2025 was a pretty busy year for single board computers. I had 15 boards released in 2025 come through the bench from 8 different manufacturers, spanning SoCs from Rockchip, Broadcom, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Allwinner, StarFive, CIX, and Texas Instruments. Prices have ranged from $42 all the way up to $590, and the variety on offer has been genuinely impressive. We’ve had RISC-V boards, Qualcomm entering the SBC space (in a big way), a new-ish SoC vendor in CIX turning heads, an Arduino SBC of all things, and Raspberry Pi iterating on their keyboard form factor.
Also, my friend Meco of sbcwiki has a great series called “State of Embedded” that shares some insight into the scene, too, and you can read his Q4 roundup on the matter if you want bit of a dive into things in general, rather than specific SBCs.
All of the boards in this article have been benchmarked and are available to compare on sbc.compare, so if you want to dig into the raw numbers yourself, head over there. I’ll be linking to each board’s page throughout this article so you can see the full data for anything that catches your eye.
Before we get into it though, a quick note on pricing. The prices listed throughout this article are what the boards were retailing at when I tested them. As many of you will be aware, LPDDR4 and LPDDR5 memory didn’t escape RAMageddon and costs have been climbing since late 2025, with manufacturers pivoting production towards more profitable (and AI-hungry) memory types. This has already hit Raspberry Pi pricing and it’s affecting other boards too. Some of the prices you see here may have gone up, or the boards may not be available at all right now. I’ll try to note where I’m aware of changes, but do check current pricing before purchasing and comparing.
The Budget Boards (Under $50)
Six boards came in under $50 this year, and they’re a surprisingly varied bunch. You’ve got RISC-V, ARM, even a decades-old Texas Instruments SoC making an appearance. If you’re looking to tinker without a significant outlay, 2025 has given you plenty to choose from.
We get some more JH7110(S) RISC-V variants in 2025!
BeagleBoard BeagleBone Green Eco ($42)
So to kick things off, I’ll be honest, the BeagleBone Green Eco is a bit of an oddity on this list. It’s running a TI Sitara AM3358, a single-core Cortex-A8, with 512MB of DDR3L. In 2025. BeagleBoard have always had a strong following in the industrial and education spaces though, and this is clearly where the Green Eco is aimed. It’s not here to compete on raw performance and it knows it. If you need something reliable, well-documented, and with a long history of community support for embedded applications, BeagleBoard have that covered. For general-purpose SBC tinkering though, you’re better off looking elsewhere in this tier.
StarFive VisionFive 2 Lite ($43)
... continue reading