The Raspberry Pi continues to be a bestseller today thanks to its low price and great community support, where we can have a fully functional computer for very little money. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are many products that offer similar functionalities, and some even improve them. That is the case with the new Banana Pi.
The Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro is the new model that the company has launched on the market. It was announced at the beginning of the year, but it had not gone on sale until now, with a price of 56 euros including shipping.
Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro: rival to the Raspberry Pi
This new board features an Amlogic S905X3 processor with four ARM Cortex-A55 cores. It is accompanied by 16 GB of internal memory and 2 GB of RAM, in addition to a microSD card slot to have more storage available or to be able to switch more comfortably between operating systems.
The board is also oriented to programming thanks to its 40-pin GPIO port compatible with Raspberry Pi, in addition to having two USB 3.0, a micro USB 2.0, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. At the video level, we have an HDMI 2.1 port, although strangely it only offers signals in 4K at 60 Hz.
This video limitation probably has to do with the SoC that it equips, since the Amlogic S905X3 is only compatible with 4K signals at 60 Hz. To be able to process 4K signals at 120 Hz it would have been necessary to have the Amlogic S905X4, which processes them with the AV1 codec, although at the video output level it is still capable of 4K at 60 Hz. Be that as it may, we have the possibility of watching content in HDR, so it can be an ideal player to connect to the TV as well as to play emulators and all kinds of uses.
Android and Linux: great system compatibility
Beyond inexplicable decisions, the Banana Pi has WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2 with the popular RTL8821CU chip, and a multitude of operating systems that we can install on it. Among them we find Android 9.0 Pie or Linux, with distributions such as CoreELEC, Debian and Ubuntu, ideal for doing projects with the Rasbperry Pi.
Its weight is 58 grams, and it has dimensions of 63 x 63 mm. We also have a 5V 3A power connector. The company that develops it, SinoVoip , thus launches its second device with the S905X3 processor , reducing the price compared to the previous model, although equipping less RAM memory in return.
Its price, as we said before, is around 56 euros depending on where we buy it, since it is currently only for sale in some export stores in China. The previous generation, the BPI-M4, had only 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal memory, so we now have hardware more equivalent to what we find in the Raspberry Pi. Compatibility with previous generations is maintained, with modules such as metal housings.