ASUS releases two new Tinker Board SBCs to take on the Raspberry Pi

ASUS has announced two new entrants in its Tinker Board range. The company has called the two new boards the Tinker Board 2 and Tinker Board 2S, although hardly anything separates them. Oddly, we cannot find any official announcement from ASUS, but Clubic cites a press release from the company.

In short, the only thing distinguishing the Tinker Board 2S from the Tinker Board 2 is its 16 GB of eMMC flash storage. The latter relies on a microSD card reader instead, which the Tinker Board 2S also has. All other specifications are identical, though.

Underpinning both machines is a Rockchip RK3399 chipset that includes two ARM Cortex-A72 cores, four ARM Cortex-A53 cores and an ARM Mali-T860 MP4 GPU. There is also 2 GB or 4 GB of dual-channel LPDDR4 RAM. Additionally, ASUS has included the following I/O:

• 1x HDMI 2.0
• 1x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C (OTG & DisplayPort 1.2)
• 3x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A
• 1x 22-pin MIPI DSI
• 1x 15-pin MIPI CSI-2
• 1x RJ-45 Gigabit LAN
• 1x Wi-fI 802.11 ac & Bluetooth 5.0
• 1x 40-pin GPIO header
• 1x DC fan header
• 1x RTC battery header
• 1x Power and recovery headers
• 1x 12 V - 19 V DC-in barrel connector

The 85 x 56 mm supports Debian 9, while ASUS plans to deliver Android 10 by Q1 2021. Apparently, the Tinker Board 2 and Tinker Board 2S will offer up to 1.5x the performance of the original Tinker Board. It is unknown when ASUS plans to release either board though, or how much they will cost. However, we expect them to arrive by Q1 2021, going off ASUS' commitment to delivering Android 10 in that quarter.

Coupon on Amazon - ELECROW Crowpi Raspberry Pi 4 3 b 3b+ 4b+ Kit Raspberry Pi Learning Programming Kit with Sensors