Asus Tinker Board takes on Raspberry Pi with 4K-capable micro PC; it is more expensive, however

A surprising competitor to the Raspberry Pi has emerged in the form of the Asus Tinker Board. About the size of a Raspberry Pi, this device features some notable enhancements that set it apart from the Pi, and might even justify the higher price tag.While the Pi itself is the true “tinker box”, the Asus Tinker Board offers 4K video playback support and gigabit Ethernet. These two features alone make the Tinker Board the ideal 4K Media Hub contender. The Raspberry Pi is less capable in the video department and features 100 Mbps Ethernet speeds, reports Gizmodo Australia.The Pi is cheaper, however, positioning it better for myriad DIY projects. At around $75 (Rs 5,000 not including shipping), the Asus Tinker Board is double the price.The Tinker Board includes a 1.8 GHz quad-core Rockchip processor, 2GB LPDDR3 RAM, four USB 2.0 ports, a headphone jack, internal headers, one HDMI 2.0 port, a microSD card slot and more. It receives power from a 5V/2A source over micro USB.The latest model of the Raspberry Pi uses a 1.2GHz quad-core chip with 1GB of RAM.Rockchip isn’t a very well-known manufacturer of chips because it’s a Chinese firm that designs SoCs based on licensed logic cores. These are usually sold for media applications and lack cellular capabilities, making it useless for tablets and smartphones.Thus, Rockchip does have some experience with multimedia capabilities.The Asus Tinker Board supports Debian Linux and Kodi for media playback.