FriendlyElec NanoPi NEO4: A Cheap and Small form Factor Raspberry Pi rival

A real Raspberry Pi rival - The NanoPi NEO4 is a Small form Factor SBC, powered by the latest RK3399 SoC.

NanoPi NEO4

Following FriendlyELEC previous launch of their NanoPC-T4 and NanoPi M4 boards based on the RK3399 SoC, the company continues its latest product line with a very small form factor SBC called the NanoPi NEO4. The new board is expected to be low cost with well-balanced specs for most end users.

The company provides Image support for Ubuntu Desktop 18.04(64-bit), Lubuntu 16.04(32-bit), Ubuntu Core 18.04(64-bit) and Lubuntu Desktop with GPU and VPU acceleration for the board, as well as the usually detailed documentation in their Wiki.  Note there appears to be only a 1GB RAM version available, so the board may not be suitable for all applications, but if you are after something inexpensive and still high performance in processing power compared to the Raspberry Pi boards, then this is a good and cheap alternative.

FriendlyELEC currently offers the board for $50.00, with the usual standard accessories at an extra cost considering, such as a 16GB EMMC Chip module, power supply, power/data cable, and a very massive yet effective passive cooling heating unit made from aluminum which costs $5.99 that I personally recommend buying.

NanoPi NEO4 | Front

NanoPi NEO4 | Back

NanoPi NEO4 + Heatsink

NanoPi NEO4 Specifications

  • SoC – Rockchip RK3399 big. LITTLE Hexa-core processor with 2x Arm Cortex-A72 @ up to 2.0GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.5GHz, a Mali-T864 GPU with support OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenVG1.1, OpenCL, DX11, and AFBC, and a VPU with 4K VP9 and 4K 10-bit H265/H264 decoding
  • System Memory – 1GB DDR3-1866
  • Storage – eMMC module socket, micro SD card slot
  • Video & Audio Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4K @ 60 Hz with HDCP 1.4/2.2 support
  • Camera – 1x 4-lane MIPI-CSI connector for the camera up to 13MP
  • Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 2.4 GHz 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 with 1x u.FL antenna connector
  • USB – 1x USB 3.0 ports, 1x USB 2.0 type-C port with OTG mode and power input, 1x USB 2.0 type A port, 1x USB 2.0 interface via 2.54mm header
  • Expansion
  • 40-pin GPIO1 header with 2x 3V I2C, 1x 3V UART/SPI, 1x SPDIF_TX, up to 8x 3V GPIOs, PCIe x2, 1x PWM, PowerKey
  • GPIO2 header with 1x 1.8V 8ch I2S
  • GPIO3 header with debugging UART, 1x USB 2.0
  • Misc. – Power LED, user, LED, 2-pin header for RTC battery
  • Power Supply – 5V/3A via USB-C port; RK808-D PMIC
  • Dimensions – 60 x 45 mm (8-layer PCB)
  • Temperature Range – -20℃ to 70℃

Price and Availability

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