When the Raspberry Pi team launched a tiny, low power computer priced at just $35, it was pretty remarkable. But that was 2 years ago, and while the Raspberry Pi has seen a few updates in that time, it’s still powered by the same single-core 700 MHz Broadcomm BCM2835 ARM11 processor.

Over the past few years a number of other single-board computers with more powerful hardware have appeared, but they usually also have higher price tags.

Hardkernel’s ODROID-C1 doesn’t though… it’s a quad-core mini computer that sells for just $35.

odroid-c1_01

The ODROID-C1 features a 1.5 GHz Amlogic S805 ARM Cortex-A5 quad-core CPU based on ARMv7 architecture.

It has ARM Mali-450 MP2 graphics, 1GB of RAM, Gigabit Ethernet,3 USB 2.0 ports, a micro USB port, a micro HDMI port, an infrared receiver, and support for a microSD card and eMMC 4.5 flash storage as well as 40 GPIO pins.

The system doesn’t come with any storage, so you’ll need to provide your own. And if you want WiFi or Bluetooth you’ll need to connect a USB dongle. But both of those things are also true of the Raspberry Pi.

One area where the Raspberry Pi still wins is community support: by essentially selling the same hardware for 2 years (not to mention being one of the first to launch a product in this space), the Rapsberry Pi Foundation has fostered a community of independent developers who have built custom operating systems and other software designed to run on the Raspberry Pi.

The ODroid-C1 measures about 3.35″ x 2.2″ and weighs about 1.4 ounces, making it nearly the same size as a Raspberry Pi, but it offers significantly faster CPU performance.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time Hardkernel has taken aim at the Raspberry Pi: this summer the company introduced the ODROID-W, which was powered by the same Broadcomm processor, but that product was quickly discontinued due to the lack of availability of that chip.

Still, the ODroid team has put together a video showing the ODROID-C1 running Ubuntu 14.04 with support for OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics, and it looks pretty speedy for a $35 computer. It can handle XBMC, the Chromium web browser, and other basic computing tasks.

via LinuxGizmos

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,543 other subscribers

11 replies on “ODROID-C1 is a $35 quad-core, single-board Android/Linux PC”

  1. Just received a C1 today. Everything worked perfectly out of the box. Hooked up 1920×1200 monitor (1920×1080 works as well). After booting the provided software did distribution upgrade to Lubuntu 14.04 LTS. My existing webcam (USB) works perfectly. Connected up a 16×2 LCD display with no untoward effects. This thing is MANY times faster than my Pi. It seems to be perfectly useful as a desktop computer.

  3. odroid C1 $35.00
    Power cable $5.50
    32 GB eMMC $49.00
    Case $4.50
    Audio usb cable $3.90
    Wifi $8.00
    Bluetooth $6.90
    Heatsink $3.90
    Total: $116.70

    The ECS Liva at Newegg has all that + more ram, + much more CPU for less money. Seems like the Liva would be better in every way except being a little bigger. It really seems like they would need to sell this whole package for like $65 or less for this to make any sense.

    1. The ECS Liva has only 2 usb,32gb eMMC is embedded,no sd card,wifi is in question with linux and bluetooth does not work at all.Android not’a.64bit Win 8.1 only if you want everything to work.Windows 8.1 takes up almost 20Gb already – leaving only 10Gb.Many quality issues noted.

    2. The cheapes ECS Liva on Newegg is $174 without software. You have to buy a copy of Windows to go along with that.

  4. I have an ODROID U3, which is slightly more powerful than the C1, has 2 GB RAM, and cost me $59 (without eMMC memory card). I actually use it as my primary desktop. By the way, ODROID does have a community, although not as large as for the RPi. There’s even a good-sized monthly PDF magazine.

  5. Having separate, dedicated storage (the eMMC module), the RTC, the heatsink, and gigabit ethernet will make this much more useful as a small server. I’d like to see what the driver support look like.

Comments are closed.