Asus unveils tiny Tinker Board PC to rival Raspberry Pi

4K video support touted for £55 Raspberry Pi rival

Asus has announced the launch of the Tinker Board, a credit card-sized PC that has its sights set firmly on the Raspberry Pi.

The Asus Tinker Board is the same size as the 10-million-selling Raspberry Pi at 3.4in x 2.4in. However, it's got more power than its rival thanks to its higher-spec quad-core 1.8GHz Rockchip processor that's capable of playing 4K video with 24-bit audio.

The Tinker Board also packs 2GB Dual channel LPDDR3 RAM (compared to the Pi's 1GB), an HDMI 2.0 port, four USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit LAN, Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi. There's also a 40-pin internal header with 28 GPIO pins, which means the Tinker Board can be used to create Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

It comes with Asus's own software, which is a variant of Debian Linux and similar to the Raspberry Pi's OS. However, the Tinker Board's OS offers support for Kodi, and Hexus reports that Asus plans to expand the current OS support with the likes of Ubuntu and openSUSE.

Commenting on the launch, Asus said: "Raspberry Pi has been in the market for so long, we're here to expand users' choices with more options. And this board has 4K support, higher SoC performance, faster Ethernet transmission, and flexibility for the memory size."

The Asus Tinker Board is available for £55, making it more expensive than the £34 Raspberry Pi and £4 Raspberry Pi Zero. It's also currently showing as out of stock, so you might have a wait on your hands if you're looking to pick one up.