Banana Pi M3 vs CHIP
When comparing Banana Pi M3 vs CHIP, the Slant community recommends CHIP for most people. In the question“What are the best single-board computers with built-in Wi-Fi support?” CHIP is ranked 3rd while Banana Pi M3 is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose CHIP is:
With 1 GHz ARMv7 CPU, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage CHIP is capable of running LibreOffice suite of applications for office work, Audacity digital audio workstation for audio editing, CAD for drawing diagrams and playing a wide array of games.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Official support for multiple Desktop-version Linux distros
Banana Pi officially supports Fedora, Arch, Lubuntu and openSUSE. It also can be used with Raspbian (Debian derivative) or Android.
Pro Excellent compatibility with Raspberry Pi software
Other than having a port of Raspbian (the official OS for Raspberry Pi) available for use with full capabilities, Banana Pi can also use many applications that were originally written for Raspberry. One of these is WiringPi, a C/C++ library which gives easy access to Raspberry's I/O with a strong Arduino flavor. But that is just one example of the many open source projects being ported to Banana Pi.
Pro Great performance for price
With 1 GHz ARMv7 CPU, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage CHIP is capable of running LibreOffice suite of applications for office work, Audacity digital audio workstation for audio editing, CAD for drawing diagrams and playing a wide array of games.
Pro The basics (wifi, BLE, charging) are already integrated
No more having to separately buy and plug in wifi dongles, usb keyboards, etc.
Pro Open Source schematics
Pro Ready to be used out of the box
CHIP comes pre-installed with a variety of applications.
Pro Can be made portable
You can use a Lithium Polymer battery to power the device and it has charging circuitry for charging the battery.
Pro Teaches programming
VHIP bundles Scratch programming language that's designed specifically to teach the basics of programming.
Cons
Con No off-the-shelf camera modules
The A20 chip that the Banana Pi uses lacks a true Camera Serial Interface implementation, instead it uses a parallel camera interface. The problem with this is that there are no off-the-shelf camera modules that support this and can connect to the Banana Pi, but it should be mentioned that the makers of Banana Pi have promised to create a camera module that is supported by it.
Con Expensive
It costs $129.99.
Con Not available anymore
Con Young community
The first CHIP computers shipped December 23rd, and while there's lots of traction it will take some time for a bustling community to develop around the devices.