Gearbest and Geekbuying are China based.
Hardkernel is based in South Korea.
Both are generally considered to be in the same basic Geographic Region and some of their products are distributed outside of Chine from locations such as Hong Kong and Singapore.
I would have to disagree, delivery was actually quicker than what I first posted.
I have had to wait longer for deliveries sent locally, never mind internationally.
Whilst some people may complain or begrudge the fact that the delivery price is high then I would just say you are guaranteed that you will not be waiting 3-4 weeks like you would with any device from China via Gearbest or Geekbuying, you get what you pay for at the end of the day.
RTC backup battery is not included in the package and having eMMC card reader is definately a good item to have if you use eMMC, but can manage OS update if one is familar with a couple of linux commands.
ODROID-UK(Lilliput) and Pollin(Germany) will start to sell the CE-Edition packages within 1~2 weeks.
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That is good news.
It will make things much simpler from an importation point of view for those within the EU.
Further update from Hardkernel, we have fed some of the forum feedback to them and shipping to most EU countries has now been reduced from $41 to $22 giving you even further savings.
Would love to get one, but just can’t stomach $28USD to ship to Australia. That’s $42 AUD. From Korea…I’ve paid $10-$15 AUD shipping for gear from the UK, which is a lot further!
Sorry, I’d be happy to support the project but that’s just ridiculous for shipping.
If you got shipping from UK to Australia for $10-$15 AUD then somebody posted you those items at a loss as I recently shipped a small package from UK to China which is less distance and it cost me the equivalent of $29 AUD using the cheapest available courier here.
These rates are set Fedex and DHL and not Hardkernel, we can pass feedback along and ask for the latest prices to be checked for specific countries of which I have done already and $28 is the lowest price for Australia from South Korea.
Just an FYI as well but CoreELEC is not taking any royalties/commission or license fees from Hardkernel for this package, all savings from the package deal is passed directly to users.
I’m not going to start an argument. It’s already been mentioned above that the shipping is too expensive. I’m clearly not alone. Maybe the chosen agents aren’t giving them the best deal. I don’t know. But I’m not making it up, just saying.
I wasn’t implying that you was, I was just merely stating facts.
I agree with you; hence we have had discussions with them and the shipping has just been reduced for a number of countries 
.
I don’t suppose HK would be prepared to make an exception for the ‘CE’ version of the device, and offer a tracked postage, rather than a courier, delivery option?
That would surely cost much less, and likely take a lot longer to deliver.
But some users might appreciate the reduction in delivery cost over the delivery time.
The problem with N2 is that it is a SBC but it pretend to a MHP.
With the package there is no remote, no WiFi/BT, no RTC battery (TBC).
It would be great if any MHP producer will reach you out and collaborate for an open platform on which you have freedom and all the information to hack on…
MHP?
Do you need a remote when you can use HDMI-CEC? this only increases the price and IR remotes generally perform very poorly and are slow.
Not everybody requires WiFi/BT and this only further increases the price again, playback via WiFi can also be very poor with most adaptors and is the result of many of the issues and support posts we see on these forums.
HTPC has no use case for RTC as time is synced on bootup to NTP servers.
We really wanted to keep the cost low for users and not increase it with accessories that the vast majority of users do not need or want.
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I can agree on the rest but not on the remote.
A lot of users use VPRs and there is no CEC for them
There are no boxes out there which welcome users overwriting the packaged Android experience with another OS. This means that for most boxes they are restricted to using SD cards and run the risk of bricks which there is no easy way back.
A SBC is a real computer, it is designed to accept any OS you choose, it is very hard to brick short of forced hardware failure. In the case of the N2 it is better designed and built than just about any of the comparable Android boxes. It will overclock without issue and thermal issues have been addressed in a way which is ignored by most Android box designers.
Its a matter of choice but the SBC is streets ahead of any Android box in terms of reliability, versatility and performance. If you need a remote than IR remote can be had for a few $ or even better a BT remote can be had for about the same.
I started out with a cheap M8S box running the S822 and regretted massively the amount of time it took to get it to do anything half passably. The fundamentals have in no way changed, buy a no name cheap andoid box and its a crap shoot as to whether it will be able to run anything but the buggy Android it came with. Its a big ask to expect the developers of CE to support all of these shit little boxes with all their fake components and broken software.
For me the N2 is an absolute bargain.
Shoog
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I’ve paid almost 160 USD for my 2 GB N2 with 16 GB emmc and black case.
It was expensive but I didn’t regret it…
I prefer this even against the VIM3 Pro.
To be honest, there is too much whining about shipping fees and import charges now. YES, we know that there are fees and charges connected to importing stuff. I really don’t think someone missed that.
Instead, just take a moment and show some appreciation towards HK and the CE team for the efforts made. The package is anyway cheaper now than it was before.
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Re: Pricing
See this post:
I paid about $100 for my Coreelec 4gb N2 with a 16gb emmc, a microSD emmc reader, an RTC battery with s&h. I added a $7 wi fi remote and an OTG usb adaptor ordered from china. But then I ordered from Ameridroid because I live in the us.