FriendlyElec NanoPi M4V2: Powerful Raspberry Pi alternative now available for US$70.00

The NanoPi M4V2 succeeds the NanoPi M4, an SBC that FriendlyElec introduced last year. The NanoPi M4V2 is powered by the Rockchip RK3399, which integrates two ARM Cortex-A72 and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores that clock up to 2.0 and 1.5 GHz respectively. The RK3399 also includes an ARM Mali-T864 GPU that supports up to DirectX 11 among other APIs and a VPU that can decode 4K video.

One of the areas in which FriendlyElec has improved upon the NanoPi M4 is RAM. The NanoPi M4V2 sports 4 GB of dual-channel LPDDR4 RAM, bringing it in line with the Raspberry Pi 4. By contrast, FriendlyElec equipped the original NanoPi M4 with LPDRR3 RAM, which is theoretically 50% slower than LPDDR4. The switch to LPDDR4 should reduce power consumption too, albeit perhaps only slightly.

The NanoPi M4V2 also has an eMMC socket and a microSD card reader, along with an HDMI 2.0a port for outputting video at up to 4K and 60 Hz. FriendlyElec has included a MIPI DSI connection too. Additionally, there are four USB 3.0 Type-A ports for connecting peripherals and a USB 2.0 Type-C port that can supply data and power. As with SBCs, FriendlyElec has incorporated a 40-pin GPIO for connecting actuators and sensors. The V2 includes power and recovery buttons too, which the original NanoPi M4 lacked. The 3.5 mm jack also now supports microphone input.

FriendlyElec has made the SBC compatible with Android 8.1 Oreo and Lubuntu 16.04 among other OSes. You can find a full technical breakdown of the NanoPi M4V2 on the FriendlyARM wiki. The FriendlyElec NanoPi M4V2 is available to order now for US$70.00, with FriendlyARM shipping worldwide.