The OSS toolchains have matured a lot since then, with parts from Lattice being fairly well supported if you don't want to touch a vendor's tooling.
Gowin have some of the more interesting new parts which sit on a different part of the cost/feature curve. The Tang Nano boards seem fairly popular but I only have experience with far larger GW5 parts.
The newer parts from Intel/AMD have increasingly impressive hard-peripherals and internal features, but not that relevant unless you know what you want/need.
The CE40-HX1K iCEstick has inexplicably increased to $158 on the Lattice Store. Pretty spendy for 1280 LUTs. The Olimex Ltd. ICE40HX1K-EVB might be a good substitute at $21.
Comments
Depends on what you're wanting to do.
The OSS toolchains have matured a lot since then, with parts from Lattice being fairly well supported if you don't want to touch a vendor's tooling.
Gowin have some of the more interesting new parts which sit on a different part of the cost/feature curve. The Tang Nano boards seem fairly popular but I only have experience with far larger GW5 parts.
The newer parts from Intel/AMD have increasingly impressive hard-peripherals and internal features, but not that relevant unless you know what you want/need.
The CE40-HX1K iCEstick has inexplicably increased to $158 on the Lattice Store. Pretty spendy for 1280 LUTs. The Olimex Ltd. ICE40HX1K-EVB might be a good substitute at $21.