The 5W space is perhaps the space I understand the least.<p>Things get weird at 5W. There's phones and tablets, but these aren't really general compute devices. But then comes these SBCs like Rasp. Pi, Rock 5B, Le Potato, Beaglebone Black, etc. etc. These use phone/tablet CPUs but in a form factor conductive to USB ports and HDMI ports... like a SFF Desktop.<p>I've seen people say "Its a great small desktop!!", and hook up the Rasp. Pi (or whatever) to a $200 27" monitor drawing 80W and I'm just... confused by that. You're not making a good power-consumption argument, or a cost-benefit argument either, most of your costs are on the damn monitor (both in power and in $$$).<p>I think there's value in the $60 7" screens though, which return the form factor closer to its Phone/Tablet roots. With such a small screen, the price is dramatically lower, while the power-consumption plummets to 5W SBC + 5W Screen (10W total).<p>-----------<p>In theory, 10W total power consumption fits inside of 15.4W requirements on PoE. So there are real benefits to cutting the power consumption to an appropriate size.<p>I guess there's also a myriad of "headless" applications where a 5W Rasp. Pi (or competing SBC) is useful. But in my experience, most of those headless applications should be a VM and/or Docker image instead.<p>----------<p>With that being said: this Rock 5B seems to draw 15W worst case, which leaves the available area for PoE. That could be fixed with a local battery pack (1270 Lead Acid packs are only $35) + some kind of power-controller to even out the power-draw. I admit that's a bit of custom electronics, but those kinds of custom-electronic problems are why we have ATMega / Arduino Unos laying around, right? :-)