When comparing Tessel 2 vs Intel NUC Kit NUC7i3BNH, the Slant community recommends Intel NUC Kit NUC7i3BNH for most people. In the question“What are the best single-board computers?” Intel NUC Kit NUC7i3BNH is ranked 27th while Tessel 2 is ranked 36th. The most important reason people chose Intel NUC Kit NUC7i3BNH is:
While the cost may seem steep compared to other SBC options, seldom are those other options sold with a case that will also house your storage drives and provide adequate cooling for the entire setup.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro NodeJS support out of the box
Out of the box it supports Node 4.x LTS and doesn't require any setup to use it.
Pro Co-processor system
Runs Linux and user application code on a 580MHz Mediatek router-on-a-chip, with an asynchronous 48MHz SAMD21 coprocessor for GPIO, ADC, I2C, SPI, PWM and UART programming
Pro Programmable via USB or Wifi
The process for deploying software, whether it's JavaScript, Python or Rust, is exposed the same way for both USB and Wifi connections.
Pro Easy to get started with
The Tessel 2's "Getting Started" experience requires little more than installing Node.js and a single package (the CLI) via npm. Complete walkthroughs for Linux, Mac and Windows are available and up-to-date
Pro Comes with appropriate case and mounting hardware for storage drives
While the cost may seem steep compared to other SBC options, seldom are those other options sold with a case that will also house your storage drives and provide adequate cooling for the entire setup.
Pro SATA III port and M.2 NVMe connector with on-board RAID-0/RAID-1 controller
The ability to harness the power of a standard 2.5" SATA III drive and an M.2 NVMe drive with four PCI Express 3.0 lanes means that sequential read rates in excess of 3GB/sec if both are SSDs. Add to that hardware RAID support and it's hard to imagine a more powerful digital storage platform anywhere near this size.
Cons
Con Very little memory
64 megabytes of RAM. This places it more in line with an Arduino style board than a SBC on the level of Raspberry Pi.
Con Higher initial costs than most other options
It's clearly not a budget option for building a home NAS, but if you want performance and more importantly, scalability, then you'll reap the benefits of the extra upfront costs many times over as you upgrade the memory, add peripherals via USB-C and put that 7th Generation Core i3 processor to work.