ASUS releases two new Tinker Board SBCs to rival the Raspberry Pi boards

ASUS has updated its Tinker Board series once again. To recap, the company began selling the Tinker Board R2.0 in the UK late last year, a month or so after debuting the Tinker Board 3N. Now, it has expanded on the latter with the Tinker Board 3N Lite and Tinker Board 3N Plus.

As Liliputing notes, the Tinker Board 3N Lite and Tinker Board 3N Plus retain the 100 X 100 mm form factor of their namesakes. Additionally, the pair feature the same Rockchip RK3568 chipset as the standard Tinker Board 3N. As such, the Tinker Board 3N Lite and Tinker Board 3N Plus rely upon four ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores clocked at 2 GHz, a Mali-G52 GPU and a modest NPU. Likewise, both new single-board computers (SBCs) offer at least 2 GB of LPDDR4x RAM.

However, the Tinker Board 3N Lite tops out at just 4 GB of RAM, whereas the Tinker Board 3N Plus comes with an optional 8 GB SKU like the Tinker Board 3N. On top of that, the Tinker Board 3N Lite drops an M.2 3042/3052 slot and one of its siblings' Gigabit Ethernet and COM 232 connections. Likewise, the Tinker Board 3N Lite does without a CAN Bus 2.0B FD header. 

Ultimately, it seems that the Tinker Board 3N Plus only expands upon the Tinker Board 3N with improved temperature resistance (-40 °C ~ +85 °C). ASUS charges an extra $80 for the -40°C ~ 25°C improvement, though. Surprisingly, the Tinker Board 3N Lite is only $30 or so cheaper than the Tinker Board 3N, despite its reduced I/O. Please see ASUS' product pages for more information.

Purchase the ASUS Tinker Board 3N Lite on Amazon