NanoPi R2S Plus lands as new affordable single-board computer with budget price tag and metal enclosure

FriendlyElec has released the NanoPi R2S Plus, a successor of sorts to the NanoPi R2S, thanks to various hardware improvements. While the NanoPi R2S Plus arrives nearly a year after the NanoPi R2S, it retains the latter's Rockchip RK3328 chipset. As such, the NanoPi R2S Plus has four ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores at its disposal, as well as a Mali-450 MP2 GPU.

Thus, the compact single-board computer (SBC) is likely to match the raw performance of the NanoPi R2S. Likewise, the NanoPi R2S Plus has 1 GB of DDR4 RAM, although FriendlyElec now complements this with 32 GB of eMMC flash storage. However, the MicroSD card reader from the original model remains for adding more storage, which continues to sit on the SBC's topside.

Additionally, FriendlyElec has switched from RTL8211E to RTL8211F Realtek Ethernet controllers and has added the following I/O:

• 1x Debug UART
• 1x M.2 E-Key (SDIO Wi-Fi)
• 1x USB 2.0 Type-A (Host)
• 1x USB Type-C (5V/2A)

Unfortunately, these I/O improvements have come at the cost of a ten-pin GPIO header that was present on the NanoPi R2S. Also, the NanoPi R2S Plus measures 58 x 58 mm, compared to its predecessor's 55.6 x 52 mm dimensions. The NanoPi R2S Plus currently starts at $30 as a bare board. At the time of writing, FriendlyElec charges an additional $6 for a metal enclosure, plus $2.99, $9.99 and $7.99 for a 30 cm USB cable, an M.2 SDIO Wi-Fi module with antennas and a MicroSD card, respectively. Please see FriendlyElec's website for more details.

Purchase the FriendlyElec NanoPC-T6 on Amazon