Beelink L55 Review – An Intel Core i3-5005U Mini PC Tested with Windows 10 & Ubuntu 18.04

Beelink L55 Review

With the shortage of Gemini Lake processors, some manufacturers have taken to releasing new mini PCs using older CPUs. The Beelink L55 is one such example and uses Intel’s Broadwell I3-5005U CPU which is a dual-core 4-thread 2.00 GHz processor with Intel’s HD Graphics 5500. The L55 is a ‘NUC’ style mini PC and physically consists of a 128 x 126 x 46 mm (5.04 x 4.96 x 1.81 inches) box case with a front panel that includes the power button, a headphone jack and a couple of 3.0 USB ports and then on the rear, two more 3.0 USBs, two 2.1 USBs, HDMI (1.4), DP and two gigabit Ethernet ports. Note that there is no SD or micro SD card slot. The full specifications include: The L55 comes with either a 256GB or 512GB (as tested in this review) M.2 SSD with pre-installed Windows 10 Home version 1809 together […]

Inforce Introduces Snapdragon 660 & 845 Modules with On-Device AI

ACC-1C20 Carrier Board

Inforce Computing has just launched two new pin-compatible system-on-modules, namely Inforce 6502 and Inforce 6701, powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 & Snapdragon 845 SoC respectively. In their newsletter, the company claims those are their first modules with on-device AI capabilities with the Snapdragon 660 enabling “advanced visual computing, enhanced graphics and on-device machine learning capabilities”, while the more powerful Snapdragon 845 is better suited for “immersive multimedia experiences including optimized AI performance for a more responsive, power-efficient user- experience and capture of cinema-grade videos in UHD@60fps resolution. Inforce 6502 Snapdragon 660 SoM Specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 with 8-core Kryo 260 processor, Adreno 512 GPU, Qualcomm Hexagon 680 DSP with Hexagon Vector eXtensions (HVX) for Caffe2 and Tensorflow System Memory & Storage – 3GB LPDDR4, Dual-Channel + 32GB eMMC flash in single eMCP package Connectivity Bluetooth 5.0 + Wi-Fi 5 802.11ac 2×2 with MU-MIMO and Dual Band Simultaneous (DBS) […]

Debian 10 “Buster” Released

If you’re a recent owner of a Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, you should have had an early taste of Debian 10 “Buster”, since the Raspberry Pi Foundation decided to release their Raspbian “Buster” image before the actual release in order to lower software development costs. Debian developers have only just announced the release of Debian 10 “Buster”. The new version of Debian supports various desktop environments including Cinnamon 3.8, GNOME 3.30, KDE Plasma 5.14, LXDE .99.2, LXQt 0.14, MATE 1.20, and Xfce 4.12. Besides the official announcement Debian also posted tidbits on their Twitter feed, where we learn for example that “Debian 10 buster has 28,939 source packages with 11,610,055 source files”. Officially supported architectures for Debian 10 include i386 and amd64 for x86 targets, arm64, armel and armhf Arm architectures, as well as various other architectures including MIPS (mips64el, mipsel…), PowerPC (ppc64el), and IBM System z (s390x). One notable […]

$9.9 ROCK Pi S is a Tiny SBC Powered by Rockchip RK3308 Processor

Rock Pi S SBC

Radxa launched their low cost ($40) Rock Pi 4 SBC powered by Rockchip RK3399 processor a little over 18 months ago. If you are subscribed to their mailing list, the company has now sent an email entitled “ROCK Pi Summer Updates 2019” (no link available) that reports about v1.4 of the board with 4MB SPI flash onboard, an external WiFi antenna connector, and various other small changes, as well as the announcement of RockPi PoE HAT to power the board from an Ethernet cable, and an USB 3.0 eMMC card reader. But what particularly caught my attention in the email was a new tiny single board computer powered by Rockchip RK3308 Cortex-A35 processor: Rock Pi S selling for as low as $9.9 with 256MB RAM, and targetting headless IoT & smart voice applications. Rock Pi S board specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3308 quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 processor with built-in VAD (Voice […]

Intrinsyc Open-Q 820Pro SoM Comes with a Faster Snapdragon 820E Processor, 4GB RAM

Snapdragon 820E Development Board

Intrinsyc Open-Q 820 system-on-module was introduced in 2017 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 3GB RAM, and a built-in wireless module for 802.11ac WiFi 5, and Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity. The company has now announced an almost identical ultra-compact module but based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 820E and featuring 4GB RAM. Open-Q 820Pro μSoM is a drop-in replacement for Open-Q820 requiring only some software changes. Snapdragon 820E is said to deliver 9% faster CPU and 5% faster GPU speeds at the same power consumption compared to Snapdragon 820. Open-Q 820Pro μSoM specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 820E (APQ8096SG) Embedded Platform with four Kryo cores including 2x cores @ up to 2.342GHz, and 2x cores @ up to 1.6GHz, Adreno 530 GPU @ 652.8 MHz,  Hexagon 680 DSP @ 825 MHz System Memory – Dual-channel 4 GB LPDDR4  @ 1866 MHz (PoP) Storage – 32 GB UFS 2.0 1-lane gear3 flash Connectivity Pre-certified […]

Atomic Pi SBC is back with pre-orders on Amazon and Ameridroid

Atomic Pi single board board is probably the SBC with the best performance / value ratio on the market, so when we reported that Atomic Pi was available worldwide last month the 6,000 pieces available quickly ran out of stock. Many people suspect it was a limited product run from a previous project, and indeed Atomic Pi is most likely AAEON MF-001 board that was designed for Kuri robot designed for the now-defunct Mayfield Robotics. But we have some good news as Atomic Pi SBC does not appear to be a one-off sales getting rid of stock as it’s now back for pre-order on Amazon US and Ameridroid with shipping scheduled for the end of May. I won’t go through the whole specifications again but with an Intel Atom x5-Z8350 quad core processor, 2GB RAM, and 16GB flash, Atomic Pi board has hardware far more powerful than the similarly priced […]

Pinebook Pro Arm Laptop Video Demo

Pinebook Pro Laptop Demo

Pine64 first revealed working on Pinebook Pro Arm Linux laptop at FOSDEM 2019 back at the end of January. The first Pinebook laptop had limited hardware resources, and as such was meant for simple tasks, but Pinebook Pro equipped with Rockchip RK3399 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB to 128GB flash, and a 14″ Full HD display is designed to be used as your main laptop. That means everything needs to work from 3D graphics acceleration, to hardware video decoding, and USB-C video output. Lukasz Erecinski very recently shot a demo of the laptop in action, and everything looks very good, meaning the laptop should be come available soon. You can watch the demo further below, but if you are in a rush here’s what has been tested and works: Ubuntu & Debian with MATE desktop 4K video playback 3D graphics acceleration for games (Quake demo) 3D graphics acceleration in Chromium web […]

$35 Atomic Pi Cherry Trail Linux SBC is now available worldwide

ATOMIC Pi

At the very end of last year, I covered Atomic Pi single board computer powered by an Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor which was mostly interesting because of its incredibly low price: $34 and up. Getting an Intel board fof the price of a Raspberry Pi looked too good to be true, and being launched via a Kickstarter, the crowdfunding campaign raised suspicions. The board would also only ship to the US. Shipping was scheduled for January 2019, backers received their board around two months ago, and most people appear to be satisfied with the main struggle being powering the board since it requires some manual wiring for people who did not purchase the breakout board. So it’s real, it works, and the good news is that the board now sells on Amazon US for $34.50 with the company (DLI – Digital Logger Inc.) shipping worldwide. Here’s a reminder of the […]