Board suggestion: for heavy surfing

[ElieZ]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm looking for a Single board computer suggestion for me to use as a Web surfing mini-station. Think, in the style of poor man's Cafe.

 

I have already done some research based on the pricing, but obviously, that would not always be a good criteria. Without hands-on experience, I do not believe that I would know the performance profile of the devices. So, I have assembled here some criteria that I think should be relevant:

 

• Pricing
  • Not too expensive, <= $60
• Surfing performance
  • Anything that will allow really Smooth video playback on the browser
    • YouTube and the likes
    • should be using Hardware Acceleration from the GPU
  • Anything that will allow to browse a few dozens of Tabs
  • Something that will be able to handle WebGL
• Connectivity
  • Wifi 802.11n
• Storage
  • Integrated 8GB eMMC

 

Basically, I'm looking for a sweet spot for the most appropriate board for Web surfing, with minimum compromise on performance, and not overkill.

 

Thanks for all of your inputs.

[margaspeak]

I think it will be hard to look at a $60 budget. 

[ElieZ]

14 minutes ago, margaspeak said:

I think it will be hard to look at a $60 budget. 

 

Thanks for your input.

 

The Odroid XU4 seems to be an interesting candidate, and it is within my budget. But again, I had no hands-on experience with it, so I'm not really sure how will it actually behave.

[tkaiser]

8 hours ago, ElieZ said:

Anything that will allow really Smooth video playback on the browser

• YouTube and the likes
• should be using Hardware Acceleration from the GPU

 

Youtube 'in the browser' works almost nowhere in Linux on ARM. And that's nowhere related to GPU but a VPU thing (GPU in the ARM world is 2D/3D acceleration, VPU does all the video HW acceleration -- every SoC vendor has its own video engine and therefore browser support is not widely existing in Linux -- Android is a different story and IMO your only option with these boards).

 

I know of one platform where you can watch video smoothly in Chromium on Linux but this platform sucks in almost all other areas too much (limited to 800 MB DRAM for Linux, shipping with braindead defaults like no memory compression and swap on SD card and all such weird things)

 

Further readings:

• https://forum.armbian.com/topic/8043-orange-pi-one-general-performance-browser-performance/ (Chromium + plugin on RPi might work)
• https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/08/24/nanopi-m4-raspberry-pi-rk3399-board/#comment-555726 (why 'Desktop Linux' always sucks)

 

[ElieZ]

4 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

every SoC vendor has its own video engine and therefore browser support is not widely existing in Linux -- Android is a different story and IMO your only option with these boards

 

Wow! I didn't know that was a fact. So, I'm guessing finding an Android board would be the best thing to do.

 

I already have 2 x Orange Pi +2E boards, but I can't find a higher Android version for it. The company behind it doesn't seem to care to have updated Android version for it unfortunately.

 

Thank you very much for your informative input.

[tkaiser]

1 hour ago, ElieZ said:

I already have 2 x Orange Pi +2E boards, but I can't find a higher Android version for it

 

Yeah, your only option is https://h3droid.com then (Android 4.4 IIRC). Also IIRC Allwinner provided a newer Android for their old H3 SoCs which also requires a newer 'BSP' based on a smelly 4.4 kernel lacking DVFS capabilities. So pretty much unusable on those Orange Pi with sophicticated voltage regulation. TL;DR: Forget about Allwinner.

 

To my (very limited) knowledge if it's about Android and consuming movies your best choice would be a cheap Amlogic TV box with a recent SoC. Or Rockchip. But honestly neither know nor care.

[TonyMac32]

Following @JMCC's media script you can watch video in chromium on Tinker Board, Mali, VPU, etc all works.  (Took a minute to get that kernel fixed though thanks to Rockchip)

[ElieZ]

4 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

all works

 

Oh! Thanks for that update ... I'll have to figure-out how to get my board's graphics first to work on the Orange Pi +2E, then I'll get that script. I now have small hope for this whole thing again 

[TonyMac32]

well it only works on the Tinker with the RK3288 and the 4.4 kernel (not so smelly as the one tkaiser spoke of, it is full-featured, even if it's aging)

[tkaiser]

7 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

Following @JMCC's media script you can watch video in chromium on Tinker Board, Mali, VPU, etc all works

 

Didn't know that. Maybe it's a good idea to summarize the status of these FAQs somewhere below docs.armbian.com?

[ElieZ]

2 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

well it only works on the Tinker with the RK3288 and the 4.4 kernel (not so smelly as the one tkaiser spoke of, it is full-featured, even if it's aging)

 

Heheh... ok. I'm out of luck with my current board then anyway. I might want to get my hands on that RK3288 and see, I'm not really chasing the latest, just something within the budget and works.

Thanks for clarifying.

[JMCC]

Hi, I'm on the go, just a quick answer.

Odroid XU4 and Tinkerboard both meet your requirements. RK3399 boards too, but they are more expensive.

If you are going to use just 1080p resolution, then go for the XU4. If you plan to watch 4K videos, then Tinkerboard is your choice.

[ElieZ]

Just now, JMCC said:

Hi, I'm on the go, just a quick answer.

Odroid XU4 and Tinkerboard both meet your requirements. RK3399 boards too, but they are more expensive.

If you are going to use just 1080p resolution, then go for the XU4. If you plan to watch 4K videos, then Tinkerboard is your choice.

 

Alright, thanks @JMCC