The best answer is if the board has been supported for a while by
Armbian then that is probably a better choice than a less well
supported/documented manufacturer specific build of Debian.
Oh, I should clarify. By "official Debian binaries and images" I meant
to say "pure" or "mainline" Debian as distributed from *.debian.org.
Yes, a bespoke "Debian" image from the hardware vendor is, indeed, out
of the question. ARMbian is better, but I know and deeply trust the
Debian project and would prefer to use their releases over those from a
derivative like ARMbian.
Thanks,
Daniel G.