Raspberry Pi is intentionally blocking RAM capacity upgrades

They’ve completely lost the plot. Raspberry Pi was founded on the principle of hacking, education, and doing more with less. It’s their DNA, but now it’s clear all they give a shit about is money. They are corporate garbage now, like so many other organizations in the FOSS community that gave up freedom and openness for the Almighty dollar (or pound in this case).

Eben Upton can suck my soldering iron.

Are there any companies that make comparable products? I’ve been thinking of making a simple and small and low power media computer and I’d rather it not be a raspberry pi anymore

Orange Pi, Banana Pi, plenty of other Chinese SBC makers who products don’t necessarilly have names ending in Pi. Tons of those in places like Aliexpress. You can even try a Risk-V architecture if you’re daring.

The problem is that their english language support is inferior, as is the software stack, plus the ecosystem is a lot smaller so there’s a lot less info on those from other people out there. That said, as far as I can tell all of them have at least one Linux distro (at the very least ARMbian), some having more distros.

Still, it would be fine if all you want is a small computer with HDMI to turn it into a media player using Linux and something like Kodi.

Alternativelly, just get a Mini-PC with a low power intel chip like the N100 - which is actually cheaper than a Raspberri Pi 5 whilst being more powerful and with better peripheral compatibility since it has a PC architecture - and put the Linux with Kodi in it. Sure, it uses more power because it’s not ARM, but not actually that much more (15w vs 8w for a Pi, if I remember it correctly).

Raspberri Pi devices are maybe twice the price of other devices with equivalent hardware, which means that the low-end low-power Mini-PCs are cheaper and yet more powerful and compatible than the high end Pi.

I have a mini PC just like that at home working as a TV Media Player (which a nice remote control and everything) and I even use it as a home server and home nas (remotelly controlled via web interfaces and SSH) since it’s has far more power than needed for just being a media player.

Also, limited support, both in community size and time. Those Chinese manufacturing companies come and go like docker containers. They spin one up to sell some product for a while, then when they’re done they dissolve it. If you want any support, you’re on your own.