Although the asking price of $209 plus shipping seems high for the Radxa Dragon Q8B, featuring the Qualcomm SC8280XP and 8 GB of LPDDR4X, this is 2026, and amid the RAMpocalypse, even the 8 GB LPDDR4X-equipped Raspberry Pi 5 now costs $175. This, to [Jeff Geerling], makes it fair to directly compare the two to see whether you may want to consider this board for more intense computing purposes.

There’s also a written summary of the results and details in a GitHub issue, though the direct comparison with the Raspberry Pi 5 is in the video.

Although this Qualcomm SoC isn’t new, its primary use is for Windows laptops, which gives somewhat of a hint as to what its performance may be like, tempered by the fact that it was announced in 2021.

The Dragon QXB offers about 2x everything over the RPi5, plus Windows and UEFI support. For Linux, it appears that you still need customized images, which seems perplexing in light of the UEFI aspect. You also have to pick between different Linux images from Radxa and use their Rsetup update tool, making it a less than ewbie-friendly offering.

The Radxa-provided Linux experience is somewhat choppy. Raw performance in e.g., Geekbench 6 multi-core shows why you’d want to use this SBC, as it triples the RPi5 score. Power efficiency is also better, with [Jeff]’s HPL efficiency showing 3.73 Gflops/W versus 2.75 for the RPi5. There are twin 2.5 Gbit Ethernet ports and more PCIe too, all of which can really be used by the raw CPU power.

This means that there’s a lot to like about this Q8B SBC. [Jeff] expresses his appreciation for it, despite issues with the Radxa UEFI BIOS. It feels like Radxa is still trying to work out the BIOS-related kinks, which might even allow for the installation of generic OS images, rather than their own images.

Per the documentation, the SBC comes in a range of RAM sizes, from 4 to 32 GB, so you can still get a cheaper version too, if you can find one for sale. As noted in the video, these SBCs are still pretty scarce, and as the AI-induced personal computing and SBC collapse continues, this situation is unlikely to improve.