Banana Pi

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Banana Pi is a family of single-board computers made by Shenzhen SINOVOIP and its spin‑off Guangdong BiPai Technology, with support from Foxconn. The boards are Raspberry Pi–style, sharing a common 40‑pin GPIO header, and they can run Android, Linux distributions, and other OSes such as Raspberry Pi OS, Arch Linux ARM, and more.

The Banana Pi lineup uses a variety of chips, so features differ by model. The original BPI-M1 uses a dual‑core Allwinner CPU at 1 GHz, with 1 GB of RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, SATA, USB, HDMI, and a built‑in battery‑charging circuit. Over the years, many boards followed, offering different CPUs, RAM amounts, and extras like onboard Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, SATA, M.2, and camera support. Notable boards and families include:

- BPI-M1 and BPI-M1+ (early model, 1 GHz dual‑core, 1 GB RAM)
- M2 family (M2, M2+ / M2U, M2 Zero, M2 Berry, M2 Magic): various quad‑core designs with options such as onboard Wi‑Fi and GPIO compatibility
- M3: octa‑core board with Wi‑Fi and SATA for more storage options
- M4: Realtek RTD1395 chip, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB eMMC, built‑in Wi‑Fi/Bluetooth
- M5: RK3576 or similar high‑end options, up to 16 GB eMMC, 4× USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, and 40‑pin header
- M6: features the Synaptics VS680 SoC
- F2: Freescale i.MX6 board
- P2 Zero: a small, low‑power board with Allwinner quad‑core 1.2 GHz
- F3: a newer 8‑core SpacemiT K1 RISC‑V board with AI capabilities
- S64: board based on the Actions S700
- R1/R2/R64/W2: router‑focused boards for networking and smart home tasks
- D1: lightweight dev board with a built‑in mini camera
- Banana Pi‑G1: multi‑protocol wireless development board (Wi‑Fi, Zigbee, BLE)
- Pro: a compact, credit‑card‑sized model

While Banana Pi is similar in spirit to the Raspberry Pi, there is no official affiliation with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Some sources view Banana Pi as a clone, while others see it as a capable evolution with broader hardware options.