Thank you, too, for the physical side-by-side comparison.

You always seem to come out with the perfect video at the perfect time to help me make up my mind on a budget. Thanks Again!

So happy seeing your video in my timeline now. I've been looking at the N100 for a while.

I saw the title of the video and I jumped right on it. Great topic! I haven't watched it yet but I'm sure it will be yet another great video.

Thank you Chris, good information, as we've come to expect from you. I did notice that many of the mini PCs on A'zon have reviews where users suspect they came with a pirated version of windows that cease to function after a short time. Something to note if one isn't going to install their own OS.

Apparently "Minisforum" is going to release a N100 based Pocket Mini PC in similar form-factor to Pi, and going to be priced under $100. It's name is "S100-N100 Super Mini PC" and was showcased in CES 2024 and is suppose to launch in a few months. Though the negative might be that it has soldered LPDDR5 memory and UFS 2.1 storage.

I was one of the viewers who asked Chris why he hadn't used a Pi5:instead of the N100... it's great to see this video!! They came out so close in the end. I replaced my MythTV box with a RPi5 and after sorting through some difficulties it's settled down well and now saving a lot of power. The RPi 5 is a great little SBC. The only criticisms I have of it are how they've relied on Wayland for speed when many Linux distro apps are still very much xserver based.

Tom's Hardware Guide picked you up!! Congrats! I am very surprised that the Pi5 held up so well. I make music so, I would pay the extra $$ for connectivity and compatibility. I am impressed with YOUR performance, CHRIS !

Another great video. The Pi did very well, but if I had to choose I would go for your N100. I particularly like the extra connectivity afforded by the VGA connector and the serial port. Weird, I know, but that’s me!

Every time there is another Raspberry Pi revision the gap relative to similar kinds of products gets closer. Great to see!

Your videos are always clear and precise to the point. More like undergoing a certified course. While my age group friends are using (at the max)excel sheets, through yours and others valuable videos I can understand & use SBC for streaming and work on chrome OS etc. Thanks for your efforts.

It is crazy to think that both the N100 and the Pi 5 are in a similar class to some older quad core chips like the Ryzen 2200G or intel's quad core ivy bridge chips like the popular i7 3770, whilst both drawing extremely low power. We have come a long way

A whole heap of interesting as always!! Great video Mr. Barnatt!! Keep up the great work!

Great video! You can tinker a little in the Bios to get lower idle power usage out of the N100. I am impressed the Pi5 was quite close.

Very interesting. I would still go for an N100, which can be had at a price closer to a complete Pi set-up but it did OK for the tasks shown. Would have been interesting to have thrown in an RK3588 for comparison too.

You are incredible in the way you present the information, break it down and explain every step of what and why you are doing it. Great work and I just started subscribing after seeing your work over at least the last year. Thank you and keep on doing what you do!

Delightful video! Your production efforts and abilities are stellar! I'm not in the market for a tiny PC but I watched the whole thing because it was interesting to see this comparison of current low-power computing offerings. Thanks Chris!

Hi Chris, thank you for the RPi5 vs N100. Really interesting results showing both have their pro's and con's. Depending of the usage, they are both interesting.

Very interesting, i didn't expect that the results would be so close.

Lovely jubbly, Chris! 👍❤ Both systems are wonderful; indeed it's an incredible time to be alive for computing wonders! Happy Sunday! Kindest regards, neighbours and friends.

Surprising results. Enjoyed the video. Looking forward to your next video!

Thanks Chris for this very interesting and practical review. I disregarded RP for servers as they were unavailable, SD cards didn’t have the reliability of a NVME SSD, power supply was very critical and cooling was an issue, so I chose a N100 box. However, you have shown that RP still have something to say

Wow. Been waiting for this for ages. Pi5 vs N100 and also Ubuntu 23.10 (which now has full disk encryption using TPM)

I'm typing this on an RPi 5. I absolutely love it. As an upgrade from the 4 it is great. I have quite a few other Pis and it is already convenient that I can plug cameras and other devices from one into the other and compile the same code without issues on all of them. I have a fairly powerful desktop so I'm not trying to use the Pi for everything. It's primarily my daughter's computer. Witha really nice keyboard and a decent monitor it is a joy to use.

Had been waiting since your recommending this a week or so ago. The more of these videos I see, the more I think it's like watching motorbike reviews. Some people want everything in the world for the price of a budget machine, and some can accept the "horses for courses" way of thinking. I would say that this horse - the Raspberry Pi - would run nicely on my course, as it were, if I had to buy a cheap replacement for my 2011 macbook pro which runs Mint 21 XFCE and is used as a simple Internet computer and for making documents for work. Thanks a lot.

Please never change, I love your videos.

Fantastic video as always Great idea to compare the two Thanks for sharing your expirences with all of us 🙂

Great comparison! Just for the fun of it I tried some of the tests you performed on my 2017 MacBook Pro that I run Linux on with a Gnome desktop, and which should have a similar enough environment to stock Ubuntu for the purpose of these tests. Curiously while the lava test in gimp finished in about 3 seconds similar to your mini PC, the sysbench with the same parameters performed significantly worse clocking in at about 5.5 seconds. This shows me that a synthetic test can't always reflect real life performance and it can even swing both ways if we compare my laptop to what you measured on the Raspberry Pi 5.

Another reason to choose N100 over rpi5 is the software compatibility. x86 systems are more compatable and the optimizations are often better. Hardware encoding on x86 systems are also better, and I do need that for real-time transcoding with jellyfin. I had my N100 mini-PC as a server for 2 months already. It has been running fine without hiccups, unlike the rpi4 it replaced, which sometimes have trouble rebooting. Also, it might be cheaper depending on the availability. My N100 server cost about the same as the rpi5 with a SSD anyway.

Another great video! I really appreciate the hard work you do to provide clear and accurate testing and information.

There was a period a couple of years ago where I had to use a 4gb Raspberry Pi 4 as my only computer because my main laptop was being repaired and that took a long time. Granted, I was only doing web browsing and UKposts playback, but it still shows how capable a Raspberry PI is. The fact that you can now edit video almost flawlessly on an £80 computer with proxy clips just goes to show how far low-cost ARM computing has developed over the past few years.

Add my thanks for producing this comparison. It was very well done. I too was surprised by how close the Pi 5 was to N100. Connectivity remains a weak point for the Pi family and this is only the second Pi that has a proper storage interface. (CM4 could support a PCIe 1.0 x1 NVME SSD.) I can see SATA cables in your build and and the Pi 5 can support either NVME or SATA via PCIe but not both at the same time. To date I have not seen any adapters for the Pi 5 PCIe connector that support either SATA or a standard NVME slot, though I expect that will come.

My pi 5 arrived this week! Exciting times...

A very nice comparison! I still think you made the right choice to build your N100 PC though, given the greater versatility of an x86 PC running Linux. And, having also experienced tinnitus myself for the last year or so, I'm a "fan" of your N100 PC's fanless design, though my tinnitus seems to be a bit different from yours. However I think it's quite possible that, given a few more years' time, more of us may chose to use an ARM based SBC for our daily work.

I was expecting laughable results, but that RPi 5 sure showed me! I'm impressed! My N100-DC build runs Proxmox with two OpenMediaVault VMs (both were in different servers), a Linux Lite VM, a Linux Mint (XFCE) VM, and a Peppermint OS VM. CPU averages at around 25% when VMs are idle with background tasks. I have a dual SFP+ NIC and PCI-e to multiple SATA adapter. 2 WD Red hard drives and 3 Seagate Exos hard drives. Only 1 NVMe (for VMs) and 2 2.5" SSDs. My N100 motherboard uses desktop power supplies, so I'm able to have that many storage drives (Corsair Gold Plus PSU -- I think the RM 550 MX?). My server runs at about 55 watts on average! Love the N100. Windows VMs run terrible, though.

Thank you Chris! Loved the comparisons..... While the N100 is more than capable, the Pi has a special place in my heart as it's UK made (in Wales, like the Dragon 32), and ARM has a connection to the Acorn days.

Thank you, i always wondered how the PI5 would compare to a N100!

Thanks to your N100 review I bought one to make a Proxmox server. I'm using the ASUS conventional power connector version with a pico psu as it comes with a couple of pcie slots (and I had pico psu and old laptop psu laying around). Really happy with the choice as I could put 32GB of RAM in it. It's interesting to see how close the PI5 is but the RAM and IO limitations of it would have ruled it out for my purposes. I have 32 Gigs of RAM and 3 network cards. All thanks to your n100 review - thanks. I'm now looking to get my PI4s running as clients to the HomeAssistant running on the proxmox server. The proxmox server also runs OpenWRT, Pi Hole and a NAS Keep it up!

I've been waiting for this video! I started souring a bit on the pi during the pandemic when the RPi foundation started prioritizing commercial customers over the makers and tinkers who brought the boards to popularity. That pushed me to thin clients and mini pcs, and I'm not sure I'll ever go back. The Pi5 is a great device, but I started migrating to the n100s a few months ago instead of a pi4 and the performance has been amazing. There are a million ways to do GPIO, so the pi advantage is almost always gone. About the only time I see myself using a pi is for some pre-built image that expects it.

Would have liked to have seen a more stressful video playback scenario. I think your standard testing is fine for chips that really need to stretch their legs to get 1080x30 playback or for testing for general video drivers on SBCs, but something like the Pi 5 and N100 is already known to be able to do 1080p at 30. I wonder if there would have been more of a performance differential if the playback was 60 framer per second, or even 4k. Great video as always.

Very good. Astonishingly close

Thanks for another great video Chris.

Hey Chris! I like the side by side comparisons. It gives one something valid to consider before buying new computing hardware. Two other things come to mind when comparing these two systems: availability and to a smaller degree, temperature. I have only been able to purchase a 4G PI 5 in the last two weeks. As soon as they are in stock somewhere (US), they are sold out. Whereas with the N100 family, they are all over the place. In any event, I would probably opt for the N100, as it will also run easily Windows, allowing me more options for operating systems. Even with proper heat sinks, I know the PI's tend to run warmer with more intense computing, but what about the N100's? It would be interesting to see. Just as an aside, today on Amazon I found a GMKtec branded N100 Mini PC with 8G DDR4, 256 M.2 SSD, and Windows 11 Pro for $159! That includes a nice mini case and power supply. I'm sure I could also easily setup a Linux distro on it. Hard to beat. Anyway, thanks for another great video Chris.

Not only is this good for education and learning, but its all coming from a techy-guy or whatever you want to call it perspective, its also entertaining, i could watch your videos and not get bored! And on top of that, you reply and keep in touch and up to date with your community, this feels like home. Do not change, thank you for everything!

Always enjoy your videos. Thank you.

This was such a cool review, thank-you, included all the important things like power consumption! I'm upgrading my NAS/media server on ubuntu and am quite excited about the new N100 platform. I'm sure at some point my curiosity is going to draw me to a pi at some point! Also, yes, I found you from Tom's, although I'm already a fan!

That was a well done video. He did a great job editing that I thought.

I was always fascinated with the idea of using a Raspberry Pi as a desktop machine ever since I got my first Pi 3 for Christmas as a kid. As the years go by, it's amazing to see the gap close further between standard desktops and these single board computers! I remember having to use my Raspberry Pi 4 as my main machine last year after the GPU in my desktop died, and it was a surprisingly pleasant experience! Web browsing, document writing, video watching, even a little bit of Java Minecraft (Albeit with a slight overclock and on older versions lol), I could almost replace my main machine with it. Very excited to see the progress these little machines have made!

Greetings. That test proved once again how well the Raspberry Pi stacks up to the Intel-based systems.

The results were much closer than expected, both would be useable for general computing tasks. The N100 though slightly more expensive offers a performance improvement that makes the value vs. performance factor about equal. Thank you again for an interesting and informative video.

Fascinating and insightful as ever :) I'd make one note however, in the boot test into ubuntu, it's worth considering the BIOS POST time, by the actual first console message on screen from the linux boot, it looked like the N100 didn't actually start to "boot" - i.e. run the disk os mbr init vector - until about 4 seconds later (about 16sec) than the Pi (at 12 sec) - so part of the boot is that the N100 has a more substantial power on sequence, rather than the operating system/hardware per se being slower to boot.. of course, it's valid when comparing actual "waiting time" to boot, but it's not from that output, necessarily a valid timing of the o/s boot speed, but the nature of the larger POST sequence [and arguably slower switching circuitry in the physical power input differences] ... as I say, not a complaint of your process, but something to consider when comparing. edit to add : it's probably worth turning of the fancy modern bios splash screens and let both machines POST with their output, like in them olden days watching all the memory get checked :)

Yhis is the exact comparison i am looking for. Thank you

Thanks Chris for a very informative video on X-86 and ARM competitors! I am planning on getting a Raspberry Pi V to replace the Raspberry Pi IV in my RasPad 3! However, your Intel setup looks very tempting…😮! I would have set the Intel system on top of the V to show how it can crush the Pi…that’s why you better do the SBC reviews…😂! Have a great week!

That was a pretty interesting video. Thank you!

My favorite sort of EC video.

Thanks for a great comparison video. First from the top view I thought the N100 PC was a shuttle PC and it seem similar. I got a couple of Pi 4 a few years ago to play around with. I do want to get a Pi 5 from Amazon but seem that it is still selling at a premium from MSRP. Probably won't be able to replace my desktop but would be able to play great on retro games.

Its great to see a more objective Raspberry Pi review.

I've been looking for an N300 mini-itx for home lab. It's good to see some N100s out there. It's another one I haven't had luck finding

This was an informative video as always. I wish you compared the prices.

I'm impressed with how well the Pi 5 did to keep up!

This was a very interesting video (as usual!). Thank you, Chris. Whilst I'm someone that is very interested in the idea of running an RPi as a desktop daily driver (I use a Pi 3B+ for a home server and also have a Pi 4 I use from time to time), I draw the opposite conclusion of most here in that it seems to me RPi still have quite some way to go before they develop an SBC that can be a true general-purpose daily driver - and that's despite the undeniably significant performance increases of the Pi 5. For me, the IO isn't so much of an issue (you can hook up two monitors to the Pi 5 and ignoring the two USB 2 ports for the usual peripherals, you still have two USB 3 ports for memory sticks, external SSDs, cameras, USB headset, etc. - though the loss of the 3.5 mm audio jack is regrettable). Instead, it strikes me that despite the minimal performance differences in some select tests, the CPU/GPU of the Pi 5 just isn't quite enough. For example, the GIMP effect render took 168% longer on the Pi 5 than the N100 and the Kdenlive video render was 56% longer. But the biggest eye opener was that the Pi 5 still drops some frames on a 1080p YT video. One wonders how that would scale for general-purpose home office use. For example, say you're writing a document in LO Writer (which is open in the background). You have Firefox running in the background with several tabs open with sites you're consulting (a Wikipedia article, a few news articles and a forum). Also running in the background is Chromium with a couple of tabs for YT videos paused. A PDF reader is also running in the background with a 200-odd page document open you're dipping in and out of. You're in the middle of editing a photo to insert into your document, so GIMP is open with a typical DSLR JPEG. Finally, Thunderbird is running in the background as you want to keep an eye on your e-mail. I'm not convinced the experience on the Pi 5 would anywhere near as smooth or as comfortable as the N100. Would it even be usable on the Pi 5, particularly after a few hours? (I appreciate that the more immediate issue may be RAM, but at least the N100 could be upgraded to a 16GB stick).

Great video Chris. I wonder if they'll introduce hardware encoding in the next Pi iteration they seem to be slowly shifting towards a more desktop like system.

been messing around with Manjaro on my pi400, guess that's why this one was suggested. it's working surprisingly well. These ARM devices are real treasures.

Consider 'neofetch' for displaying specs, it's more thorough than the settings screen, yet more succinct than lscpu. It should be available in the Ubuntu repo.

Good info. I was using a 4gb pi 4 as a mini PC for a while until the Pi 5 came out and I snagged an 8gb model. It's been great as a general use/media player/ emulation box. Tempted by some of these mini PC setups to run some old games but the Pi 5 with an SSD has been fine for most things.

Thanks Professor! For me I just like the SBC RPIs 3, 4, & 5. "But, that's it!"

Just what I was needing today.

Nice comparison. Thank you!

Thank you for another amazing video. It so happens I'm looking for a faster than rPI3 home nas and I was wondering about rPI5 or N100 based PC and this video is enough to make a good impression of both systems.

This video was perfectly done, thank you.

Thanks so much for this good work. Very interesting.

Evening coffee with excellent Explaining Computers video. Greetings from Poland.

Cool video. I’ve been covering a similar topic however I used the youyeetoox1 sbc which is 99-109 in price and has similar specs. Also something to consider is the x86 compatibility. We r getting better performance on a board not as strong as the raspi 5 and orange pi5 but in most cases it performs better with emulation because emulators are native to x86 and better driver support

A bit late but yeah I love raspberry pi videos I love how much you explain very well computers etc

Woah, that small PC looks like a thing that I actually looking for whenever I want to use other than Mac. I never heard about that kind of case.

Thanks, interesting episode. Watching thru my Mac mini M2 pro. 👍👍

Great video, thank you, Sir!

That was a lot closer than I expected. The Pi 5 held up really well compared to the N100.

Waiting for that Million. Thanks pc man.

Its nice to see that both can be a pretty functional desktop system. In my mind the real advantage of a pi isn't general desktop use but control some hardware with the built in io. You could do the same with an N100 but it would need additional hardware. I really like the pi zero as it has the I/O is even smaller, lower power, and only $15! The pi zero is a terrible desktop, but it can be a great server/embedded device if it is fast enough for your use case. The trick is that it is still really hard to get a Pi Zero 2W although you can get the older pi zero w for the same $15.

Nice comparison. I'm expecting my Pi5 any day now at which time I will set it up as a daily driver for a bit and see how that all works out. Given what you've shown in this video I don't think I will be disappointed.

Awesome video. I would love a similar video but between AMD 7000 or 8000 mobile chips used in minipcs and apple M3.

I can add some useful info about time synchronization on the Pi5B: It seems like the new GPIO chip adds some extra delay for serial GPS data when trying to use said data together with PPS pulses. I did not observe the same thing on a Pi Zero 2 W.

For me this (and recent personal experience) proved that if one's main system is offline for any reason then it is very possible to spin up a rpi5 as a very competent temporary replacement. With regards to power consumption, in a macro sense it helps to reduce consumption where possible, however the N100 with 31w at load is still very reasonable for a desktop PC.

I am pleasantly surprise by the Pi5, especially since I just ordered one!. I think one consideration is ease of use I would suggest that the Pi5 likely has better support, better drivers, better community.

Great video, thank you!

Very good comparison

I remember back in the day going to PC World and telling the guy I just needed a small desktop to check my emails and maybe write the odd letter. He immediately took me to the £2000+ PCs and said "Well, these will work but you might need more memory.."

Wow, good comparision. I just got two n100 system. One is less than 10x10x5 cm with 3 hdmi, 2 lan, 3 usb3 with 16GB lpddr5 and 512GB m.2 sata for 110 usd: "t8 plus". The other one is "router" machine with an 1kg passive metal case, 4x i226v lan, 2 hdmi, gpio, 4 usb2, 2 usb3, 2 serial, m.2, minipcie, m.2 wifi slots - barbone for 126 usd (and I added 16GB ddr5 sodimm and an m.2 nvme drive). Plus sales tax. They are running great.

I use a mini N100 system maxed out with 16gb ddr4 as a non gaming daily driver. It's impressive for what it is.

Nice comparison. Thanks. I quite like my setup with a Pi 4 or 5 set up next to my usual pc. I use the Pi for python programming and it's a handy place to test out programs before committing them to the main pc. I appreciate the low power requirement in this set up, it doesn't feel as wasteful as having two pcs running. It helps keep all dev work in one place. Also the Pi is much easier too set up for python. Python on windows can be a pain esp if your GIS (my main work) uses a different version of python. I was pleasantly surprised at the Pi's performance running portion programs and also running QGIS aswell. Another bonus is ease of maintenance (just keep a spare micro ssd), windows, for me, is just getting more and more difficult to maintain, resource hungry and expensive. After many issues recently on laptops and desktops I've got tired of the whole windows cycle and am experimenting with migrating to linux as a main OS. I'll give Ubuntu a shot now, thanks for the idea - I was using zorin on the pc (Very nicely finished OS) but the are a few things that don't quite suit a development environment or the way that i work. Cheers for the vid.

STILL waiting for the Ras Pi 5s here in OHIO! - Luckily?!? - I' m a VERY Patient Old Man, Sir! LOL 🙂 Cheers! - Judson & Buddy! - Have a GREAT WEEK, My Fellow Nerds! lol 🙂

Would have been interesting to have NVME test too. Great video. Thanks

A very pertinent comparison of two computer systems; thank you for this presentation! I have the impression that with its fifth version, the Raspberry Pi has reached a new plateau in terms of performance and connectivity. Of course, it will always be relevant to check whether this little gizmo can really be used as a basic computer, and it clearly can! (I was recently following the experience of a hospital centre in West Africa where medical records are managed exclusively on Pi400s. Efficient, portable, energy-efficient and very affordable. What more could you ask for!) But we should also point out that for the great tinkerers out there, each new iteration of RPi opens up new avenues that very few SCBs allow you to explore. In short, thank you again for this highly instructive video.

Great show, Professor! Thank you...🇺🇸 👍☕

Fair test - certainly the Pi5 could be overclocked quite a bit - but I understand why you tested at the default clock speed.

Hi Chris. Pretty good results from the Pi. Was not expecting the performance difference to be that low in everyday tasks. Are you planning a video testing the Pi running Windows at all as I'd love to see how the little Pi 5 deals with such a heavy OS.

I feel that unless one is doing a mobile application/installation the power savings may be nice, but only from a "that's interesting" standpoint, but since we are typically "mains" connected, not overly important. OK, maybe if one is running a 'typing pool' with a multitude of data entry personnel in a single building or hall, an AMP or two isn't as much of a concern. Space saving, real estate wise might be important, but one can only squish people so close together! :)

one other advantage of the Pi5 over your N100 is the size.... you can travel with a Pi5 more easy than your N100.... but very good video Christopher .... I use my Pi5 as a portable computer (travel anywhere) all as I need is a HDMI TV / monitor to plug in to and away I go ....

Hi chris, thanks for the video the pi5 did rather well.