One that comes close on paper is the $10 Nano Pi Neo, which will cost you the same as a Raspberry Pi Zero W but lacks the Pi's built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, has half the memory (the 512MB version costs $12) and no mini-HDMI. As such it's hard to find a machine to match it. The $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W is one of the smallest and cheapest machines available, costing roughly the same as a KFC Bargain Bucket, and packing 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.

WHAT ARE CHEAP ALTERNATIVES TO THE RASPBERRY PI ZERO W?

There is also the Orange Pi 3, which on paper sounds good for the price, although I have a hard time recommending that given the board's very flaky performance in testing. If 4K video playback is what you're after, then the $27 Le Potato has been praised for how it handles 4K, H.265-encoded video with a Kodi media player, but also criticized for software and operating system support being nowhere near as robust as on the Pi, so you'll have to be technically proficient to get it working. There are also issues with driver support that affect HDMI sound and USB 3.0 working at the speed of USB 2.0, according to a recent review - although work is ongoing on improving software support. The catch is those advantages aren't clear cut while the Pine machine offers more memory, it is also DDR3 RAM, older and slower than the DDR4 found on the Pi 4.Īnd while the H64's CPU may operate at 1.8GHz, compared to 1.5GHz on the Pi, that speed bump may mean little in terms of actual performance due to the Pi 4's CPU being based on a newer Arm architecture.Ĭompounding that disadvantage is the fact the H64 has slower Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, one fewer USB 3.0 port, and doesn't support dual displays. That said, the ~$35 Pine H64 Model B does offer more memory than the Pi 4 for the same price and its CPU is also clocked at a higher speed. With the release of the Raspberry Pi 4 being so recent, it's tough to find a board that beats the specs of the board for a similar price. WHAT IS A GOOD RASPBERRY PI ALTERNATIVE FOR THE SAME PRICE? However, the board's bigger brother, Le Potato, has also been criticized for lacklustre driver and software support, so it's probably yet another Pi wannabe that you should only buy if you have the time and knowledge to invest in getting it to work. On paper, the La Frite also promises comparable video playback performance to the Raspberry Pi 3 B+, can output to 1080p displays via HDMI 1.4, and offers two USB 2.0 ports

There's also the $25 La Frite board, which comes close to matching the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ in some key respects, using the same underlying Arm-based CPU and even offering DDR4 memory.

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