BPI-M5 Pro Review: New Raspberry Pi Alternative
The BPI-M5 Pro is Banana Pi’s latest attempt to dethrone the Raspberry Pi 5. Available for roughly $130 with 8 GB of RAM, the BPI-M5 Pro contains numerous ports and expansion options, as well as a Rockchip RK3576 chipset.
Two months have now passed since Banana Pi presented the BPI-M5 Pro. Since then, it has become possible to purchase the KunPeng Pro with an unusual Huawei HiSilicon SoC. Now, the company has released the BPI-M5 Pro globally alongside the smaller and less powerful Orange Pi CM5, details of which we have covered separately.
As CNX Software notes, the BPI-M5 Pro is available in some cases as the Armsom Sige5. At any rate, both single-board computers (SBCs) feature a Rockchip RK3576 chipset within a 92 x 62 mm motherboard weighing 43 g. For reference, the Rockchip RK3576 combines four ARM Cortex-A72 CPU cores clocked at 2.2 GHz with four less powerful Cortex-A53 cores limited to 1.8 GHz and a Cortex-M0 microcontroller (MCU) running at 400 MHz.
Additionally, the BPI-M5 Pro has a Mali-G52 MC3 GPU and a 6 TOPS (INT8) AI accelerator at its disposal, as well as 8 GB or 16 GB of LPDDR4x RAM and the following I/O:
- 1x 40-pin GPIO header
- 1x HDMI 2.0
- 2x Gigabit Ethernet
- 1x M.2 Key M (PCIe SSDs)
- 1x MicroSD card slot
- 1x MIPI DSI
- 2x MIPI CSI
- 1x USB 3.0 Type-A
- 1x USB 2.0 Type-A
- 1x USB Type-C (DisplayPort Alt Mode/Power Delivery)
- 1x USB Type-C (Power Delivery)
Currently, the BPI-M5 Pro is orderable from AliExpress for approximately $130 with 8 GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64 GB of eMMC flash storage. Alternatively, the company offers the same configuration with an enclosure, pictured above, for just over $145. The SBC should be available in other memory configurations eventually though, with up to 16 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage shown on Banana Pi’s website.
Purchase the Orange Pi 5 Plus on Amazon
