I’ve been using the Beelink for a few months now for general-purpose computing (web, Excel, VSCode, etc.) and it’s better than it has any right to be for its size and price.
I got one of these in order to also get a Coral. I’ve been testing Frigate, Viseron, and other NVRs for a few weeks. It performs pretty well and having QuickSync on it makes a big difference. Having built other similar spec systems in the past, I think what sets this apart is the form factor and the dual ethernet ports. Still feels overpriced, but it’s at least covering a niche use case.
I have one of these. It's served me very well as the house gateway running OpenBSD. It's outlasted several 'generic' mini pcs. I'm hoping they release one with a newer processor, however.
Look at what cost mini PCs with multiple Ethernet ports, and the following one is one of the cheapest in the EU (other links appreciated). https://www.ipu-system.de/
> What would you really need this for that you couldn't use a $35 Raspberry Pi 4 for
The RPi is unobtanium almost everywhere, and costs more than twice, which makes it the very last choice for any use.
Also, performance is quite poor compared to the Celeron used in that product.
Here's a comparison. Benchmarks should be always taken with a grain of salt, still they give a rough idea of the differences.
Last year I moved my Kodi media player from a RPi4 to a used Asus CN62 2nd gen Chromebox whose CPU isn't that far from the linked mini PC, and the performance boost was huge.
I've just looked at Ebay listings for a used RPi4 and it easily goes to €100 and above for the 4GB model; it's just crazy (and wouldn't happen if the RPi was really available at the advertised prices): the Chromebox cost me half of that, delivered.
That miniPC has two Ethernet ports, which makes it better for use as firewall than a single port system. External USB adapters are not a good or reliable workaround.
> (and slap in a cheap SD card)?
SD cards can fail spectacularly. Any device running important services should boot off reliable media, which SD is not, especially when not mounted read only.
It's more like $100 for an rpi4 currently. Also, an rpi doesn't really replace an actual microcontroller in terms of I/O.
I tried looking up more on the "ATSAMD21 ARM® Cortex®-M0+" but didn't find out exactly what it means for this to be a co-processor. Does it share system RAM? Like... an arduino with GB of ram? That doesn't seem possible. So I suppose it's more likely it's just a arduino capable chip thrown in on the same board and same power without much beyond a built in serial interface...
It's not spelled out very explicitly, but the wiki[1] contains the details. It's connected to the host CPU via a serial port, and the specifications state "28-pin header from SAMD21G18". There's also a pinout diagram[2].
Dual, not single, gig-e? 2 x m.2 slots not crappy SD slots? Faster processor? Can run regular Windows (or even ESXi) if Linux/BSD isn't what I need?
And that's ignoring there's no RPi 4 you can get or have been able to get for $35 unless maybe you're ordering hundreds. The last one I bought was around $120.
