[petsfed]

You might be able to run on a 5W supply, but my experience is that booting on a less than 15W supply is a recipe for corrupted SD cards and hard-to-trace bugs.

My biggest frustration with hobbyist boards is how little power the can source to e.g. the USB ports. Its super frustrating to need a powered USB hub to add e.g. a USB indicator light. The fact that you can power the RPi from the powered USB hub seems hacky, but maybe that was always the intent.

[snvzz]

By all means, use a good power source.

Yet note that a good power source doesn't mean that these SBCs will suddenly draw 15W sustained.

Average draw will be much lower than any of these NUC-like devices.

e.g. my VisionFive 2 is below 4w.

[doubled112]

I sure wish I could get my Pi 4 to boot with a powered USB hub attached.

After trying three I gave up.