Companies are churning these things out, new kid on the block:
Hardkernel’s $129 ODROID-X is a powerful little development board, but the price tag might be a little off-putting for some. Now the company’s offering two new models at price points that are little bit closer to Raspberry Pi territory: the ODROID-U and ODROID-U2.
The base model sells for just $69, and it features the same quad-core 1.4GHz Samsung Exynos 4412 processor found in some Galaxy S3 variants. It’s got 1GB of RAM, an eMMC connector and microSD slot for storage, two USB 2.0 ports, integrated 10/100 Ethernet, a micro HDMI port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It measures about two inches square, making the ODROID-U series about half the width of the Raspberry Pi.
For an extra $20 you can step up to the ODROID-U2 (insert your own geeky Bono joke here). It’s got a speedier processor — the Galaxy Note 2?s Exynos Prime 4412 clocked at 1.7GHz — 2GB of RAM, a 10% faster Mali-400 GPU, and a 3.5mm audio input jack.
Both prices include worldwide shipping and one other nice little bonus. The industrial-chic aluminum heatsink pictured above (which doubles as an semi-open case for the ODROID-U) is included, too. On the firmware side of the equation, Hardkernel is providing downloadable images of both Android and Ubuntu.
The ODROID-U2 and ODROID-U will begin shipping on December 21 and January 16 respectively. They’re available for pre-order now, as is an upgraded version of the ODROID-X.
Hardkernel is also getting ready to ship the ODROID-X2 with an Exynos Prime 4412, and it’s been priced at $135. It’ll start shipping on December 10.