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Get a consensus of advice and go with information that appears consistently across a number of YouTube videos and/or blog posts.

Wow, that's a perfect lead-in for me.? I wrote most of the below for another platform, but IMO it fits into this discussion here about Pi 5 and NVMe.? It also fits into some stuff I wrote earlier about how I feel Pi will be under more pressure from small form-factor (SFF) PCs using x86 processors, and that the sBITX community will have to be ready for things to change more rapidly than in the past

IMO design decisions made by the Pi Foundation make it relatively easy for them to move on to Pi 6 and beyond because they've put all the IO onto a separate chip.? That makes it easier for them to drop a newer/faster CPU into their design than they have in the past, and such newer/faster ARM CPUs already exist.? ? They may have to, because SFF PCs IMO are already strong competitors so there is already a competitive threat that could easily intensify.? I'm saying this since I think a lot of people have gotten used to the slower development pace of the COVID era, but I think those days are long over.??

So, we see that Jeff Geerling is jumping onto the Pi 5 vs N100 SFF PC bandwagon after Christopher Barnatt / Explaining Computers did so a week or so ago.??

Jeff:??

Chris:??

Jeff is doing an almost exact match on price and is fairly close on form factor, whereas Chris's N100 PC was not a SFF PC, it was a mini-ITX so bigger case and PSU and cost 1.5 times more than his Pi 5 setup.? ?Yet Chris's N100 has very similar specifications to Jeff's.? Chris provides more details on specifications and performance than Jeff did.? For instance Chris tells us his motherboard supports two-lane PCIe V3, whereas Jeff doesn't get into that level of detail.

Jeff's video is really amusing to me since my PCIe to NVMe adapter arrived last night for my Pi 5 and I was doing almost all the same stuff he was doing in the setup phase of this video myself last night.? My Pi 5 setup is pretty much identical to Chris's.? We both have the Pineberry Pi Hat! Bottom whereas Jeff has the Top model.??

Jeff is right that the Pi world requires you to select, purchase and assemble more 'stuff' to get a useful setup whereas most SFF PCs come with all the stuff you need right out of the box.? ?He is also right that it's really hard to know if a given Pi case will work with a given top/bottom device and still provide good air flow, still have the holes line up with the jacks, still be able to get at the sdcard, power button, camera/display connectors, etc.

My summary of both videos is that at a similar price point the N100 platforms delivers somewhat faster performance but draws somewhat more power both at idle and under load to deliver that performance.? The N100 is clearly faster at anything that involves graphics and video since it has a better GPU with better software support.? The N100 takes up more space, but is more expandable.? Jeff's N100 has room for a 2nd NVMe storage device and has a slot for mobile data dongles too.? He doesn't say if the memory is expandable or not.? Also, I don't know how 'battery friendly' its voltage requirements are.

On the software side assuming you are using the "native" software for the box, Debian Linux on the Pi boots up pretty much ready to use whereas Windows makes you accept a EULA, accept or avoid a Microsoft account, turn off a whole bunch of data collectors, only provides the Edge browser by default etc so is worse from a privacy point of view.? Windows is also a bigger target for malware providers although one shouldn't presume Linux isn't also targeted quite often too.? And, of course, you can always install Debian on the N100 PCs and bypass Windows entirely.? Regardless of what thinks of Windows, though, being able to offer it is a competitive advantage, IMO.

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Regards,
Dave, N1AI