At first glance the specifications of the LattePanda seem quite impressive: a quad-core Intel Atom processor running at 1.8 GHz, 2 or 4 GB RAM, 32 or 64 GB eMMC, WIFI, Bluetooth 4.0 and USB 3.0. And to top it all off, an on-board Arduino processor! Note the exclamation mark, I copied it from the project’s website.

According to the website LattePanda includes everything a regular PC has and it can do anything that a regular PC does. Is that so? To me it looks like a stripped-down laptop without battery pack, keyboard, touch pad, and display and without enclosure. My laptop is more expensive, of course, but it has more stuff. It is Arduino compatible too; all I have to do is connect an Arduino board to one of its USB ports. My laptop is also more powerful than the LattePanda, but Windows 10 manages to slow it down quite a bit.

Sure, you will say, but LattePanda is intended for embedded applications, to control your home's window blinds for instance, or something else. IoT, that sort of stuff, you know.

Yes, I know, but I wouldn’t be very comfortable with a slow Windows 10 PC running Arduino to control something in my home. I already find it hard to rely on Arduino alone.

The LattePanda may be cheap, but that doesn’t make it a useful product. Let’s hope the future proves me wrong.