There’s something about the CuBox-i4Pro that makes you feel calm. A full Linux desktop is running on something that’s only two inches across and weighs 91 grams. It fits in your hand like a bar of soap. A lot of people didn’t know what to think when the Israeli hardware company SolidRun first brought this form factor to the market in 2013. A desktop PC that you might drop between the couch cushions? It sounded like something new. It was something more useful than that in the end.
SolidRun has been improving their CuBox-i line of fanless, ARM-based minicomputers for years, and the SolidRun i4Pro 300D is part of that line. The i4Pro is near the top of that list. It has a Quad-core i.MX6 processor clocked at 1GHz and 2GB of RAM. It comes with Gigabit Ethernet, an eSATA port, and a microSD card slot for storage. It’s not a desk for work. But it works better than its size might suggest for what it’s meant to do: be a development platform, a media node, and a testbed for embedded apps.
How SolidRun put this hardware together from the start is what makes it really interesting. The CuBox-i series wasn’t made to go up against consumer laptops or gaming PCs. People who needed a real ARM environment but didn’t want the hassle of emulation or the cost of enterprise hardware were the ones who were meant to use it. When the 4X4 version came out, the company’s CTO, Rabeeh Khoury, made it clear: the goal was to extend the performance range for people who were making “innovative new applications.” That frame has held up pretty well over time.
For some types of users, the software support is where things get interesting. The CuBox-i4Pro can still be built with Kali Linux, which is the preferred operating system for penetration testers and security researchers. It’s not as easy as plugging it in and starting it up. You are cloning a build script from GitLab, using the dd utility to flash a microSD card, and starting up in a headless mode. This is the kind of setup that instantly gets rid of casual users. However, it can be fun for people who know what they’re doing to run a full security suite on something smaller than a paperback novel.
It’s still not clear if the market for mini PCs like this has grown up the way SolidRun thought it would. There are more competitors in this area now that Raspberry Pi, ODROID, and others have pushed similar ideas, though with different prices and levels of community support. The i4Pro’s Quad-core processor and wired Ethernet still give it an edge in deployments that need to be stable, especially when wireless connectivity isn’t great. It seems to have carved out a niche rather than taking over a category, which may have been a better long-term result.
Power consumption is important to talk about because it seems like a small feature until you use something all the time. When it’s loaded, the CuBox platform uses less than three watts of power. Not even one watt when not in use. Those numbers are important for people who are thinking about always-on apps like a light home server, a monitoring node, or an edge compute device. A spec sheet doesn’t fully explain these things until six months into your electricity bill.
If you’re looking for consumer polish, the SolidRun i4Pro 300D is not the machine for you. To set up, you need to be patient and know how to use the command line. But for developers who have used it, the hardware has a quiet dependability that’s hard to ignore. It’s a small box that does what it says it will do in a field where making false claims is embarrassingly common.
