The magic about the pi was the price around $35. Once it rose sky high, comparisons like yours had to be made.

The problem is that you can wipe the Windows and install any free and open-source Linux distro on N100 mini PC. Intel's mainline Linux support has always been top-notch.

My takeaway from this is that computing is so cheap nowadays! My first PC cost $1500 and had only a fraction of the CPU and storage of any of the machines shown. Now I have mini PCs, several Pis and even an old HP refurb from Amazon that lived out its life computing spreadsheets on someone's desk. I run various different OSs, have networks set up as a playground. When I started as a programmer I used to go into work at the weekends just so I could play with the hardware in the machine room, now I have all that and more sitting around my den at home.

The N100 Amazon link now takes you to a $550 device. The N100 appears to be $180.

For me it was definitely during the shortage when every content creator and their mother had seemingly endless access to whatever they wanted so they could show off cool projects that no normal consumer could hope to replicate unless they spent exorbitant prices to scalpers.

One of feature that he missed in the video is that You can upgrade the RAM to 32GB for the N100 Mini. But you're stuck with 8GB RAM on Pi

Four things: 1) With the GMKtec, you can, of course, always wipe the Windows 11 install and install Linux as well. (or just swap the drive if you want to keep the Windows license key) 2) Speaking of the Windows license key, if you subtract that from the cost of the GMKtec mini PC. 3) If you compute the performance/$/Watt, the answer my surprise you. 4) It REALLY depends on what you want to do with the systems. Proxmox on ARM is still technically experimental.

i mean the main advantage of using a raspberry pi is really the GPIO pins, not it being a usable computer

Most of the "issues" with the N100 box were issues with windows, not the hardware itself, put debian on it for a decently fair comparison. For reference, my N100 box, which is very similar to the one here, idles at around 4-5W, not as good as the pi, but much better than with windows. Also I think we're kinda missing the point of an SBC here, for general desktop computing, an SBC is always gonna be a poor value. The strength of the pi and other SBCs is their IO. They're great for projects where you need to interface with the real world through sensors, actuators, indicators, and non-USB user inputs. If you're building a robot that needs potentiometers on each joint, position sensors, and status LEDs, then use a pi, that's what it's made for. If you want a small, portable, low power desktop, get a mini PC, that's what they're made for. That's why I'm not a big fan of the Pi 5, it just doesn't really fit anywhere, it's too expensive to casually embed into a project, but not powerful enough for a good desktop experience. It's cool to have the capabilities of a Pi 5, but how many situations actually need GPIO pins AND 8GB of RAM? The niche case of moderately high-end robotics that actually has those requirements has long since been filled the Jetson nano stuff (granted, the pi is a fair bit cheaper). It just doesn't have much a real place.

Raspberry pi kinda had a mission statement. They wanted to make these cheap and readily available so that people would get interested in the hobby. At first, it worked. I got my first kit for $55 and I've been tinkering with computers ever since. We all know what happened after that with prices and availability. But I can honestly say that I'm thankful for what they did.

Also, as a former dell service technician for laptops: get a magnet mat with a grid on it, to keep those pesky screws in place. Also helps with remembering in what order you took them off, though that's less of a problem with this few screws.

When the PI 4 came out, I used it for my desktop and I am (or was - I've retired since then) a full-stack professional web developer. It didn't perform like my dual-xeon server but it worked well enough. When work-from-home came around, I did switch to my laptop so I could be more productive for work, but for most people, doing a little bit of typing work, a little bit of email, and a lot of surfing, the PI 4 was great. I didn't even know the PI 5 was out until I watched this video but for all of my electronics work, controlling I/O and custom home control modules, etc., my stack of Pi 2, Pi 3, and Pi4s are doing the job just fine.

You have to remember why the Raspberry Pi was created in the first place. As a tool for schools, children and the like, which earned the company charitable status. Upton decided to prioritise business's but did not relinquish the charitable status, which he clearly abused in making the decision. So it is not the Pi itself that may have become something of a villain but the creator.

The thing I kinda miss with older Pis is the "you already have most of what you need" ethos. You already have a phone charger, you already have a USB keyboard and mouse, you probably already have an HDMI monitor, and if you don't you can just use your TV, and there's a good chance you can borrow an SD card from something. I know better hardware is more power hungry, but it seems to have lost the kid friendly idea of buying a computer with your pocket money and not needing anything else to get started. Now you have to get a special power supply and a special display cable, and maybe a special case to keep it cool.

Good luck with the not-dropping-a-screw mission. I've never been able to beat that one yet either and I've been doing DIY electronics for 45+ years. Great video!

Being an electronic designer, I would say it is rarely DIY is cheaper than buying, so pricing was not a surprise, but the excitement in DIY is in general worth the difference :).

In Australia, today's price for a Pi5 without the hat, using a micro SD, with all the other bits is $214. At the same time, an 8Gig ram, 128G ssd windows 10 PC from Amazon is $158. We are a long way from the originally touted benefits of a $35 computer (which it never was here anyway).

I laughed out loud at "Nobody is sponsoring this video. Everything you see here I bought, thanks to this channel's... sponsors."

Assembling the Pi reminds me of how it used to when building your own PC - you never knew if it was going to work, and working 1st time was almost unheard of!

To be honest, the comparison is a bit silly since you don't need to run windows on the N100 PC, and you don't need to run Linux on the Raspberry Pi. What has happened lately is that a lot of people who used to use a Raspberry Pi as a multi-purpose device. For their web server, network storage or emulation. (And didn't really need what made the RPi unique, lite the GPIO or camera interface) have found the device a lot less desirable these days due to price... Personally I bought a brand new z75 ITX motherboard with used parts; a core i5 3570K + 16GB DDR3. The total was ~80$ incl shipping from China (I added a GTX1050Ti I had laying around). The great thing about the motherboard that it had full PCIe 3.0 4x NVMe support + six SATA ports. For me it works great as a storage server, HTPC + living room gaming machine. Power draw isn't much of an issue since it isn't always turned on anyway (And yes, I use Linux on it). It was cheaper than a RPi5, especially since I had a motherboard and PSU laying around. I think this is what is starting to happen. Not all people need a RPi for every project, and the pricing competition of different devices is becoming quite fierce for the general purpose stuff. So the RPi is starting to settle in more to the projects in which it was designed for.

I like the part where Jeff says the N100's 40-50% higher Geekbench scores are "a bit faster."

I was on rpi4 for a long time until I jumped to N100 a few months ago. The first thing i did was to wipe windows and install ubuntu. It turns out the N100 is MUCH more capable than rpi4, especially on HW encoding. I can finally burn subtitles in jellyfin real-time!

Prices chage with regions but for the most part you're correct. The important thing in Pi is the GPIO header and what you can do with it; it was the reason Pi was useful and it's still useful today (SCART output, keys, led, audio over I2S), that's where Pi wins. BUT. The thing that is missing on a PC is that header and the flexibility given under linux... but PC hardware can do just fine as is and it wouldn't be that difficoult do build a USB (or even PCIe!) GPIO interface.

The main attraction for many RPi users is wanting to control or monitor external hardware with it. For instance they might want to control LEDS, electric motors or monitor weather sensors etc. All RPis all have a GPI(General Purpose Input Output) pin header that none of these Windows based alternatives have. This is a main reason that many schools and colleges use RPis in their IT and science departments.

For me the Pi Pico has now become what the original Raspberry Pi was to me, it’s cheap and barebones with some IO. I actually have to do some engineering to get things to run on the limited resources it offers which I find part of the fun.

Interesting to watch how, over time, the Raspberrypi has moved from being a STEM part emphasizing the GPIO functionality, to being a small computer that you can sometimes hook stuff to.

Jeff and his Dad are two of the best reasons to look at UKposts. (another radio engineer, here)

IMHO the Pi died when those ThinkCentre tiny computers and similar offerings from Dell and HP started getting surplussed onto the market. They are somewhat expandable for their size and much more capable.

The key point here is "if you're looking for a desktop computer". Pis have _never_ excelled at this role (despite frequent claims to the contrary), and have been downright abysmal at it up until the Pi 5. You get a Pi because you have specific connectivity needs or you're using it embedded or for a special purpose, not just because you want a "cheap desktop". The GMKtec is a pretty slick little unit though, thanks for showcasing it!

With the Pi's price increase (yes yes I know you can technically still get one for $35 but certainly not a Pi 5), and the need to buy so many extras it's become pretty pointless to use it as a dedicated machine when mini pc's are so cheap now. Even the older Thinkcentres which can be picked up sub $100 on ebay far outstrip it in performance. I wouldn't say the Pi is a villain, but it's certainly no longer the go-to solution, not even close to it. The shortage certainly didn't help, nor did some of their very sketchy and questionable behaviour on social media (their incredibly hostile and rude responses to people on twitter and their own forums being a prime example, they still ban new users for asking genuine questions just because they don't like hearing them) helped push people away from wanting to work with them. I think they've just evolved. They are no longer the loveable opensource, friendly community focused product maker. They're a corporation who realised B2B was vastly more profitable, and the hobbyist market has become very much secondary. They slowed down on the push into education massively over the last couple of years to the point where they don't really seem to be interested in it anymore so it's not too surprising.

Love your content, Jeff! Use case is everything. I built a media server running Plex on a Pi4B 8GB on which I have 6 10TB USB drives (via USB3 hub, 3 primary, 3 backup) and 1 internal NVME drive on the other USB port using the Argon40 case. 7 drives seems to be the limit for the Pi. If I bring up another drive it starts acting flaky. I think the Pi5 would be a great upgrade for that. I have Pi's all over the place including a Pi3 that runs HamClock next to my ham radio station. Really cool bit of software. You look at the display and intuitively know what time it is anywhere in the world. I also have a Pi4 NAS which probably doesn't need any upgrade based on my usage. Now, if I'm setting up a field radio station, a lot of utilities are Windows based, like WinLink (email over RF), Outpost (packet), and Ham Radio Deluxe (remotely control radios from the PC). For that use case the mini PC would be my choice. There are Linux based utilities, but they're typically not as robust.

It's been only a week and the N100 linked is $550 with similar products being $200+

Love the part where he says "is it a good time to segue to a sponsor? No, it's not". I like this presenter's style, goes into enough detail without overdoing it. I've been tinkering with both Raspberry Pi and low power Intel boards for a few years. I've found fitness for usage depends on what you want to do with it. I've had a PLEX server running on a low powered Intel Celeron processor for several years.

Aside from the reliability in finding non-scalped Pis, I think they moved into a pricing segment where you could get more compatible, flexible, powerful options for a tiny bit more. Why go through the trouble of stringing together a bunch of hats and accessories when for about $120 you can get a well-capable N100? Raspberry Pis are in the uncomfortable stage where they either need to offer something more powerful than the N100 or double down on better/cheaper versions of lower segment offerings. More powerful or feature rich Pi Zeros, for instance.

Fun thing I found out with dropping screws, if you just put a hand towel on your desk and put the screws on that when you drop them they almost always stay exactly where you think they went.

IMO the selling point of the Pi has never been a small cheap computer. I have never found it to provide a good general purpose computing experience. The selling point has always been the customizability and ability to integrate it into embedded projects, as effectively a quite powerful and quick to set up microcontroller thanks to the large software and hardware support base for it.

My first Pi cost $35, didn't need a fan or heat sink, and used an old USB phone charger (so free) for the power source. At first I used a couple of hand bent and drilled squares of Lexan for a "case" (eventually, cases got cheaper). It performed its automation job for all that time, until being retired a few years ago to a farm upstate (I'm told). My alternative at the time would have been a compact PC that would cost a lot more (even used), was the size of a couple of laptops stacked up, needed mains power to the case, consumed a lot of that power, had a noisy fan, and booted from a mechanical hard-drive. It WAS a no-brainer, but now the industry is very different. The Pi isn't a villain, it's a victim of evolving technology, and economies of scale.

the pi 5 defeats the point of the pi imo

@jeffgeerling, great content thanks. I wondered whether you found any malware on your w11 small form factor. Mine came preinstallled with lots of bloatware of which chrome had a confirmed bad / trojan based browser extension.

0:37 boy you got me hovering over the skip 10 sec button 😂

The raspberry pi foundation became the villain for two reasons. During the shortage they rubbed many hobbyists face in it when they announced they were going against their own objectives. And decided to supply business customers over end users. Then hiring a surveillance cop. And blocking people when the pointed out issue.

Hi Jeff, the little metal bar you wondered about is a VESA mount so you can put the mini-PC on the back of the monitor. Then you have an all-in-one computer. 😉

I have bar magnets on my table edge to hold tools. Turns out they are excellent for catching runaway screws too.

I run pi 4b 8g in my communications room and portable in the field. {no generator} FT8, FT4, Packet, APRS Digipeaters and many other applications. Communicate all over the globe with radio waves. Very reliable units and super fun to build and program. Also they are small enough to mount anywhere. Also love the terminal for building and setting up various programs.

"Is it a good time to segway to a sponsor? No, its not" hilarious. Love it.

I'd say it's when the social media account of the manufacturing side attacked and blocked people for simply asking why they hired a former surveillance officer to a higher position in their company.

I think one of my original draws for the PI was power consumption. This video has made me reconsider if maybe its time to go the mini pc route going forward.

my man has a Dalek poster in the background, what a legend, I need that poster. Thank you for the video as well, very informative. just had to comment.

On of the biggest selling points for me are the GPIO ports. With a Raspberry Pi you get a computer that also works as a full fledged microcontroller. In that aspect, it's just wonderful

@0:40 THIS! Or: How not wasting my time earned you a like and a subscriber!

Thanks for that very informative video. I've heard alot about Rasperry Pi but never really looked into it. I know a lot of folks use it for SDR(Software Defined Radio).

About a year ago I bought a used dell miniPC instead of a Pi for a game emulator project. The experience definitely changed my opinion on SBCs, unless I need something very tiny and barebones, it almost always makes sense to go with these x86 miniPCs now that they’re about as cheap and almost always more powerful.

If you drop screws on the ground, put a flashlight on the ground to cast long horizontal shadows from any little speck on the floor. Makes it so much easier to find things. Or utilize a magnet, even though we still haven't figured out how they work

love the channel jeff! I just bought my first raspberrypi and I'm really excited to try out some DIY projects and learn more about electronics. First thing I want to get for it is the NVME hat and a ssd but what are the differences between pineberry's hat drive and the one from pimoroni ? other than the lack of the LED do they both have the same performance?

At last, I witnessed the Geerling who provided all the companies I worked for their inventory of ansible roles. Instantly subscribed.

I don’t think it was just SBC which stole Pi 4/5’s lunch. ESP32’s also became very popular, cheap and incredibly versatile. ESPHome made them very easy to configure compared to the days of .ino files.

User-upgradable RAM is another advantage of the tiny PC. Also, Rpi OS does come with an office suite and other software which could be considered “bloat” if you don’t need it. I think RPi became the enemy when they gave people what they said they wanted: a desktop replacement Pi.

i put a couple jar lids on the table for my screws, i used to just use the bottles but the lids are really shallow and convenient for this

The reason I like my RPi is how little power it uses, which gives two benefits: 1. I don't mind keeping it running 24/7 for a small-time server, or doing some stuff overnight that takes a lot of time. I don't have to mind the electric bill with RPi running all the time. 2. It produces relatively little heat so using it with a fanless aluminum case like Flirc means that it runs totally silent. I formerly had a RPi case with a small fan and its high-pitched whirring noise was driving me nuts, especially at nights. Also, since there is no airflow inside a passive-cooling aluminum case, it also means it is not sucking dust into the case all the time either. The fan-equipped RPi was very dusty in no time, including the fan itself. Now I have a fanless Flirc case and I love how totally silent it is, and still runs quite cool (basically the whole aluminum case acts as a big heatsink, brilliant design). Passive cooling at its best.

To be fair to the GMKtec, you're under no obligation to use windows. It is great that it comes with a license, but you can flash linux the same way you would with the pi.

RPi started with hobbyists. Now they cater to corporations like Samsung, LG, Sharp, etc. who are putting RPi CM4's into commercial TVs used for marketing signage, etc. There's a ton of other corporate companies buying up RPi and all this contributed to the shortages the last few years because RPi gave those corporate customers priority. This made is next to impossible to source the best CM4's and RPi4's. I bought a couple TuringPi v2 cluster boards, couldn't obtain any CM4's (at least the SKUs I wanted). Finally TuringPi released their RK1 RockChip compatible with RPi4. The RK1 is better than the CM4 and I don't need a daughter board to put it into the TuringPiv2 and they sold big heatsinks with fans.

I used to run a pretty decent set top box on a Pi B 512 and I recall the Rasperian desktop being slow but still responsive--circa 2011. I had 3 or 4 laying around including cases, so early this year I tried to set up a barebones desktop and CUPS Printer server on one after Microsoft dropped driver support for my best laser printer between Win10 and 11. I gave up after finding several so-called "minimal" distros unresponsive (like 10 min to pull down a menu).

I love vendors that include the all the cables with their electronics. That shows that they care about their customers and want them to start using their product right away without having to go back to the store to get additional parts and be unhappy about spending more money.

You should test GNKtec with Linux, ensuring it's the same system used on Raspberry Pi for a fair and accurate benchmark comparison.

The N100's iGPU is its major ace in the hole - 4K HEVC transcoding, more emulation horsepower, real hardware-accelerated video editing chops... The Pi costs too much and delivers too little. Also, the N100 has many more PCIe lanes, leading to the existence of cool router / NAS boards based on it.

Still a big pi fan. Have used a pi 3 for my daughter's arcade machine. The gpio pins for learning and programming are awesome.

My finger was primed and ready to tap 7 times to skip forward a minute when you said "is this a good time to segue to our sponsor?" That was very good. Also funny reference to LTT, though they only do a 10 s ad in the beginning wo only two taps in that specific case

I chimed in on this issue on your channel a few months ago, but Pi’s let me down so much on limitations, and I moved on to

A few family members have asked for a simple office pc, and I always look for a cheap, refurbished small form factor Dell Optiplex. The quality is fantastic, they're build to run 24/7, they usually have an i5 from 3rd to 6th gen, have 8 GB of memory and nowadays they sell them with new SSD's (so I don't have to replace the old HDD myself) for anywhere between $90 and $150. But, that new GMKtec sure does look like a great option to me.

In every video we have: 1. ah the fan does not fit because of the hat 2. ah we may need to cut something a bit shorter 3. ah will the case fit? 4. ah it's rather slow. IT. IS. A. VERY. BAD. DESIGN. (and they don't care to make it better). There, i said it. Imagine if they could get the cpu on the opposite side of the board. Now magically your fan doesn't get in the way and your case has some solid airflow! What an idea.

The mount thingy that came with the mini-PC is for putting it on VESA mounting holes on the back of a monitor.

The real problem with Raspberry Pi is just their availability. Their popularity still means that they are the best choice in most cases, none of the alternatives have it's community support. It's just that they seem incapable at scaling their production to the demand of their product.

I actually bought the GMKtec NucBox G3 recently (I was also considering Raspberry Pi 5 and Orange Pi 5 Plus) - my use case is a home server / TV media center. I bought barebone version and added 16 GB of RAM and 2 TB NVMe (I didn't care about Windows and just installed Debian Linux on it). At least in my area the cost was pretty much te same for N100 vs Rasp 5 (Raspberry is less cost effective than it used to be and it gets worse if you have to buy a HAT for SSD). One thing I can say is that Linux is a bit more energy efficient than Windows - at idle my GMKtec NucBox G3 was consuming 8 W. But then, I noticed that in BIOS pretty much all energy saving options are disabled by default. Once I enabled Render Standby for GPU, C states for CPU, all ASPM options for all PCIE slots that allow it and I turned off some things I don't use (like SATA controller, also disabled WiFi and Bluetooth in the OS) I finally ended with 4 - 4.5 W range in idle.

About 4 years ago I bought a LinuxMint Mini 2 Pro. I run LinuxMint 21.3 Mint distro. The box is about 4.5 X 3.5 X 1.5 inches comes in cast aluminum case. The top is a heat sink. There are no moving parts, it 100% solid state, except the ON/OFF switch. Th got this from COMPULAB out of Israel for $400.00. I just love it. I'm done with giant PC boxes.

Notice how your 4k yt-video got served vp09 codec on the Pi and av01 for the N100 that has hardware support for it.

I never could find the "$5 Pi Zero" for under $25. That's the problem, they've always been way more costly than their advertised price. With the exception of the Pi Pico, with all the RP2040 clones, I can actually get one for $4. The black clone anyway.

I have to admit. I have been playing with Raspberry Pis forever. I have about a dozen of them in various sizes. I've build a NAS, an OpenVPN server, a Media player, a rain detector, remote hedgehog camera system, CCTV DVR etc etc - but this December I bought 2 BMAX mini PCs for around $100 (well £85 TBH) each. I now have a PC NAS (Openmediavault) and I'm using the other as a media player. I can't imagine buying another Pi unless I need something with digital I/O.

Very informative video. Thanks for all the hard work. I have been considering getting a mini pc for daily use, or a pi, i dont need to have a gaming rig running to watch youtube, and check email. Ty.

I believe the "wall mount" is a monitor mount, so you can stick it behind a standing desk monitor.

The Pi’s main strength is education and tinkering. An N100 will destroy the Pi in raw specs but not necessarily be the best educational tool. My parents got me a Raspberry Pi 1B for Christmas over a decade ago and I’m so thankful for the learning the Pi ecosystem has provided me. For servers I run low power Dells but if I ever have kids they’re getting Pi’s!

Definitely in the "dropping a damn screw on the ground and searching for it for 10+ minutes" club right with you. Between drones, 3D printers, and computers, I've dropped enough screws to fasten a car together...

Amazing video!! I wonder what the power draw would be with the n100 PC if it was in Linux, could even be equal on power performance

Hey Jeff think it’s cool you still read and respond to the comments loved the video. A sad effect of all videos like these is the great valued product mentioned is always bumped in price a bit by the seller once traffic is driven to it by a video (for reference the mini pc mentioned in this video is now around 160) nothing can really be done about it just stinks as a side effect lol. Thanks for the great video again.

"Geekbenches per watt" is my new favorite benchmark metric

This video was timely. Just last week I decided I'm done with the Pi. There's tons of applications that it's perfect for, but it just doesn't suit my emulation needs anymore. I have a Pi 4 running Retropie and it was alright a few years ago when I finished the project, but now that mini pcs are at this price point they're just the best option. I wanted to do this again with the Pi 5, but it's just too much trouble for too little return. Supply shortages, a world of crappy cases that don't fit my needs, waiting months or years for the Retropie team to cobble together a stable build, poor performance...I bought the exact same GMKtec a few months ago for an arcade cabinet project and the thing doesn't run into any problems until I try to run a Dreamcast game. For $320 I could get something that runs PS3 emulators.

Edit: I fixed a horrible mistake - you know when you see it. Admittedly not having used any Pi's, I have a kinda love for them. First, I love the idea of having a retro-style PC, and an actual retro multi-system emulator... I'm talking of Pi 5 IIRC, and if not I mean the one that's built-in a beyboard. I would have it run Linux, but boot straight into a C-64 emulator or just an application emulating one that presents a menu with a choice of emulator (for many consoles and computers from the 8- and 16-bit era). The plain C-64 emulator I would modify a bit, so it would have two extra commands, "menu" and "emu" that take parameters from console/computer names to "Linux" for Linux. That would be neat. But I'd also love an un-cased SBC Pi. And there's the problem. If I could get SBC with features like that x86 box, especially at least with the option to not have Windows or having paid the Windows tax for it and the price would be lower or not much higher, why would I go for arm-based Pi? Heck, I know at least one PuppyLinux release can still play UKposts videos with its Light (or Lite) Browser. Granted, not in 1080p, but on the original PC's native resolution. I forgot to mention the system: Asus EeePC 4G, one of the original super tiny, super cheap and super lower-end netbooks that seemed to start and end the super cheap low-end netbook boom - sadly. But if it can do that, -I'm baffled at how bad Windows is that it can't make the higher resolutions on that beast (in comparison)- err, correction: I'm sure I could get a better resolution to play out of the Pi with the right choice of distro and browser. But this just wants me to have an SBC, so screw you, I'm leaving thumbs down! JUST KIDDING :DDD

I was using Pi's from first version to 4, had every one variant around a house. But now I have only one.. Zero models can be replaced by ESP for simple tasks, and regular PCB's can be replaced by terminals or other mini PC's. I loved Pi for price, power consumption and reasonable performance. It just had very good ratio of all of that. But now it's just not the case anymore.

I'd love to see what the same N100 machine would in Geekbench with a thin Linux distro running.

I don't see raspi as a villain but I do think prioritizing commercial customers was a mistake. It let the scalper market thrive and drove most hobbyists to look at alternatives. I know I haven't been able to afford continuing with them and it affected me in a way where I haven't been interested to see if the hobbyist market for raspi has recovered. Love the product. Just can't get them, or couldn't for long enough that I've erased the platform as an option for my projects, in my own mind.

Hey jeff, Thanks for the video. I wonder, if the raspberry PI cant handle 4k, how does the new TVs run android can play 4k videos with probably half of RPis spec.

Didn't even know you had a YT channel. I only recognized the name from all the ansible work you've done. Nice video.

I bought one of those N100 Mini PCs for a jank NAS. Plugged in a USB 5-bay SATA JBOD hard drive dock filled with 10TB drives, and shared them on my network. No fancy backup software or anything, just drag-and-drop. One drive is used for Jellyfin media. Once I got it up and running, I run it headless, just sitting on a shelf beside my desk with the dock. It doesn't do anything except share the drives, and encoding when I'm using Jellyfin. It does exactly what I need it to do.

The most surprising thing about this video was how fast 20 minutes can go. Great video, keep up the good work.😊

For someone like me, it comes down to two actual end use situations: 1) The RPI has the I/O header. That's why I have a small army of 3B+ RPIs: Data collection and processing from DIY electronics projects. I really doubt the mini PC can do that kind of thing. 2) The Windows mini PC has all the compatibility I'm used to with my desktop PC... more or less... This might be great, might not. Can I run EQ APO on it like I would like to? Probably not. Is there enough remaining usefulness to make it worth the money I'd have otherwise spent on another RPI? Mayyyybe but I can't know until I pull the trigger, and with my budget that's definitely not in my comfort zone. One thing the mini PC can do for sure is my weird idea of wall mounted touchscreen web/misc machine. But do I care enough to blow the money on it?

The absence of magic smoke when turning on diy electronics is always a plus lol. I smoked my lilygo t-beam while trying to put a waterproof pelican case together as a housing for it; forgot to remove battery and shorted the antenna base against a terminal 😭 live and learn lol.

I used to do retro pie for my arcade cabs, and have switched to running launchbox on PC with mini PCs. It got to where a pie wasn’t actually cheaper, and while windows kinda sucks, it’s more “known” in how it sucks than raspbian is. (I have a Linux laptop for work and work as a software engineer on Linux systems. I’m not scared of Unix. But retropie/raspbian behaves weird at times). I don’t hate pies, but mini PCs got better and cheaper as pies got more expensive, and it’s kinda hard to get past that.

GMTek is good for people who want just a small homeserver / mediabox / emulation station. The pi with its gpio etc could also be used for that, but the strenghts are definetly on robotics projects etc.

It was a bummer when they decided to take away the RCA output. I was using it to give life to my old CRTs and I was thinking to change all my Pi to 5 for the superior power, but without the output it made no sense to me anymore. I will have to try another solution. Thank you for the awesome video!

"Some assembly required" The DIY nature of the Pi is not a negative at all IMO. In fact, it's to a large degree the very point. A part of the use-case of these devices since its inception is to teach children/people about computing and electronics. Making people navigate through relevant conventions, standards, processes, and procedures to do things gives them a logic and intuition for computers, and problem-solving skills that would simply not be there if all it was was a plug-and-play solution. And for experienced people, the assembly is either enjoyable, or so easy that it's no trouble at all. The DIY nature and requirement of Pi's is a good thing.

I think a lot of people had a simmilar "journey" as me. I started hosting a few Network Services like Pihole, NAS, ... on a PI 2 where eventually I moved on to a Celeron J3455 NUC which I set up with Proxmox and 16 GB of RAM from which I now moved on to a Ryzen 2700x Server with 64 GB RAM.