[Video] Odroid M1: Bootable SATA & M.2 ARM SBC


Odroid M1 SBC review and demo. Includes installing an operating system from the Internet using the Petitboot firmware, and running Ubuntu from an NVMe SSD, and Debian from a SATA SSD.

My previous review of the Odroid N2+ is here:

You can find the M1 on the Hardkernel website…

30 Comments on “[Video] Odroid M1: Bootable SATA & M.2 ARM SBC”

  1. I never thought that overall, the M1 was going to be of great interest with the SOC being used and seeing the actual performance is worse than I expected. I also don't think that the 10 year Rockchip guarantee of production will make t]anything produced be deemed of long term interest outside of the industrial sector. For tinkerers and home enthusiasts, this will die quit the quick death. Hardware GPU acceleration in Linux is somewhat of a pipedream right now and will not come courtesy of the manufacturers and patent owners. I know that there are efforts like Panfrost and others to provide open source GPU drivers but these may come further down the line than desired and of no guarantee. What this board does have going for it, in general is basic design and I/O. NVME support on the actual board (unlike Khadas) adds to the design appeal and if they keep the design and add an RK3588 SOC to it then it could be very much of a winner. I do hope though, that in 2022 and beyond that we can finally rid ourselves of the Jurassic USB 2.0 port. 6Ghz IUSB 3.0 (otherwise known as USB 3.1 Gen 1) should be the bottom line. Likewise, USB-C, now around 7 years old, should be the default plug type across the industry. The one omission from this design is Bluetooth, which should be onboard. Wireless, at least for me is OK as an option, even though others may also feel that it should be onboard, like most other similar devices, to which they would have a reasonable point. However, we must also never forget that Hardkernel/Odroid is also synonymous with the worst guarantees on the planet. 30 days when ordering direct from the manufacturer. Other 2rd party vendors may offer loner but even the likes of Odroid UK only offer 3 months, even though contrary to UK law, claiming that a SBC is a 'Prototyping item', despite the Raspberry Pi, also of the same category of product, having full warranty as expected and required.

  2. Nice review, and the more exposure the M1 gets, the better development and support it will have…my main issue with this board is nvme support…i have purchased 3 different nvme drives and had the same poor results installing anything based on Linux 5.xx kernel (meaning it simply will not boot)…4.19 works fine but am still disappointed because nvme support was one of the main draws when i purchased this back in April 2022..I can report that Android 11 mounted on a microSD card works a treat! And media play back at 1080p/60 is buttery smooth on it! So, this thing still needs some work, but I will ride the tide on this one and hopefully one day the nvme issues will be sorted…Cheers!

  3. Off-topic Video Suggestion: Chris, I've been playing around with AI image generation programs — Dalee, Midjourney, etc. They claim to have been trained by "analyzing" over 40 million pictures. Presumably, some of these pictures contained human subjects. Yet these programs only have the vaguest notion of how many arms and legs humans have. Nor do they know where or how these appendages attach to the body. While AI Art videos have become a dime a dozen, no one has done a video about how AI is trained. This seems to be something that is right up your street.

  4. Thanks Chris for this video. Now with all these SBCs out there and with your wide knowledge and experiment with many of them. It is interesting to have a video that show a use case for each of them. Well, yes many of them can be used in many use cases but I thing there is an area were each of these lovely SBC excels! One video that puts each SBC on the map of 'use cases' like robotics, multimedia, content creation, NAS, Internet browsing, … etc. will be appreciated. A table (or tables) showing their specs, prices, sizes, power consumption will be great.

  5. Lets hope the M1 is better than the previous N2 model in terms of reliability. Many people report that the USB hardware goes faulty and there is also a firmware bug associated with the real time clock. I'd be more interested in the expanded features if I could trust the reliability of the hardware and the support provided by the company that stands behind said hardware.

  6. Thanks for informing me about SBC's getting upset when they're upside down, Chris. No wonder they've always been so contrary with me.
    I'm sure that we'll be right as rain, from now on. 😎
    Does cursing at them cause them to stubbornly lock up, as well?🙄
    Are techno-therapists or SBC counselors covered under national health?

  7. Disappointing performance overall — I do hope that the long-term support will allow developers to create more optimised versions of various OSes for this computer. It really seems like it should perform much better, given the hardware on that board. But when the UI itself is laggy — something is clearly not properly optimised for it.

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