The BPI-M2 Pro single-board computer Banana Pi announced in March is now available worldwide for $61. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the board is fully ripe, with CNX Software noting that Banana Pi still hasn’t released its firmware.
Banana Pi said the BPI-M2 Pro features an Amlogic S905X3 equipped with a quad-core Cortex-A55 processor clocked at 1.5 GHz and a Mali-G31 MP2 GPU. It also has 2GB of LPDDR4 memory, 16GB of onboard eMMC storage, and a microSD slot.
The BPI-M2 Pro also offers an HDMI 2.1 port that can theoretically support up to an 8K video output. Still, according to the Banana Pi wiki, it will be limited to 4K output with a 60Hz refresh rate. (Which is to be expected from a single-board computer.)
The board also features 40 GPIO pins, numerous USB ports, and built-in networking that offers Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 5 support out of the box. More information about the BPI-M2 Pro’s specs are available via the Banana Pi wiki.
The BPI-M2 Pro is supposed to support Android and various Linux distros, but there aren’t any official images available at the time of writing. It’s not clear if that’s because the board supports images made for the Banana Pi BPI-M5, because it wasn’t supposed to debut yet, or because they’ll be ready when the board reaches buyers.
If the lack of official firmware doesn’t deter you, the Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro is available now from AliExpress. Just be prepared to wait a while for it to arrive: The retailer said it doesn’t expect orders placed on June 16 to be delivered until July 20.
