Interesting?
Sorry if this has been answered alot here, don't want to go throu all the pages but
how is the input lag. It's running off a emulator? What will be better jamma one or hdmi version for the Pandora 5 if you got both options to deal with. What pandora version is more perfect to get. Is it better then a mame raspberry pi.
Better or worse is a very subjective thing. If you're talking pure emulation quality, I would still go for a Pi 3 over one of these any day.
From what I've heard the PB5 still has screen tearing issues, which is just inexcusable given we're up to the 5th incarnation of the hardware and it should be more than fast enough to handle running games without screen tearing. Also, the Pandora's Box products run at a single resolution which generally favour CPS1/2/3 hardware, everything else gets squashed/stretched which end up with artefacts that could have been avoided by using a very high horizontal resolution (I run my Pi 3 at 1920x240, which allows you to run both CPS-based and NeoGeo-based games with pixel level accuracy).
Emulation quality aside, these Pandora's Box products are super convenient and really very good value for money. If you want to get up and running quickly, this is the way to do it. In terms of Jamma vs. HDMI, they're all going to be about the same, so it mostly comes down to the display you end up pairing it with. A CRT is always going to be faster than an LCD-based monitor or HDTV, on the other hand, modern displays are sharper, but whether you prefer one or the other is up to you, so pick your poison.
A Pandora's Box doesn't offer a lot of flexibility though. So if you want to run a game it should *technically* be able to run, like MK2, well, you're out of luck. Whereas a Pi 3 can run MK2 if you use the Mame 2003 core (oh, and the sound buffering issue has been solved recently, so now it actually plays without the sound going crazy on you). Or if you want to access all the different settings that a game offers, well, the Pandora's Box products restrict you to only some very basic settings. Like if on Super Street Fighter II Turbo you want to turn on the music for the intro, well, you simply can't do that as it's not an option the device provides and there is no other way to enter the games' setup menu.
In short, the PB5 is super simple and really affordable for a complete end-to-end Jamma solution, but inflexible and the emulation quality questionable. A Pi 3 is a pain to set up as you have to do it all yourself, and if you want to pair it with a JPAC & VGA HAT like Gert's adapter to make it Jamma compatible it would be more expensive, but probably worth it in the end if you have the time and patience to set it all up.
Again, just my opinions so take them with a grain of salt.