Banana Pi M4 launches for $38 with M.2, 40-pin, and PoE
Jun 13, 2019 — by Eric Brown 3,953 views
SinoVoip has launched its previously revealed “Banana Pi BPI-M4” SBC for $38. The Raspberry Pi-like board runs Linux on a quad -A53 Realtek RTD1395 and offers HDMI, M.2, WiFi/BT, 40-pin GPIO, PoE, and 5x USB ports.
When SinoVoip announced its Banana Pi BPI-M4 in February, it suggested the board would be coming soon. As it turned out, four months have passed, but the BPI-M4 is now available for $38 with 1GB RAM and 8GB eMMC on AliExpress.
Banana Pi BPI-M4
(click images to enlarge)
The delay may be linked to the novelty of the quad-core, Cortex-A53 Realtek RTD1395 SoC with its Mali-470 MP4 GPU. Although this is presumably an open-spec board like other Raspberry Pi models, the software section of the wiki is pretty skimpy. It appears, however, that Linux and Android 8.1.1 images are on the way.
The CNXSoft post that alerted us to the AliExpress launch said that the new board differs in that it switched from GbE to Fast Ethernet. However, our February coverage showed a 10/100Mbps “Fast” connection, and there appear to be no additional hardware differences in the new specs.
Banana Pi BPI-M4 front detail view
(click image to enlarge)
Like the octa-core -A7, Allwinner A83T based Banana Pi BPI-M3 and the quad -A7 Allwinner R40 based Banana Pi BPI-M2 Ultra, the Banana Pi BPI-M4 has a 92 x 60mm footprint. Like those boards, it has a somewhat Raspberry Pi like layout and a 40-pin, RPi compatible expansion connector.
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The Banana Pi BPI-M4 ships with 1GB or 2GB DDR4 RAM, 8GB to 64GB eMMC, and a microSD slot. The SBC offers 4x USB host ports, a USB 2.0 Type-C port, and an HDMI port that is limited to 1080p.
The Fast Ethernet port offers a connector for the Raspberry Pi PoE HAT, and there’s a module with WiFi-ac and BT 4.2. You can add a cellular modem using the M.2 E-Key slot. More more details, including a full spec list, may be found in our original BPI-M4 story.
Further information
The Banana Pi BPI-M4 is available on AliExpress for $38 (plus $5.26 to the U.S.) with 1GB RAM and 8GB eMMC. More information may be found on the BPI-M4 AliExpress page and the wiki.
Until these SBC-clones are 100% rasbian & kernel-compatible stand-ins for the Pi, the they will get zero interest from me, even if it was $0.
S
but the cost of wasted time and frustration due to a broken or lagging software and kernel stack outweighs whatever minor hardware improvement they’ve added to compete against the raspberry pi.