[iimitz]

Thank you for the in depth information and organizing this thread. It's made the process of researching different boxes incredibly easy and I thank you for that. Unfortunately some of the boxes listed aren't available in Canada or without paying rather hefty shipping/custom charges. Due to our poor exchange rate right now it makes choosing a box all the more difficult with a limited budget. Would it be possible to get a suggested box for using Kodi (let's just say netflix, TED talks, and a few other programs), as well as running some retro games? If I had planned to install LE on the box, does it support common emulators? Please let me know if retro gaming emulation talk is a no-no. I'd like to budget around $100-$150 CDN ($76-$114 USD). I originally wanted to pick up a Raspberry Pi but was uneasy due to it only having 1GB RAM. Odroid isn't as cheaply or readily available in Canada.

Odroid C2 is well within your budget, do a search for odroid us resellers, there's a few that will be on the first page. I just paid $109 US which included shipping to Australia. That included all the extras too which you could peg back to save more... this included eMMC 16Gb, Bluetooth module, Power supply & the more expensive blue tinted case.

Cheapest I can get the price down to with Odroid-C2, a case, power supply, 16GB EMMC, EMMC Reader, Wifi dongle, and remote is $217 CDN (ordering from Diigiit reseller). The other websites put it at around $255 (Ameridroid). HardKernel says it would put it around $160 but it fails everytime I try to checkout and the website is incredibly buggy. The price above also wouldn't include the Transcend card reader (about $20 here). At those price points I would assume I'd be better off getting the Minix Neo U1 with an air mouse for $175 CDN off Amazon (and have almost zero setup/easy return policy).