Reviews

I have reviewed the Mango Pi MQ-Pro (a RISC-V board) in the past and I was impressed enough that I wanted to try one of Mango Pi’s other boards. Unfortunately this one is not a RISC-V board but it is much, much more powerful than the Mango Pi MQ Pro as it has a quad-core processor instead of a single core one.

Today we’ll be taking a look at the Mango Pi MQ-Quad single board computer including the available operating systems, the specifications, build quality as well as do some performance benchmarking to see how well the board performs.

Let’s get started!

The Banana Pi P2 Zero is a single board computer that has a quad-core processor as well as a 8GB eMMC and 512MB of RAM. It’s equivalent in power to roughly a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 or a Orange Pi Zero 2.

Today I’ll review the Banana Pi P2 Zero and examine the images available for the board, the build quality and included components as well as benchmark the I/O performance of the board. We’ll then compare it to the Orange Pi Zero 2 (one of my favorite SBC choices in this current market) and see what the advantages and disadvantages the Banana Pi setup has.

Let’s get started!

I recently reviewed the BIGTREETECH CB1 alternative to the Compute Module 4 and I was very surprised how well it worked with my existing I/O boards. Today we’re going to review my second one which is the Pine64 SOQuartz V1.1 module. This module features 2GB of RAM (with 4GB and 8GB options available). With twice as much RAM (or more) the hardware at least has the potential to outperform the CB1.

We will run the same benchmarking tool using the same SD card to get a direct I/O performance comparison between the CB1 and the SOQuartz. We’ll compare BIGTREETECH’s open-sourced kernel and image offerings to Pine64s and test the CM4 reference I/O board for compatibility. I was comfortable recommending the CB1 as an alternative to the CM4 (as long as running Raspbian isn’t necessary). Will the Pine64 SOQuartz get a similar recommendation?

Let’s find out!

I’ve recently been reviewing many different single board computers that are outside of the Raspberry Pi ecosystem due to the ongoing pricing and availability issues with the Pi. Today will be my first review of a product that is meant to be an alternative to the Compute Module 4! There are several different CM4 knockoffs/alternatives available and I’ve already also received a Pine64 SOQuartz which I’ll be reviewing in the near future.

Today we will be examining the BIGTREETECH CB1(revision 2.2) as well as the official Pi4B adapter (meant to be one choice of IO board for the device). These are generally meant to be used with 3D printers as BIGTREETECH’s catalog is largely geared toward 3D printing.

I will not be reviewing the device for that purpose today. I will be examining it as a more general-purpose CM4 alternative. We’ll look at the images available, try plugging it into some other I/O boards meant for the CM4 and seeing what works and what doesn’t, benchmarking the performance and try to reach a conclusion about what a board like this will work for and what it won’t.

Let’s begin!