[matheweis]

You may want to check out the rapidly growing number of RPi clones... cheaper and often more powerful, besides still having GPIO pins. You can find a nice list of options on the Armbian download page: https://www.armbian.com/download/

[astrodust]

There's a lot of clones, which is a good thing, but they are kind of a mixed bag on software support.

The one advantage of the Raspberry Pi is it's the one with the most of everything. Other noble competitors, like the Beagle, are pretty good too but getting anything to run on them can be really frustrating.

[ekianjo]

problem is That a lot have terrible hardware support. and virtually no community following.

[moftz]

It gets even worse when you buy really expensive SBCs from random small companies. You want support? They just ignore any emails because they either can't read your language, closed up shop, or just don't care to respond. Only good thing is that at least the hardware is amd64 and it uses drivers that are in the kernel.