Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If you intend to pull it out of the box and stick it in a Pi case and just run it as a Linux box it deserves 2 stars maybe even 3, in that respect it is faster than a Pi3 and has Gigabit ethernet. However, anything more complicated than that and it, in my opinion, struggles to deserve 1 star. Everything is there to make it a great product, except any kind of real support from the manufacture or any real community. There is no manufacture sponsored community for this product, there is no source code for the current kernel, there is no real documentation on how the board is logically laid out, the distro is poorly done, no modules, so effectively is just a tiny motherboard that runs Linux, what it isn't is much of a basis for an embedded application that uses any of the features the board has implemented, or anything that isn't already compiled into the kernel. No source, no modules, and very little documentation means the Tinkerboard is essentially limited to being a platform to run applications, but ineffective as a platform to develop an embedded control process, which is generally what these type of boards are created to do. This essentially reduces the product to being a user level PC running Linux. The Tinkerboard is also capable of running Android, however running Android does not mean that it provides an environment anything like an Android phone, or tablet or TV, what it runs is a simple, very basic Android base with virtually no services you generally associate with Android. The product does not come with Play Services, it is not registered with the Play Store and the greater Android distribution makes no effort to provide the updates necessary to maintain it as a functional Android environment. What this means is applications need to be sideloaded APKs onto it, including Play Services, and updates even minor ones, because they are independent of and not part of the greater Android distribution mechanism are capable and likely to become destructive of the devices integrity. Also there is no support within Android for anything integrated onto the board other than basic functionality: audio, video, network, Bluetooth and basic USB input devices, so here again this board is far less effective at what it is trying to emulate than the real thing, meaning most obsolete phones or tablets, used without cell service are substantially more capable devices, in virtually every respect, than a Tinkerboard for running Android. Then there is the power issue, the Tinkerboard needs 2.5-3A@5-5.25VDC to boot and these numbers tend to be more towards the higher than the lower. Power is provided to the board via a micro USB connection which does, by design, only have the contact capacity to reliably support 1.8A and provide no more than 5V at the source point and usually less at the device end of a cable due to loss within that cable. So in order to power a Tinkerboard you need to provide current in excess of the rating of the connector provided and voltage at, at a minimum, the maximum allowed by the standard. The Tinkerboard mimics the layout of the Raspberry Pi to a level unlike any other SBC and because of that can be installed in any enclosure made for a Raspberry Pi, differing only in the diameter of the audio jack which is slightly smaller on the Tinkerboard, this is a very nice aspect of this board. It's faster, has Gigabit Ethernet, the capability for an external antenna, theoretically better Audio and Video capabilities and a faster interface to the SD card, there is good in this board. The distribution, TinkerOS, is awful however and on my particular sample the network WiFi chip had a cold solder joint for the antenna connector so while boxing it up I removed the external antenna I installed and the connector came off the board with the cable, the final straw, since it rendered the board effectively unusable should some aspects of this boards flaws ever be resolved. In the end, for me at least, the Tinkerboard required to much tinkering and not enough getting it to do anything I wanted it to do. Source was available for older releases at the time, although the download link was later removed, but the version of the kernel that did have source code did not have many basic things on the board working reliably yet, WiFi was unusable, video decoding was not enabled, hi-def audio was not working. The power problem makes the board essentially locked into a specialized power source, the extra features added to the GPIO bus, like CTS/DSR for the UART overlaid over GPIO pins means that many HATs will not work correctly even after you spend the time to dig around to try and find the mapping of these pins which is not the same as a what any procedure for any HAT is expecting them to be. The community for this board is very small and focused on very basic functional debugging so there is little to be gained there if you are trying to do anything more than getting the board to do anything beyond getting what is printed on the box to work. There is no real technical documentation that would be required to figure it out yourself, there is no source code for the kernel to compile additional modules, there is no modules, beyond basic functionality, included in the distribution. For me this board was a complete dead end, what I wanted from it was a board that could run a small TFT display, have gigabit Ethernet as well as WiFi working, powerable from an available USB port, run decent audio and video (over HDMI), and fit in an off the shelf Pi case what I got was a board that if I wanted source code, delivered gigabit Ethernet from my list, fit in a Pi case and nothing else. Instead I went with a Pi3 for this project and got everything, except gigabit Ethernet, on a way better supported platform, way better distribution, way better community resources, way better manufacture network, and can power it from virtually anywhere. I really wanted to love the Tinkerboard, I truly did, and I gave it way more than a casual chance at letting me love it. I got more working in 2 hours on a Pi3 than I was able to get working on a Tinkerboard in 2 weeks. Too much Tinkering required.