this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2026
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Might be a controversial take, but Raspberry Pi's are pure ass as media servers. They're profoundly i/o limited, which extends to access to external USB devices as well as ethernet, and lack the oomph required to decode hi-res video streams locally. 1080p can be choppy, forget about 4K.
Pi5 occupies the unhappy spot where it's too expensive for enthusiast and hobby applications, but inadequate as a desktop PC which benefit from a bit more power.
A mini-PC is a much better fit. An N100 might even be overkill - mine has a Skylake from a decade ago in it, and it crushes 'media' activities while gently sipping at electricity.
I thought media decoding was like the one thing they were decent at. But yeah, for everything else I've always ended up severely disappointed by their usability.
Well, I went for an N100 myself (and recommended it) because of its low power consumption (it has a 15W TDR), which makes it a good choice for an always on device which is how I operate my Mini-PC because it's also my home NAS.
That range of CPUs was design to consumer less power and most x86 CPUs consumer significantly more power than this.