These days, you encounter a certain type of developer at audio meetups and home-lab forums: slightly evangelical, slightly disillusioned, and carrying a tiny black cube the size of a child’s fist. They’ll tell you that they’ve moved on from the Pi, almost apologetically. Not totally.
Really, no one leaves the Raspberry Pi. However, they claim that the CuBox simply accomplishes tasks that the Pi cannot for some projects.
| Profile | Details |
|---|---|
| Product Family | CuBox-i / CuBox Pulse series of mini-computers |
| Manufacturer | SolidRun Ltd., headquartered in Yokneam Illit, Israel |
| Founded | 2010 |
| Core SoC | NXP i.MX6 (Quad / Dual / Solo) and newer i.MX8 variants |
| Form Factor | Roughly 2 x 2 x 2 inches — about the size of a Rubik’s Cube |
| Operating Systems | Debian, Ubuntu, Yocto, Android, OpenELEC, Volumio, DietPi |
| Audio Output | On-board S/PDIF optical, HDMI, USB (separate bus) |
| Common Uses | Roon Bridge endpoints, media servers, IoT gateways, digital signage |
| Direct Competitor | Raspberry Pi Foundation boards |
| Approx. Price Range | $90 – $200 USD depending on configuration |
| Distinguishing Feature | Separate buses for USB and Ethernet, fanless aluminum chassis |
It’s difficult to ignore the change. The discussion of hobbyist single-board computers was a one-horse race for many years. Millions of people bought the Pi, schools embraced it, and its British manufacturing story from Pencoed, South Wales, gave it a romantic underdog appeal that rivals found difficult to match. That benefit is still present. However, a more subdued migration began between the Pi 3 and the Pi 4, motivated more by dissatisfaction with the minor architectural compromises incorporated into the Pi’s design than by spec sheets.
The bus is the compromise that everyone seems to bring up first. USB and Ethernet share a single 480 Mbps system bus on the Raspberry Pi, which is good for experimenting but not so good for streaming high-bitrate audio to a serious DAC.
In contrast, they are separated by the CuBox-i. Until you’ve actually tried sending 768 kHz audio through a Pi and seen it stutter, that may seem like a footnote. For years, people who use Roon Bridge endpoints in their living rooms have been discussing this, and the discussion has gradually spread from audiophile circles into more general developer forums.
Additionally, it seems like SolidRun has been playing a longer game. The business is small, has its headquarters in Israel, and doesn’t use the same marketing strategies as the Pi Foundation. Wales has no tours of wave-soldering factories, no education campaigns, and no charity wing. Rather, they have concentrated on integrators, industrial clients, and the type of engineers who actually read NXP’s i.MX documentation. The end product, which is fanless, aluminum-cased, and the kind of thing you bolt into a rack and forget about for three years, feels less like a teaching tool and more like a piece of equipment.
You get the idea that the CuBox community is smaller but stickier as you watch this develop. There is less noise in the forums. The tutorials are more comprehensive. CuBoxes aren’t used for LED projects; instead, they’re used for media servers, signage controllers, and edge gateways for industrial sensors. The CuBox may never be able to match the Pi in terms of raw volume, and to be honest, it doesn’t seem to want to. You can tell that just by looking at SolidRun’s prices. The cost of a loaded CuBox exceeds three Pis.
The change is real, though. Despite its outdated details, the 2015 Hacker SBC Survey revealed the fundamental reality: the SBC market was already fragmenting, and developers were starting to use their money to support boards that effectively addressed particular issues rather than those that performed all tasks. The default is still the Pi. However, defaults deteriorate gradually before accelerating. Some longtime tinkerers believe that a few experts rather than a single board will control the next few years. Against the odds, CuBox appears to be one of them.
It’s still unclear if that translates into a true ecosystem rivalry or just a fervent niche. However, the cube remains on the shelf.
