2023 Review!

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I wasn’t sure about writing something like this as it feels a bit self-indulgent but there have been a lot of changes this year so I wanted to highlight those, share some details on the most popular posts of the year and look ahead to what’s to come in 2024.

So what happened in 2023?

Going into the year I didn’t have much of a plan. This blog was born initially out of writing up the steps I took to fix problems I couldn’t find any other documentation for back in 2021 and after having far too much spare time during COVID I decided to start playing around with the Single Board Computers I had and write a microSD card benchmark post. That blew up and I ended up being extremely motivated to continue.

2023 was when I started to feel a little burned out after juggling the arrival of a new rescue dog, a full-time job, and everything else life had to throw at you. I may have also said yes to a few too many reviews (and I’m still paying for that with my backlog but I’ll get there!) which didn’t help but don’t worry, 2024 should be a little more planned out.

Sticking with 2023 though, I published 21 articles/reviews, ran 6 giveaways (and the latest Libre Computer Giveaway is still running at the time of writing and publishing this) and hit 1,500 followers on Twitter so I’m incredibly grateful to everyone that’s reading and following what I do!

Top Posts of 2023

I’m not sure if these will surprise people or not but let’s see. The top 3 posts (in terms of views) in 2023 were..

1st: Intel N100: A Challenge to ARM

The Intel N100 vs RK3588 benchmark piece seemed to resonate with people having come out of a period of time where everybody was saying “Get a mini PC instead!” whilst waiting for Raspberry Pi boards to be back in stock so I’m not surprised to see that this was the most popular post of the year.

It was quite an interesting piece to put together on my side too, and even more surprisingly, the folks over at OKdo that supplied the ROCK 5B are still talking to me, so that’s nice.

2nd: Libre Computer Le Potato Review

I covered an awful lot of areas in this particular review, with the Libre Computer Le Potato itself, eMMC storage, cases/cooling etc so I was extremely happy to see this one doing so well over the course of the year. Lots of people looked to the Le Potato as a great value alternative to the Raspberry Pi during the shortage and for good reason.

3rd: The Great Pi Zero Showdown

Interestingly, my comprehensive Pi Zero comparison published in August 2022 turned out to be my 3rd most popular piece in 2023 which is good and bad. Good because it means that people are finding it interesting and useful, but bad because seeing this data reminded me that I have multiple new “Zero” boards that I’d like to add to that but given I’d need to go back and completely re-do graphs, perhaps we just need a refresh for 2024, what do you say?

Honourable Mentions

Just outside of the top 3 were a number of posts that may have just crept into the top 3 if we’d given them a couple more weeks. The Pineberry Pi M.2 Hat Review just missed out after picking up incredible traction. The Raspberry Pi 5 Review was up there too, as was the Best Raspberry Pi 5 microSD Cards test, all thanks to the incredible hype surrounding the latest Raspberry Pi offering.

What’s in store for 2024?

I love a rhyming heading. Anyway, on to 2024 I have plans to try and steer away from doing purely SBC testing and introducing some fun project ideas that I’ve had on the back burner for a while. I’ll continue to do SBC reviews for boards I think are interesting, and for those that I feel offer something beneficial to the wider community but I also want to have a bit more fun with content.

Part of this will include branching out into some video content. I’ve had a long to-do list of video content that I’d like to put out but I just haven’t had the time to do so. It’s much easier to come back to a written article than a video so that’s what I’ve stuck to.

So to summarise.. (Hopefully) higher quality reviews focusing on the parts that people are most interesting in, some video content over on the bret.dk YouTube, and some larger, more interesting projects to supplement the review content!

Thank you!

I’d also like to take a moment to properly thank everyone that’s engaged with my content this year as it’s been my best year in terms of engagement across all platforms and I wouldn’t have continued to invest and work on this content had it not been for the very kind comments and feedback that I’ve had from all (most) of you throughout the year.

I’ll be continuing to build on paying that back in 2024 as I continue to grow the operation and content so please do stick around and please do continue to follow me across Twitter, Mastodon, YouTube, and anywhere else you may want to keep up. Unless it’s outside my home, in which case, please don’t. I don’t leave it much anyway so you’ll be waiting a long time.

Finishing up

Now most of the waffling is done, it’s time for me to wrap this up and begin celebrating Christmas and New Year with family and friends, though don’t think that this is the last you’ll see of me for this year because I may have 1 or 2 more surprises to hit “Publish” on in the coming days..

Thanks again to everyone for 2023, if you’re celebrating Christmas and New Years in the next few days then do have fun with your loved ones and hope you’ve been on the good list so you get all of the presents you wanted. Otherwise, see you next year!