They allege the XR2 goes up to 32GB of RAM but no price given for that
In contrast, while searching to see what that ARM Rockchip 3588 CPU was, I found https://www.firefly.store/goods.php?id=171 which is $375 for 16GB LPDDR4. No fancy LCD, or vanity case, though; how every shall I live
https://www.firefly.store/goods.php?id=165 may be closer to a traditional desktop, accepting SSDs, shipping with WiFi6, and a cool transparent lid, but $799
https://www.amazon.com/Orange-Pi-Rockchip-Computer-Developme...
Cheap aluminum cases for it are also available.
Planet's other offerings are handhelds in unobtainable form factors where I'd expect to pay a massive premium because designing and manufacturing that kind of portable device is obscenely expensive, and there are essentially no competitors - and honestly, their gadgets are quite reasonable for the segment they occupy. These are desk boxes with Rockchip RK3588 parts in them, there is competition in that space.
Yes, the fancy case with a touchscreen front is fancy and legitimately a more expensive thing, they've done some neat integration, and the IO looks extensive, so I expect it to be quite a bit more than an SBC... but an Orange Pi 5 Plus is an RK3588 board, and configured with 8GB of RAM and 64GB of EMMC those are like $120. Firefly has a couple RK3588 systems in less fancy chassis where the 8/64 configs are $3-400 depending on the IO... and the PlanetPC XR2 in the 8/64 configuration is $922.
I want an ARM workstation. This isn't it. It's a step above a Raspberry Pi, but not much of one.
The RK3588 is actually a pretty decently spec'd SoC. It's a dual cluster with 4xA76 (P-cluster) and 4xA55 (E-cluster). Neoverse-N1 is nearly identical to an A76 and it what most cloud vendors offer and it's performance is generally decent. It's only four P cores but it's no slouch by any means.
Half as fast single core on the RK3588's P-cores is still perfectly usable for workstation activities, in fact that's about what you'd get on an i5-8210Y MacBook Air from 2018 [3] which I'm sure a few people here are using as their daily driver.
[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/21459716
Disappointing.
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/ampere-altra-max-wind...