ASUS Tinker Board (Rockchip Quad-Core 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM,WiFi,BT,1Gbit LAN, HD)

ASUS comes into direct competition with Raspberry Pi, promising a system of the same size and much higher performance. The new Tinker Board may, in fact, render video in 4K.

Low consumption, negligible and performance very valid dimensions: these are the characteristics of the new Tinker Board of ASUS, a system with ARM processor designed in this case for multimedia purposes, as well as for the do-it-yourself. 

The name to be exact is the infinite Asus 90MB0QY1-M0EAY0 Tinker Board, but abroad has already been ironically baptized as ASUS Pi, because of the striking resemblance to the famous mini-computer rival. At the base, we find an ARM processor with four core Cortex-A17 to 1.8GHz, supported by 2GB of RAM and LPDDR3 a Mali-T764 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.0 and DirectX 11. For the dedicated storage is a microSD slot and does not fail support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.

Essential characteristics, those for connectivity, considering the target audience to which it addresses ASUS: “Raspberry Pi is on the market for too long, and we intend to expand the choice for users with more options,” the company said in step presentation. “This card has support for 4K video, superior performance for SoC, faster Ethernet connections, and flexibility for the amount of memory.”

In addition to the multimedia purposes, the Tinker Board can be used to complex and advanced projects for which Raspberry Pi is inadequate. Together with the small ASUS board has prepared a version of Linux Debian specifies that should optimize the user experience of the device, just like Raspberry Pi OS on competing systems. ASUS has also announced that it is working to provide greater support for other Linux distributions, like Ubuntu and OpenSUSE.

Planned for the future is also support for KODI, one of the most famous media platforms among the enthusiast users. The cost is certainly higher but so are the capabilities of the new Taiwanese system that promises to bring down the crippling limits of Raspberry Pi to use it effectively as a general-purpose machine.