Novastar is the best LED controller on the market. It costs more, of course, but it is definitely superior to everything else on the market. We sell to LED manufacturers every day and their opinion is the same. Most companies start off with the cheaper controllers to test them out and see how they work, but in the end it seems they all use the novastar. I suggest you save yourself the hassle of testing out the cheaper cards and deploying them all over the country only to start replacing them every 2-3 years.
Xixun is not bad. We have used the K10 / D10 in our signs and it definitely works. If you’re doing 20mm signs, it’s great. For really high resolution signs, the image quality is not as good as Novastar. The M20 is good for single sided small signs, the M31 is for single sided larger sizes, and the K10 is for double sided large signs.
Linsn is synchronous, meaning you will have to embed a PC into the sign. The linsn card needs a constant video feed from the computer. The benefits of synchronous are that you have a computer in your sign, you can remote in and troubleshoot problems. The top left of your screen gets displayed on the sign, so if you wanted to display your desktop on the screen, you can. Also, there are third party programs like SM Infinity that offer cloud based sign controlling software that work with synchronous controllers.
DBStar seems to be okay from what I’ve heard, but I haven’t ever used it.