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Continuing our series on single-board computers, we’ve come across a new contender on the market. LattePanda is not a new name in this field, with the original LattePanda debuting way back in 2016. Since then, the brand made a name for itself by being the first x86-based commercially available single-board computer. This time, we’re taking a look at the flagship offering from the company, the LattePanda Alpha 864s, a tiny, powerful, albeit somewhat expensive offering from DFRobot.
We would like to thank DFRobot for sponsoring this review and sending us a review unit. Our opinions are our own and unbiased and are not in any way influenced by any third party.
The LattePanda Alpha lineup (including its lesser Delta sibling) started off as a Kickstarter campaign in 2017, materializing in 2018 as the first generation of the device. A refreshed design in 2019 brought upon several changes, mainly an upgrade from a 7th generation Core m3-7y30 CPU to a newer, 8th generation Core m3-8100y and a step back in the RAM department going from dual to single channel memory, but still retaining 8GB of LPDDR3 it. We find this change justified, as the price of the device has not changed after the refresh. Intel’s newer silicon costs significantly more than its older iterations, so other cost-cutting measures had to be implemented. Thankfully, the intended applications for this SBC are all CPU-heavy, rather than RAM-heavy, thus this change should, in theory, almost universally positively impact performance.
It’s also worth noting that the current LattePanda lineup offers two main variants – the LattePanda Alpha, with the aforementioned specifications, starting at $379, and the LattePanda Delta, with an Intel Celeron N4100 processor and 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, starting at $188. The LattePanda Alpha further comes in two variants, the 800s and the 864s, the only difference being the presence of 64GB of eMMC flash storage on-board on the latter. You can also pick up the Alpha with Windows 10 Pro pre-installed.
The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B came out a few weeks ago, and it brings a major leap forward in general usability and performance compared to its predecessors. The previous major revision of the board, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ paved the way towards a viable desktop replacement, but just wasn’t quite there, whereas the new model promises to finally reach the aforementioned goal of every single-board computer out there – to get onto your desks as a complete alternative to a standard PC.
Raspberry Pi has always been the go-to board for tinkerers, engineers and developers. Its versatility as a platform, open access to a large GPIO header, low cost, open-source hardware and software, and the great community around it are ensuring that more and more people keep getting drawn towards it. Numerous robotics, IoT, CS and electronics projects are made with a Pi in their heart. Another major demographic of the community is comprised of students having their first foray into programming.
The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B comes in three variants, differing only in the amount of RAM they are equipped with. The base model keeps the 1GB of its predecessors and maintains the traditional $35 price that the full-size boards have always gone for, while the 2GB and 4GB models run for $45 and $55, respectively. It’s also worth noting that the RAM of the new board is LPDDR4, which is much faster than the LPDDR2 used in the previous iterations.
Other new additions include the USB-C port, now used for powering the board, two USB 3.0 ports, true gigabit Ethernet, two micro-HDMI ports (that can go up to 4K 60Hz on one port or 4K 30Hz on both), Bluetooth 5.0 and last, but not least, a greatly upgraded SoC at the heart of it all.