If you are primarily concerned about performance, it is hard to beat Intel NUC. They are even quite power efficient. A bit pricey though, for what they are (last time I checked).
However, of much greater concern are the firmware level backdoors (IME). Personally, I will not be buying any more Intel hardware whatsoever until they end this despicable practice (and Iâm not holding my breath). In case you were wondering, AMD is not any better.
Which is why all these other ARM based Single Board Computers are so interesting to me. Many of them (other than RPi) have little to no binary blobs, much less crap like IME built into them. They are also quite inexpensive, and because they are essentially based on smartphone chips, very power efficent! For me, a winning combination.
If you donât have the same concerns (and many people donât, unfortunately in my view) then buy whatever you like.
You say that as if it is a good thing.
I changed from Windows to GNU/Linux a few years ago, itâs amazing to me how all the devices on our home network suddenly âjust workâ together, when everything is designed from the ground up with Freedom and open protocols in mind⌠Really makes you thinkâŚ