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Mashimo

Can you link a few that are in the Pi5 price range?

Pi is ~70 EUR including ~25% VAT.

Cheapest N100 I found in 5 minutes of searching was a ACEMAGIC T8 Plus for ~160 EUR. (Currently sold out)

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They're only really comparable if you want an 8 GB Pi 5.

Right now I could buy a 4 GB Pi 5 setup (Pi 5, case, power supply) from CanaKit for $82. $97 if I didn't have an SD card to spare.

I don't buy mini PCs from random companies. The last N100 I bought was the NucBox G2 for $139:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCDL6VS3

If I didn't need the second ethernet port I probably would've grabbed the NucBox G5 for $136:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZRJL7JM

Cheapest G5 in Europe I could find was 180 EUR, but sold out. And on amazon.de it's 280 EUR.

Oh yeah. I have no idea what's available there. Sorry!

GMKtec sells on AliExpress if you don't mind going that route:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806972422176.html

GMKtec Mini PC N97 [1] is 160 EUR on amazon.de (with the 70 EURO voucher that is). Got mine with free shipping to Romania, as the purchase was over 50 EUR.

Also, the N97 has better performance than the N100, but the power consumption is higher. For me its a plus as it's more powerful than the usual N100 mini PC's while much smaller and fan noise is quite low (for now at least...). Not really intended for high workloads and 24/7 anyway. More like a backpack PC.

[1] https://www.amazon.de/-/en/G5-Computer-Generation-12GB-256GB...

For me it shows as €233.82

There is a voucher button you can press.

Prices in the US dont show sales tax which is somewhere between 0 and ~10% (or a little higher).

Presumably your prices have VAT?

The price for those is now $200 and $170.

That's weird. The prices haven't changed for me. I wonder if it's because of "Exclusive Prime price."

It doesn't look like the AliExpress prices have changed if you don't mind going that route.

Over at AliExpress there are tons of options, like this[1] or this[2] fun 4x M.2 box.

Yes they're about twice the price of a bare Pi5, but they come with metal cases and power supplies, can fit an M.2 NVME without add-ons, and like the first example also includes some RAM and storage.

While likely not the best quality RAM and storage, what I got in mine has held up to light use for several months so far without issues, so better than nothing. YMMV.

I bought a few 2GB RPi4's when they were $35. At that price point they were great. I don't get the RPi5, especially 4GB+ variants.

[1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007511663921.html

[2]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007900081466.html

[1] is 150 EUR from EU, not bad. I can see myself give it a go at some point. Still twice the price for my needs.

Right, it's twice the price but like 10x the capability (unless you need GPIO).

That's why I think the lower-end, lower-priced RPi4 made more sense. Fast enough to have decent network speed and run a lot of functional workloads, cheap enough that you could "spam" them.

I use it in a 3d printer. I don't need 10x the capabilities. For my usecase it's just 70 EUR more, with the only benefit it might boot and update faster.

And then I have to add 25% VAT because the order is more than 1500 SEK.

No, I think that was the price from the Spain warehouse and included tax. Just 10 EUR shipping. Aliexpress got better with showing you the real prices.

I haven't got any personal experience of them but aren't there a number of Raspberry Pi clones which offer the same functionality at much lower cost? Seems like that would open the gap up.

There are some, but a lot of them have very spotty Linux support. In most cases either you're stuck with some ancient kernel provided by the manufacturer, or you're relying on community support from Armbian at best.

Take for example the OrangePi Zero 3[1], which you can get[2] from around $25.

Armbian provides community support status[3], so you're relying on volunteer efforts to provide updates and support. Also drivers for peripheral devices might be missing[4].

There are others, like say the NanoPi Zero2[5][6] for around $20, but again, support might vary. The Zero2 is so new it's not listed on Armbian, and most of the other NanoPi's are under community support.

That said, I've been running some NanoPi ZeroPi's (the Zero2's predecessor) for several years now, without any issues. Just using them for light loads, one is my PiHole for example, but yeah can work great as long as you do a bit of research in terms of what's supported and not.

[1]: https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/07/03/orange-pi-zero-3-all...

[2]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007673457198.html

[3]: https://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-zero-3/

[4]: https://linux-sunxi.org/H616

[5]: https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/09/13/nanopi-zero2-tiny-he...

[6]: https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product...

The issue with nearly all Raspberry Pi clones is documentation. Boards tend to be undocumented, sparsely documented, or documented with errors. It makes for a frustrating experience when you run into problems, especially when those problems are with bog-standard Raspbian (or whatever). Raspberry Pi hardware has occasional quirks (eg, don’t try to hotplug USB on a Raspberry Pi Zero), but quirks are the norm for other SBCs (anything from Pine64 is an exercise in frustration). So the modest upcharge for a Raspberry Pi is usually worth it.

> Pi is ~70 EUR including ~25% VAT.

Now add a power supply and case.

No, but thank you.

I put them into a 3D printer that already has all that.

But I need to add a 16 or 32GB SD card. Around 10 EUR, maybe less.

Is it a home-built 3D printer?

What if you don't need a box or power supply? And what if you like then gpio pins?

FT232H breakout board is a couple of bucks.

Thank you.

No one ever talks about just how easy it is to add GPIO to anything.

Thanks for that!

Look for ASUS Alder Lake-N, roughly 100eur incl vat. (that's mobo with N100)

You do need to buy SODIMM DDR4 (12-14eur for 8gb), m2 NVME for storage and power supply (which you have to buy for rpi5 also).

You end up with a board with way better ports and IO, better audio dac, and significantly faster performance all across the board.

Raspberry PIs 5 and such offer poor value and are very overpriced.

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, Orange Pi Zero 3 and RP Pico still provide good value. (for 3d printers and such)

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