LattePanda

Is it a PC, a Raspberry Pi competitor or an Arduino board? Mike Bedford put this unusual product through its paces in order to find out.

- Mike Bedford

Since there are several similar products to the LattePanda, we need to spell out exactly what we are reviewing here. It’s described as the

LattePanda 2GB/32GB – that is, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard flash storage. When we also point out that you’ll often also see the phrase “Windows 10 Mini PC” tagged to the end of the name, you might think it’s a strange product to review in Linux Format, but things aren’t that simple.

Certainly, the LattePanda launched as a Windows 10-only product – unusual in the world of SBCs where Linux dominates – but Linux is now officially supported too. At this point we need to clarify things further by referring to the fact that even the 2GB/32GB board is available as two variants. Both versions have Windows 10 pre-installed in the boards’ flash storage, but in one you get a Windows activation key and in the other you don’t. Needless to say, since there’s a price difference of almost £29 and you’re not going to be using Windows – indeed, you’ll be overwriting it – you should choose the nonactivated version which has our quoted price. You might also like to take a look at the designer’s website, www.lattepanda.com.

Lattes all round?

The LattePanda has a similar form factor to the Raspberry Pi, measuring the same lengthways and being just 12mm wider than the RPi 4. It has two full-sized USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0 ports, a full-sized HDMI socket, an Ethernet socket and a micro-USB socket for power. There’s a serial display connector for attaching a touchscreen LCD panel, but not a camera connector – although you could use a USB camera. It also supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. The GPIO connectors look markedly different from that of the RPi, though.