A tiny little company from Korea called Hardkernel just released a very powerful ARM board for a price of $139, The ODROID-X. And this small 3.5"x 3.7" slab of PCB packs a large punch, featuring a quad core Exynos running at 1.4GHz, coupled with 6 USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet adapter, headphone and microphone jack, and of course an SDHC slot so you can expand your storage. Plus offering 1GB of RAM. This is essentially a barebones Galaxy SIII, this also contains all the essential pins for those who want to mod or use it in other situations. And this is no Raspberry Pi in terms of specs and price. Where as the Raspberry Pi only sells for $35, it is also substantially slower, running only at 700MHz with only 256MB RAM, not really a beast in specs. Now I see this more as a cheap computer that many can buy and use as their daily driver, or for use as a development board, where as the Raspberry Pi is meant more for modding and for hobbyists. Plus the selection of operating systems for the ODROID-X is very low, featuring Android, Ubuntu, and maybe in the future Windows RT. I personally see this more as a device that you hook up to your TV so you can play games and stream content. Or you could go ahead and buy a Roku 2 and use that to stream movies and play games, or play a game. More specifically Angry Birds. Now if they were to release this with a case, its appeal would certainly increase. Due to the fact that with the case you can take it around with out the worry of damaging the board. Anyways this device looks like it has a lot of potential, but the only draw back is the price tag. So it seems that the Raspberry Pi wins the battle here. But for all the spec enthusiasts, this board may be for you.
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