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TOOLING: Raspberry Pi gets some competition with SolidRun’s HummingBoard series
The Raspberry Pi has been on the scene since 2012 as one of the more popular SBCs on the market and it’s clear to see why. It’s incredibly small for all the hardware that’s packed onto it and won’t break the bank in terms of cost, however there is a relatively new contender in the SBC ring that’s been gaining ground on the RPi’s popularity. Copy-cats were sure to follow… but this one is blatant.
SolidRun’s HummingBoard series of single-board computers are roughly the same size as the RPi but more powerful and as such, more expensive.
There are three boards in the series with the entry-level HummingBoard-i1, mid-level i2 and advanced i2eX, which when compared to the RPi B+, is superior in most respects. The i2eX features an ARMv7 dual-core SoC (running @ 1.2GHz) with 1Gb of memory while the RPi B+ uses an ARM1176JZFS (running at 700MHz) with 512Mb of onboard memory.
The i2eX also features full 1080p video output (HDMI), 10/100/1000 Ethernet and can use Android, Ubuntu, Debian and a host of other Oss. With that in mind, the i2eX costs $99 over the RPi’s significantly reduced $35 but you do get what you pay for. The i1 (single-core) and i2 (dual-core) run $45 and $75 respectively, however even the HummingBoard-i1 is faster than the Pi.
No matter which board users prefer, one thing is certain in that the competition is heating up in the SBC world.