The latest tiny computer-on-a-board from Banana Pi measures just 2.6″ x 2.6″ but has room for two full-sized USB 3.0 Type-A ports, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, and HDMI 2.1 port.
The new Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro also supports WiFi and Bluetooth, has a 40-pin header, and supports Android 9 and several Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Debian, and CoreElec.
While this board has the same Amlogic S905X3 processor as the Banana Pi BPI-M5 unveiled in December, the new version has a more compact design for folks willing to sacrifice a few USB ports for a single board computer that can fit into even tighter spaces.
The S905X3 is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 chip with support for clock speeds up to 2 GHz. It also has a 650 MHz ARM Mali-G31 MP2 GPU that should be able to drive a 4K display at 60 Hz.
Other features include 2GB of LPDDR4 and 16GB of eMMC storage, a microSD card reader for removable storage, an IR port that can be used for a remote control (sold separately), and the little computer supports WiFi 5 (802.11ac) and Bluetooth 5 wireless connectivity.
It also has a micro USB 2.0 port that can only be used for data and not power. You’ll need to use 5V/3A barrel AC adapter to supply power to the system.
Banana Pi will also offer an optional aluminum enclosure for the Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro .
There’s no word on the price or release date yet, but the Banana Pi BPI-M5 with the same processor (and a Raspberry Pi Model B-sized body with more ports) currently sells for about $63.
via CNX Software
If you need HDMI 2.1 then this is your board.
Doubt this has any power to do VRR, or 120Hz, or HDR10+ let alone lossless 4k-playback. :'(
The S905X3 does support HDR10+
Lossless 4K video? Is anyone even doing that? Is that just like a an uncompressed Mpeg file?
Most 4K video files come from an h264 or h265 source, which is lossy. Where are people finding lossless 4K movies?
Sorry, I worded that wrong.
I noticed that a lot of these devices “support” 4K playback, even putting it on the box or ad. But when you go to test it, you actually get some/lots of dropped frames. That’s what I meant by “lossless” and not in the way related to high-quality audio.
I’m still not convinced on the features and performance of this. So I think the HDMI 2.1 port is not a selling feature (it’s a moot point).