It’s low power that is still making arm small computers popular. It’s impossible to get a pc down into the 2-5 Watt power consumption range and over time it’s the electrical costs that add up. I would suggest the RPI5 is the thing to get because it’s expensive for what it is and more performance is available from other options supported by armbian.
Yet a Mac Mini does exactly that. Or like any Intel N100 based mini PC or laptop. Those also have way better performance, IO, and software compatibility. Raspberry Pi’s fill a certain niche, but efficiency isn’t it. At least not anymore.
It’s low power that is still making arm small computers popular. It’s impossible to get a pc down into the 2-5 Watt power consumption range and over time it’s the electrical costs that add up. I would suggest the RPI5 is the thing to get because it’s expensive for what it is and more performance is available from other options supported by armbian.
Yet a Mac Mini does exactly that. Or like any Intel N100 based mini PC or laptop. Those also have way better performance, IO, and software compatibility. Raspberry Pi’s fill a certain niche, but efficiency isn’t it. At least not anymore.
Mini PC with N200 and NVMe SSD uses around 7W when idling.
For a minimally higher power consumption you can have up to 32 GB of memory, more powerful CPU, and decent GPU for video transcoding purposes.