ASUS Tinker Board vs Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+

The ASUS Tinker Board offers performance that outclasses other single-board computers in this price range. It can easily be used as a daily PC substitute and it can easily handle some tasks that competitors (like the Pi 3 for example) find difficult. Things like image editing, streaming Full HD videos, and even playing some simple browser-based games can easily be done on the Tinker Board.

This single-board computer copies the form-factor of the raspberry pi to a T. The size is about the same and most of the connectors are at the same spots as the Raspberry Pi.

You can get the official Linux image for the Tinker Board website. It's actually a customized version of Debian that's changed to work as smoothly as possible on Tinker Board's hardware.

It comes with all the essential applications every PC has nowadays (web browser, text, editor, etc.) and some more specialized tools that are used to control the GPIO pins and that allow more advanced users to "talk" to the hardware.

This board has built-in WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities.

Yes, you can add an external WiFi adapter to most SBCs but the ability to connect an external antenna to the embedded WiFi is a pretty rare feature.

Unlike most boards on the market, the ASUS Tinker Board is rather aesthetically pleasing as well. It has an array of colours which help distinguish the different connectors. Especially nice are the GPIO pin headers which are all colour-coded to identify the various types of pins.

And since it has a dedicated controller which is not shared with USB it's very fast an the speed doesn't depend on USB usage (and vice versa).

The Tinker Board uses the same GPIO libraries as Raspberry Pi does. This means that users coming from Raspberry Pi who want to play around with the Tinker Board's GPIO pins will find it very easy to do so.

Thanks to a new thermal management plate (heat spreader), as well as better voltage regulation, the CPU gained a nice little 200 MHz bump in clock speed over the Pi 3 Model B. Applications on the Pi 3 B+ are a little faster and snappier than their predecessor.

What really sets the Raspberry Pi apart from the competition, and makes it leagues apart from every other SBC out there, it the software and support you get from every corner of the ecosystem regarding anything you want to make, build or do with the Pi. The most up-to-date kernels, the widest supported bundles, hats for every occasion, step-by-step instructions, and if you're trying something and get stuck, chances are high someone else has got stuck at the same spot, got past it, and left detailed instructions on how to get past it so nobody ever gets stuck there again. That is the best feature of the Raspberry Pi.

Because of the Gigabit ethernet (although still sharing the USB 2.0 bus which limits its speed ceiling), it goes up to 3x faster than the original Pi 3 Model B. The new wireless chip supports 802.111ac, which also increases its throughput to 3x as well. Bluetooth 4.2 LE is much more stable, and it's just a nice little upgrade.

The various addons boards means this is the board to go with for starters into development. Without much knowledge you can get a project up and running in a short amount of time.