The PineTab-V is a tablet with a 10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display that comes with a detachable keyboard cover and supports up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. It’s also one of the first tablets to ship with a RISC-V processor.

First unveiled in an April 1st post on the Pine64 blog, it was unclear at first whether the tablet was an April Fools’ Day joke. But the company has since revealed that the PineTab-V is real and it will be available for purchase starting April 13th for $159 and up. But while the hardware is ready to go, so far there’s very little software support for the tablet. It doesn’t even have an operating system yet.

The PineTab-V looks nearly identical to the PineTab 2, but the RISC-V model is black while the ARM version is silver-gray

Pine64 says the PineTab-V is physically almost identical to the company’s PineTab 2 tablet, which goes on sale at the same time for the same price ($159 for a 4GB/64GB version or $209 for 8GB/128GB).

But while the PineTab 2 has an ARM-based processor and ships with a build of Arch Linux with the KDE Plasma desktop environment, the PineTab-V doesn’t even boot into a command line Linux environment yet.

In other words, if you’re not a developer, you probably shouldn’t buy one yet. But if you are a developer, you may be able to help port existing software or create new software that can run on the tablet.

This won’t be Pine64’s first foray into RISC-V hardware. The Star64 single-board computer, for example, has a 1.5 GHz StarFive JH7110 64-bit quad-core RISC-V processor. And the Pine64 Ox64 is a cheap microcontroller board with a BL808 low-power RISC-V chip.

The PineTab-V is expected to have the same JH7110 processors as the Star64, which should theoretically help developers working on software for the single-board PC to adapt it to the tablet, and vice versa. In practice, things might be a little more complicated than that though, since the Star64 is a single-board PC without a a display, battery, or touch panel.

Pine64 says that while the main difference between the PineTab-V and PineTab 2 is the processor, there is one other difference: the ARM-based model will ship with a “silver-gray” back cover, while the PineTab-V is black.

via Pine64 March 2023 Update

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12 replies on “PineTab-V is a $159 tablet with a RISC-V processor (and virtually no software support)”

  1. I’m very interested in this, but I’d need software support neatly packaged for me and ready to install. I don’t have the time or patience to be compiling kernels and tinkering to get it working. I just want something I can practically run out of box.

    Glad this is being offered. Hopefully the likes of Framework and others will step up to the plate and offer their own Risc systems.

    1. I’ve been thinking about this since I saw this article yesterday. I think I’m going to get it. And just hope that Debian support comes down the pipeline at some point…
      I would like nothing more than to get away from x86 and arm. I sincerely hope though that Risc stays niche, cause I’ll bet you all 10 to 1 that if Risc-V ever becomes a big thing, Intel will probably get their slimey fingers in it, and the last thing I want is to buy another Intel made chip.
      All I need is a basic desktop and web browser and media player. If I can have that in this system, I could have very well already purchased my last x86 system. 🙂
      Enough shower thoughts, bring on Risc-V already!

      1. Lol Hate to burst your fantasy bubble there, but Intel already has their slimy fingers in the pot. SiFive, the company founded by the people who came up with RISC-V at Berkeley, all of a sudden canceled their last boards which they had developed in-house. Instead the next board they release will be made by Intel using their Horse Creek SoC:
        https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-pro-p550

        1. Lol, figures. Thanks for letting me know. That’s one less thing I’ll buy.

  2. I bought a cheap Pine board a while ago. Entirely useless, aside from the operating system it was impossible to even get a driver for an entirely generic USB Realtek ethernet adaptor. Zero software support, and garbage compilation support for things distributed as source.

  4. The large flat surface may make it one of the better Pine paper weights.

  5. I’m currently using Ubuntu touch on the Pinetab-V and the Android apps are running smoothly with Waydroid.

    1. Are you sure you don’t mean you’re using a PineTab (1st-gen) tablet? The PineTab 2 and PineTab-V aren’t available yet.

      1. I’m communicating from 5 years into the future and the state of Linuxing is bright, it is currently the year of desktop and Wayland completion is soon. However, Microsoft Bing now rules the planet with a velvet glove, people are fined for thinking “poop” and are executed on spot for speaking out loud anything that is deemed offensive by the Smart Ai.

        1. I think banning sexist or homophobic language would send a clear message that such views are unacceptable and punishable.

    2. Wow! I’d LOVE to see Lomiri on Debian running on this hardware, I really would.

Comments are closed.