Banana Pi (by the Banana Pi team / SinoVoip) is less a single product line than a catalogue: SBCs, router boards (MediaTek), RISC-V boards, compute modules and ESP32-S3 microcontroller boards. Evaluate each model on its own; software support is not uniform across the family.
BPI-M7: high-end RK3588 board
From the official documentation:
| BPI-M7 | |
|---|---|
| SoC | Rockchip RK3588: 4x Cortex-A76 @ 2.4 GHz + 4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.8 GHz, 8 nm |
| NPU | up to 6 TOPS (INT8) |
| RAM | 8 / 16 / 32 GB LPDDR4/LPDDR4x |
| Storage | onboard eMMC, microSD, 1x M.2 Key M (PCIe 3.0 x4) for NVMe SSDs |
| Network | 2x 2.5G Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5 onboard |
| GPIO | 40-pin header (vendor states it is compatible with the Raspberry Pi 40-pin layout) |
| Power | USB-C PD input, 5–20 V |
Good fit for: edge AI (NPU), NVMe-based home servers, network appliances (dual 2.5G).
BPI-M5: modest, eMMC and USB 3.0
| BPI-M5 | |
|---|---|
| SoC | Amlogic S905X3, quad-core Cortex-A55 |
| RAM | 4 GB LPDDR4 |
| Storage | 16 GB eMMC (up to 64 GB supported), microSD |
| Network | gigabit Ethernet |
| USB | 4x USB 3.0 |
| GPIO | 40-pin header (28 GPIO) |
Good fit for: always-on gateways where eMMC (instead of SD card) and USB 3.0 storage matter more than CPU power.
Before buying
- Check which OS images exist for the exact model and how old their kernel is (vendor wiki download section, Armbian board page).
- A matching header layout is not the same as software compatibility: see the GPIO warning.
- Router boards (BPI-R series) are aimed at OpenWrt-style networking, not general-purpose Pi replacements.