Comment by wpm
5 days ago
Price parity but not feature parity. I still struggle to find good use-cases for the full sized Pi that both require direct GPIO and the increased CPU capabilities/storage speeds. For anything that needs GPIO, I find it much easier to just run it on a Zero 2W.
For anything else, where I just need "small computer running Linux to do a thing over USB or the network", the Intel mini-PCs are still a better deal.
1. They are usually upgradable, either in storage, and/or RAM, WiFi, etc depending on which one you buy.
2. They usually have actual M.2 storage without the need for an add-on board.
3. More sensible board and port layouts. I despise the Pi B form factor. Easily the worst thing about my Radxa X4 is the slavish "lets make it Pi B" form factor, which they didn't even manage to do, so any time I use it it's a port squid mess instead of having everything be neatly managable and I don't get to use any of the Pi B form-factor accessories I have anyways.
4. Can run any x86 operating system, and get installed off of a USB. I dual boot my Radxa X4 between Windows and Linux.
5. Typically have faster networking and definitely better video/NPU hardware. Intel QSV is excellent.
6. Power usage stats that are a rounding error up or down from what a Pi 5 could do.
At this point, I'd rather the Pi Foundation really focus on the Pico stuff, I find it far more interesting. The compute modules are also pretty useful when you really want to customize the I/O. As the landscape changed, the full-size Pi B's just seem...left out. Weird boot process, weird form factor, weird Broadcom stuff, weird price/performance ratio, downright hostile power supply choices (5V5A is supported by like two special snowflake supplies, and guess what, the Pi Foundation sells one!), few upsides. Maybe if the mini-PCs prices still increase, and the Pi Foundation can still get away with selling 8GB Pi 5s at $100 or whatever, it'll make more sense.
100% agree on the better video hardware. I found out this weekend the Raspberry Pi 5 removes the dedicated video encoder present on the Pi 4B. I was getting 2-3 fps in OBS, which makes it unusable for my application. Any mini PC would do much better with dedicated encode capabilities.
To be fair, I haven't messed around with video encoding settings yet. I've seen claims the Pi 5 can do 1080p60 with 50% of the CPU. I could trade off quality for faster encoding, but with a mini PC I could get high quality encoding at real-time speeds.
I'm feeling some buyer's remorse with the Pi 5 right now...
I believe the Pi 5 dropped the hardware encoder for H.264 only, with the claim that the CPU was fast enough to brute force it (sure...). It does have accelerated HEVC, so OBS should be able to handle that.
excellent points. I'd also add that at slightly higher price you can include embedded TPUs /NPU like RyzenAI . With all of the lacking features you mentioned, and the AI features in mini PCs, Raspberry PI seems to be many years behind.
A major selling point of mini PCs is the integrated cooling system, so they run silent. Pi's thermals are terrible, and the active cooling offerings are just garbage.