ASUS has also joined the Raspberry Pi alternatives with its own SBC (Single Board Computer). And he does it with his model ASUS Tinker Board, a board with higher performance, and somewhat more expensive, than the Pi. Something that could be interesting for those makers who are looking for more performance for their DIY projects and who cannot find it in the Raspi.
Of course, it also has many similarities to the Raspberry Pi, since the ASUS Tinker Board is also an SBC to assemble your miniPC with which to have a complete computer equipment at a great price and a small size ...
ASUS warranties
ASUS (pronounced as "eisus") is one of the most prestigious brands of motherboards. ASUSTek Computer is a Taiwanese firm based in Taipei that has become a benchmark in the hardware industry. It stands out for its innovation and quality.
All this can also be noticed on your ASUS Tinker Board, since ASUS specialty is precisely motherboards. Therefore, if the alternative SBC boards do not convince you too much in terms of reliability, with ASUS you can find a great guarantee and security.
Make it one of the world's leading motherboard suppliers and top rated in the industry it is not a coincidence ...
Is the ASUS Tinker Board worth it?
To answer that question, you must first analyze its technical characteristics. So they can be compared with current Raspberry Pi boards to see if it is really worth paying a little more or not.
Both the Raspi and the Tinkerboard they look alike in many respects, like in the HDMI, or in the microUSB for the feeding. Also includes 3.5mm headphone jack, and 40 GPIO pins. Even the ASUS SBC's own design and format seems to mimic the Raspberry Pi.
In the following table you can see a comparative one of the details of a Raspberry Pi 3 and an ASUS Tinker Board:
| ASUS Tinker Board | Raspberry Pi 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| SoC | Rockchip RK3288-C QuadCore 1.8Ghz | Broadcom BCM2837 QuadCore 1.2Ghz |
| Benchmark Score | 3925 | 2092 |
| RAM | 2 GB | 1 GB |
| Display | HDMI 4K (H.264 code) | hdmihd |
| NIC | 1Gb LAN | 100Mb LAN |
| Audio | 192K / 24bit | 48K / 16bit |
| WiFi | 802.11 b / g / n Swappable Antenna | 802.11 b / g / n |
| Bluetooth | 4.0 + EDR | 4.1 LE |
| SDIO (version) | 3.0 | 2.0 |
| Operating Systems | linux etc | Windows IoT, Linux, etc |
By the way, there are two ASUS Tinker Board models. One is the base model and the other is the S model. model S you have a bit more performance, since it uses DDR3 RAM instead of the base's LDDR3. Also, it uses another version of the SoC with a somewhat more powerful GPU, since it uses the Mali T764 instead of the T760. However, it has less onboard eMMC memory, only 16GB versus 64GB. Otherwise it is identical ...
Conclusion
As you can see, the ASUS Tinker Board can outperform the Raspberry Pi in many ways. It especially stands out in its performance, which almost doubles that of the Raspberry Pi and that is quite considerable. Of course, for the ASUS you will have to pay more than double than for the Pi.
Besides that, now you have the Raspberry Pi 4 at your fingertips, which exceeds in performance and benefits to the 3 that has been compared in the previous table. So the performance gap is further dissipated… Even the Pi 4 is considerably cheaper than the Tinker Board models.
To that you add the great community after the Raspberry Pi and the amount of projects, plugins and tutorials that you have at your fingertips. Something that is not the case for ASUS.
Options
That said, in the market you have various alternatives where to choose:
- ASUS Tinker Board
- Complete ASUS Tinkerboard Kit: heatsink, case, adapter.
- ASUS Tinker Board S
- Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
- Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
The decision which one to buy it's yours, depending on your needs ...