Bonus 1: I still have the spare RPi4 that I wanted to attach to the 3D printer because I could re-use the old one :) Bonus 2: I now know that rpi-imager has a ready-made Klipper image and I don't need to set it all up by hand.
Next time I consider getting another SBC, it will be an RPi again.
I might end up just using it as a Klipper board too.
This was a great decision! Created a USB stick for the RPi4 with Mainsail OS. No display necessary, just connected Ethernet (WiFi did not connect, didn't debug though). The printer setup was really easy, though I had to adjust the template configuration for my hardware modifications (mostly tmc2130). Most actual effort was in reworking parts of the hardware (remove case, solder new build plate, design and test the mounts, fix bad soldering that only caused half the heat plate to heat up [good bless thermal cameras!]). Overall, the UX has increased tremendously since I first heard about Klipper (IIRC Kevin just added delta support back then). I think the Mainsail UI has a huge impact on UX. Especially manual calibration of the delta kinematics with the Mainsail web UI is a delight. I scrapped getting piezo probes or stuff like that (for now).
Pine64 does have a newer QuartzPro64 that they're also working on mainline support for. The Orange Pi 5 uses the same SoC. And yeah support isn't there yet, but I'm hopeful: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/QuartzPro64_Development#Upstrea...
[1] There have been plenty of devices where someone was working on drivers and then the developer moved on or a new revision was released etc and the original thing never gets the support people bought it anticipating.
RPi has had some very dedicated mostly independent contributors dragging things along. I think a couple have received some small sums for their work from the producing companies but miniscule amounts compared to the work. OPi seems further behind and again reliant on volunteer forces.
It's just so damned sad.
Also sad: the best arm boards available for under say $500 are some chips announced 2018 (Cortex A76). Even with Intel flat out not shipping new nodes for half a decade, they still have steadier better delivery pipeline than arm.
Hot take: If I need something more powerful than an RPI then I'm shooting for x86.
A Raspberry Pi (any versions, and their friends in the marketplace) is not a like a PC. It's a got a little ARM SoC. It's a lot smaller than your NUC -- it can fit into a normal pants pocket. It has easily-swapped storage, making brain transplants trivial. It includes weird interfaces, like for LCD screens and cameras, and also some GPIO that is included just for tinkering with and integrating into other projects.
It can do PC stuff -- of course it can. It has USB and HDMI ports (and Ethernet and Wifi), much as a modern PC might. It can run Linux (and a whole desktop OS) just as a PC can.
But it can also do other stuff that PCs don't generally do, and that PCs (examples like the awesome GeekPort on the BeBox[1] notwithstanding) have never generally done.
Your NUC was sold as a complete system (including an absolutely-required "esoteric charger") that can be unboxed, powered on, and immediately put to work.
A Raspberry Pi is sold as a bare board that -- by itself -- can't actually accomplish anything at all, just as a common PC motherboard also cannot accomplish anything by itself.
They're very different things, with potential use-cases that only somewhat overlap.
Why this is still an issue of contention after very nearly a dozen years of Raspberry Pi existence boggles the mind. I mean: Some people enjoy dining out (and may not even know how to cook), and some others grow their own food (and thus participate in every stage of its production and consumption by necessity).
Neither set of people are inherently wrong for choosing to do things their own way. Even if one set can't can't understand why the other set does things so differently, both are still perfectly OK.
If a person wants a prebuilt PC to do PC stuff with, then they should absolutely get a prebuilt PC (new with warranty, old, janky closet laptop, whatever) and do PC stuff with it. If a person wants a computer that can be (must be) tinkered with in a very hands-on way, then perhaps a learning- and tinkering-oriented SBC like a Raspberry Pi (new, old, 3, 4, 5, zero, Craigslist score, whatever) might be a better option.
For my own part: I own some PCs that I do PC things with. I also own some Raspberry Pis that I do more-hackish things with.
My Home Assistant rig runs in a VM on a (very cheap, used) small Lenovo M600 box, because I felt that this was the best way for me to accomplish my goal at the time. My usage of HA doesn't need any special IO, and I enjoy using VMs. It sits there and just works.
My DIY energy monitoring rig runs on a Raspberry Pi 3, because I felt that this was the best way to accomplish that goal at that time. The system I chose absolutely requires the Raspberry Pi's GPIO, and conglomerates as a very small contraption that is easy to co-locate near the circuit breaker panel. It sits there and just works.
I'm very pleased with these purchases. 10/10, they suit my own proclivities just fine. (If they didn't, then I'd like to think that I would have chosen differently.)
It's OK to have more than one kind of product in a marketplace.
a lot of people need the rpi to be something different than a media center that gets stuffed somewhere. 90% of the rpis I have at home are interfacing with something via pins, not just the usb hub. if I want to do something like that with the amd option then i'm back to some kind of usb device mated to that and another software layer that'll be undoubtedly more poorly supported than the rpi equivalent.
for something like a nas or media center though I absolutely agree with you.
I think there is a divide in the RPI community between electonic enthusiasts and those who just need a small portable PC (media center, game cabinet, NAS/server/etc)
Add them up and a Quad-Core N100 becomes equivalent. Here they're on Amazon for 180€ with 16GB ram and 512 GB storage. And cheaper options with less storage and ram (usually coupled with the sightly slower N95 chip)
It's not a pi and if you want to integrate it into electronics a pi is much better but for the "small mini server" usecase I don't see the benefit of going for a pi anymore.
The grandparent comment said you could get an N100 for the same price, but they are all more expensive no matter how you look at it.
That is sure a nice system for the money! Wow. I will check if I can get those in Europe.
If you need more than RPi, then a proper open platform like x86/x64 is really your only other 'community' option usually.