Asus Tinker Board: a 4K-capable rival to Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi’s success has been rather phenomenal, but Asus thinks it can get in on the action too with the Tinker Board.

Spotted by Hexus and Liliputing, the Asus Tinker Board offers a 32-bit quad-core A17 CPU (Rockchip RK3288), 2GB of RAM and a Mali T764 GPU for graphically demanding tasks. Otherwise, microSD expansion, WiFi, Bluetooth, a Gigabit LAN port, 3.5mm audio jack, four USB 2.0 ports and HDMI connectivity round out the package.

The card-sized computer also touts support for 192Khz/24-bit audio and 4K video, making it ideal for multimedia on paper.

As for operating systems, it doesn’t have the Raspberry Pi 3’s comprehensive support, but it’ll run a version of Debian as well as the popular Kodi media streaming app.

By comparison, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B packs a similar quad-core CPU (albeit a 64-bit A53-based design) and 1GB of RAM.

Nevertheless, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B has a US$35 price tag (Takealot has them for R720), while the Asus Tinker Board will set you back £55 (R924) when it’s released. Someone has already unboxed the device on YouTube though, giving us a closer look.

Why would you want one of these computers? Well, we’ve got six ways to use the Raspberry Pi, for starters…