I've been down that road. Original Pi B, 2, 3, Pi Zero, and Zero W. Orange Pi Plus 2E, Banana Pi M3, and an older Banana Pi Pro. The distros generally sucked if they weren't a Raspberry Pi but the hardware had more potential. Got tired of that and went w/ a Latte Panda which is nice and portable but slow. Ended up building a NUC that goes everywhere w/ me. Quad core processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 500GB SSD.