i have some nanopi neo(1)s and they're rock solid - my rule of thumb with arm boards is that support is good enough if it has an armbian _debian_ (vs just armbian ubuntu) release
Cheers I might look at getting one then, as I had problems with my Pi's network connectivity being slow compared to a laptop's using the same ethernet over power line adapter.
no idea about PoE on either board but if i/o is a concern you might want to take a look at the $25 rock64 with gbe and usb3 - i/o on my neo1 maxes out somewhere just below 20mb/s but my rock64 has no problem doing 80mb/s with some ancient spinny disks and some armbian devs have done ~200mb/s with ssds iirc
os support on the rock64 is not quite there yet however but given the features@pricepoint i expect it to catch up