My recent experimentation with a CM5 installed in my uConsole did not go well for me. The OS is just not ready for prime time yet, there are too many problems left unsolved and at least one of them is not going to be fixed anytime soon. For the time being I am going back to using a CM4 and I am am repurposing the CM5 for another project. Fortunately a few days ago the Hackberry Pi 5 was released, which is a very similar concept to the uConsole, so being the little techno dweebe that I am, I order one. You can get one here;
https://www.tindie.com/products/zitaotech/hackberrypi5-with-9900-keyboard/
I'd like to make it clear that I am basing this on upgrading the uConsole to using a CM5 rather than a stock CM4. The reason I did this is so I am comparing apples to apples. First, even an overclocked Raspberry Pi 4 is nothing close to a stock Raspberry Pi 5 in performance. Second, if I did the comparison with a CM4, I would get hate mail saying the uConsole can use a CM5 and therefore I am wrong about everything, while skipping the realities of just how bad the CM5 support in the OS is and that discussion needs to be had.
Second I am going to address the elephant in the room when discussing the uConsole and to a lesser extent the Hackberry Pi line of devices. It takes a ridiculious amount of time to get a uConsole from the manufacturer, with some customers waiting the upwards of a year to get one. I personally would never have bought one had I not found one on ebay for what I consider a decent price. The Hackberry Pi 5 on the otherhand ships quickly and you will get it within a week or two from Germany. This all by itself makes the Hackberry Pi 5 the winner in any comparison, I can't think of any other product where customers would tolerate even a three month wait for a product, let alone a year. To get an idea of the actual lead times for recieving a uConsole, have a look at this post on the uConsole forums;
https://forum.clockworkpi.com/t/before-you-order-a-uconsole-delivery-times-and-order-tips/15621/1
To be perfectly fair, the Hackberry Pi line is not always available. Zitaotech, the company that makes these is a one person shop and he says he makes them 50 at a time, which are usually sold out in minutes. Some he keeps to sell himself on Tindie and some he sends to Elecrow to sell. So these devices can sometimes go months before another batch is made. The big difference to me is, neither Zitaotech nor Elecrow take your money until the product is shipped to you. Clockworkpi will happily take your money the day you order it, even though they know you will not get it for months. Both are working on a shoe string budget and both are probably $20 away from going out of business on any given day. If or when Zitaotech goes out of business for whatever reason, your biggest problem will be disappointment. If or when Clockworkpi goes out of business for whatever reason, your biggest problem might be getting your money back.
Having addressed that, The obvious starting comparison is with price;
uConsole: No CM4, No 4G: $189.00, CM5: WiFi, 8GB RAM/0GB eMMC: $80.00, 2 x 18650 batteries: $10.00, Total: $279.00
Hackberry Pi 5: $135.00, Raspberry Pi 5: 8GB RAM: $80.00, 2 x 18650 batteries: $10.00, Total: $225.00
A $54.00 price difference is not that much. If you have enough free cash that you are spending it on a product like this, $54 is not going to be that big of a difference. So while the Hackberry Pi 5 is cheaper, the extra $54 you would pay for a uConsole gets you a bigger screen and an aluminum chasis. The uConsole is a professional grade product in terms of hardware, while the Hackberry Pi 5 is not much more than a hobby project, with its 3D printed case. The clear winner here is the uConsole, based on the overall quality of the build. Unfortunately, as we progress through, this is the only area where the uConsole clearly wins.
The screen for the uConsole is a 5 inch 1280x720 display, the Hackberry Pi 5 has a 4 inch 720x720 touch screen. I don't use touchscreen for anything, so the uConsole does have a slight advantage here. However in terms of other hardware, the Hackberry Pi 5 wins in this catagory. The uConsole has a single USB 2.0 port, and one micro HDMI port. The Hackberry Pi 5 has access to most of the I/O provided by the Raspberry Pi 5 board. Two USB 3.0 ports, one of the two USB 2.0 ports (The 2nd USB 2 port is used for the keyboard), an ethernet port and two micro HDMI ports. This is head and shoulders above the uConsole.
It is true, there are expansion boards you can get to give the uConsole more ports, but this is an extra expense and they are not mass produced, you either have to have them made yourself or you have to wait for someone else to make a few extra to sell and hope you can get in on the buy. Neither gives you any access to GPIO, however this problem can be solved for both. The Hackberry Pi 5, all it takes is 3D printing a new bottom for the case, or simply cutting a hole in the bottom of the case, to expose the GPIO. For the uConsole, this requires an expansion card, which again are not mass produced and has the same problems as the USB expansion cards. Plus, you can have one or the other, both cannot be used in the device at the same time.
While I am discussing I/O, I would also point out that the WiFi implentation on the uConsole is problematic. By default the antenna is mounted to the case via a sticky piece of plastic film, this barely works and in very common situations, fails entirely. There are a few ways to fix it, but the reality is you have to mount an external antenna to get reliable WiFi. With the Hackberry Pi 5, Wifi works perfectly well by default, out of the box without the need for any modifications.
The keyboards on both devices I consider to be adequate for the job. I am Gen X, I did not grow up thumb typing, so both keyboards are awkwared for me, but both are usable. I would give uConsole an edge here, simply because it is slightly larger.
I want to preface this next part by saying the maintainer of the Community uConsole OS is an amazing man doing gods work. Nothing I say here is meant to cast shade on his work. He is doing the best he can with little to no support from either Clockworkpi or the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and what he is doing is nothing short of spectactular. Someone please buy this man a steak dinner, I will chip in.
Early on, there were several outstanding issues when using a CM5 with the uConsole. These issues ranged from minor usablity issues to showstoppers on a production device. However, over the last several weeks, the maintainer has done an amazing job of fixing these issues. I would still consider CM5 support for the uConsole to be beta software, but I think it is getting very close to where it needs to be for production use.
The Hackberry Pi 5 uses the stock Raspberry Pi OS image and works straight out of the box. There is really no comparison here, the Hackberry Pi 5 uses well supported off the shelf parts that the Raspberry Pi OS handles natively. No weird keyboard firmware or a purpose built Linux kernel to work properly. This also means you can use any OS image designed for the Raspberry Pi 5, like Ubuntu or Kali, with little or no problems.
At this point it should be clear that the Hackberry Pi 5 is the better choice unless a 3D printed case, and a smaller keyboard and screen are deal breakers for you. However for me this next point is what really sets the Hackberry Pi 5 well above the uConsole. In the Hackberry Pi 5, you can mount a Waveshare PCIe to M.2 Adapter Board, this little bad boy doesn't just provide active cooling, it also allows you to mount an M.2 device to the Hackberry Pi 5. For me, this is a game changer, this means I can install an NVME SSD into the Hackberry Pi 5. NVME SSD's are geometrically faster than SD cards, are far more reliable than SD cards, and it boots in like 2 seconds. There are other M.2 devices you can use this for, but the primary use case is NVME storage. However, if you want to be really spendy, you can install an Hailo-8 M.2 AI Accelerator Module. This is an addon card and does cost some extra money to get, but these are mass produced and easy to get. The uConsole just does not have anything like this, the extra $22 price tag for the board and $20 for a 128GB NVME SSD, makes it a must have for the Hackberry Pi 5.