Pretty exciting to see they are bringing back a tablet to their product offerings. The rk3566 SoC has very good mainline kernel support so far, and even mainline TF-A and U-Boot support is progressing along. The $160 price tag for the 4GB version kind of makes it a no brainer from my POV.
The 8GB version I am personally avoiding. Even though the cost difference is just $50, the SoC has some implementation flaws that only show when it is configured with >4GB of RAM. Hopefully these issues are fixed on rk3588, but rk356x really shouldn't be shipped or purchased with >4GB of RAM IMO.
As the owner of two of the original tablets… I’m pretty hesitant… I’m keen but hesitant to get more tablets given how I have two that are great till I update and suddenly it won’t boot because I can’t get updates without breaking the boot loaders.
much as I have sympathy for the Pine64 project and like many of their product, their sales logistics are what often ruins it for me: specifically, they don't have any viable option for Europe. The pine64eu.com shop adds way too much of a price difference to be viable, way more than the added VAT on import…
… so that it would typically be even more expensive than to order directly from Pine Store Ltd in Hong Kong AND pay not only the import VAT (via customs), more than twice more on shipping (import VAT), plus the ripoff fee that the shipping company charges to get it through customs (as you can't do that yourself any more since the exemption limit for the import VAT was scrapped) than to buy it from the pine64eu.com shop
I get it that operating a local shop in Europe costs money, but as is, the added cost is just too much from a customer perspective
FYI pine64.eu is not owned or operated by the PINE64 project. Their actual domain for their EU shop is pine64eu.com.
As far as the price difference, I understand that EU shop return/warranty policy is much more generous than their international shop. Like 2 years vs. 30 days.
yeah sorry, that's the one I meant. The other one is just what the search engine spew out first right now when I searched for the address with the keywords pine64 eu thinking to find the shop I meant.
> 2 years vs. 30 days.
I don't know about the specific terms, but 2 years warranty looks like the EU standard, which de facto is only 6 months because while the warranty is indeed 2 years per se, the burden of proof that the product was deficient when sold flips from the seller to the buyer after 6 months.
Anyways, it boils down to the individual appreciation of whether the added de facto warranty time is worth the high price premium or not. For my purposes, it isn't.
just noticed that i was so tired last night that I forgot to adapt a few words when I changed the formulation of the comparison. What I meant, for the second paragraph, was:
… so that buying it from the pine64eu.com shop would be even more expensive than to order directly from Pine Store Ltd in Hong Kong despite in the latter case having to pay not only the import VAT (via customs), more than twice more on shipping (import VAT), plus the ripoff fee that the shipping company charges to get it through customs (as you can't do that yourself any more since the exemption limit for the import VAT was scrapped).
The 8GB version I am personally avoiding. Even though the cost difference is just $50, the SoC has some implementation flaws that only show when it is configured with >4GB of RAM. Hopefully these issues are fixed on rk3588, but rk356x really shouldn't be shipped or purchased with >4GB of RAM IMO.