See my comparison video last year, when the Mini PC was cheaper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TORg5FhKf-4And Happy New Year! Hope the rest of 2026 has mor...
Funny enough I recently bought an N100 Mini-PC with 8GB (as a Christmas present to replace somebody’s aged Windows 8 PC) for just a bit over $140 (more precisely €123, so $143 at today’s exchange rate).
According to this the performance of the microprocessor on the Pi5 is at the same level as that of the N100.
So basically if you buy a Mini PC with an N100 and 8GB memory you can roughly get the performance of the Pi5 at the price of a Pi4 with only 4GB.
I think the point of the previous poster that “this is wild” is exactly right.
Unless you actually need the actual pins with I/O ports, I2C, SPI or such for controlling some electronics, you’re better of with the Mini PC and even if you do, you’re probably better of with a Banana Pi or an Orange Pi.
Funny enough I recently bought an N100 Mini-PC with 8GB (as a Christmas present to replace somebody’s aged Windows 8 PC) for just a bit over $140 (more precisely €123, so $143 at today’s exchange rate).
According to this the performance of the microprocessor on the Pi5 is at the same level as that of the N100.
So basically if you buy a Mini PC with an N100 and 8GB memory you can roughly get the performance of the Pi5 at the price of a Pi4 with only 4GB.
I think the point of the previous poster that “this is wild” is exactly right.
Unless you actually need the actual pins with I/O ports, I2C, SPI or such for controlling some electronics, you’re better of with the Mini PC and even if you do, you’re probably better of with a Banana Pi or an Orange Pi.