Pick Your Pi
It's like PC shopping in the 1980s.
A couple months ago I got a pair of Raspberry Pi5, the model being dictated by the need to use Waveshare LoRaWAN radio cards. Then I personally chose the Orange Pi Zero 3 because I wanted the smallest thing I could get with an ethernet port.
Today I’m poking around on Amazon again, looking at the Banana Pi line. This reminds me a lot of PC shopping in the 1980s, going through the small ads in the back of Computer Shopper, looking for the very best price on some out of reach treasure.
Like those years, when we had 8 or 16 bit machines and lusted after 32 bit, the tiny differences in processor models make a HUGE difference in performance. A few of you have already mentioned you’ve got some sort of new Pi, and I bet more of you would, if you felt just a bit more confident.
Rather than the minutia of some specific model, let me share the big picture things I’m focusing on with this class of machine.
Attention Conservation Notice:
Small computer wonkery. If you’re not in the market, you’re free to go about your business.
Attributes:
Just like back in the day, what matters are memory, processor, storage, and support.
Memory:
Per my reading, the Raspberry Pi 5 introduced LPDDR4 as its memory type, or maybe it’s simply a different memory controller, but it’s reportedly 3x - 5x faster than the prior generation. So both the amount of memory, 4GB if you want a light desktop, 8GB were the best I could get, and I’m excited to retire one of my 8GB machines and see how their new 16GB board feels. I am officially NOT interested any more in the large memory Orange Pi boards, because I’m going to wait to see if RockChip even continues building the type of processors they use.
Processor:
There are ARM A-5X range processors with a passmark of around 600 to 800, or A-7X with a passmark of 3,000 - 4,000. You’ll see processors from Allwinner, BCM, RockChip, and if you think you like a board you should hunt for its rating. They’re all going to fall in that 600 - 4,000 range.
Storage:
Low end boards come with a microSD slot. The collage of numbers and symbols on this SanDisk Extreme (gold) card mean that it’s capable of 30 megabytes/sec transfers. The SanDisk Ultra (silver) card can only do 10 megabytes/sec. These are the very low end storage that you’d pair with a low end processor.
If you are truly going to use one of these as a desktop replacement you will want one that either has eMMC, the 3x faster embedded form of the microSD cards, or NVMe, the same storage format used in modern laptops. The no-name 120GB NVMe card in the Pi5 on my desk scored around 200 megabytes/sec and they were cheaper than the SanDisk Extreme.
And this is where these systems really start to differentiate. The Raspberry Pi 5 has a $10 expansion that will let you use NVMe storage. The larger Orange Pi sometimes have an M.2 slot on the bottom, which is attractive because it’s more compact. The Banana Pi line are more likely to have onboard eMMC storage than the others.
Bear in mind that the raw bandwidth rating isn’t everything. The SanDisk Extreme will perform about 500 write IOPS. When I benchmarked the NVMe drives in my workstation they were just the worst - only capable of 45,000 write IOPS. Video camera grade flash and personal computer grade flash are two very different things.
Support:
Here’s where things get a little complex. Raspberry has the name recognition, they sit squarely in the mid range, and the support is excellent. You can just download the Raspberry Pi Imager, pick an OS, and you’re off and running.
If you just gotta have a whole lot of memory, the Orange Pi line is tempting, and the onboard M.2 is also nice. But I’ve found getting the little one I have working to be an adventure and my reading on the larger models has left me cold. RockChip may just completely abandon their single board computer chip line, and that’s the end of those machines. Even if that doesn’t come to pass, the lone developer doing kernel support is fed up with RockChip’s disinterest in his work. You won’t find that with Raspberry.
Banana Pi hardware is similar to Raspberry and Orange, but they have a very specific niche. They offer large form factor boards, like the bigger Orange systems, but none of them have more than 4GB of memory. They expect these router oriented boards to end up in, well, routers. Hardware wise they offer more options than Raspberry, dramatically less options than Orange, but I suspect their stuff would be easier to use.
What’s Next:
One of my 8GB Pi5s is going down the road in the next week or two, into the radio support role I thought the Orange Pi Zero 3 might take. Since the goal there is for me to NOT be traipsing back and forth across the Bay Area on support calls, that rules out the little Orange. I have been using the Pi 5 for some development duties, mostly because Apple’s nannyOS forbids me from installing Meld. I can almost convince myself that I need one of the 16GB machines to replace it.
The Orange is likely going to live and die right here on my desk, occasionally put into play as a sensor in networking experiments. If I can’t send it out with a pre-configured WiFi setup and expect it to work, it’s not ever getting sent. It’s been too flighty for backpack duty. So I expect its replacement could be …
… maybe a Banana Pi BPI-M6, which has 4GB and a similar processor to the Pi 5, as well as onboard eMMC storage, but here’s the rub, in red parens.
The full sized 22x80mm M.2 slots on the bottom of Orange Pi boards are meant for NVMe storage. That little 22x30mm slot is for a WiFi card. This model trades the cost of integrated wireless for the eMMC onboard storage, and when you do get wireless it’s got an external antenna option that the Raspberry boards lack.
The Raspberry Pi 5, in its sharp cornered aluminum box, with its external power supply, a USB external drive case, a mouse, and a keyboard would get packed for certain sorts of expeditions. The BPI-M6, in an aluminum heatsink style case, with a low profile USB wifi dongle, is something I’d just have in my backpack.
Conclusion:
This stuff makes sense to me, but I am quite near the forty year anniversary of my introduction to Unix. I use a little of everything, but there’s nothing like having a real operating system on hand to knock down network troubleshooting issues.
So maybe you’re going to decide you need a pocket PC for a travel firewall, or you’re less picky than me and you’ll take a Pi with Kali Linux with you as a network sensor. Every day the internet gets a little bit uglier, as described in Avoiding Salt Typhoon. If your firewall is a Pi, having an up to date OS on it is entirely within your control, unlike the TP-Link gear, that is credibly accused of shipping with back doors.
This pursuit is a bit pathological for me. While writing this I was idly turning the Orange Pi over in my hands. My iPad was nearby, I decided to see if its USB-C was sufficient to power little machine. I found that it does … and an iPad serving as monitor, mouse, and keyboard for a little machine like that would provide some interesting travel options …
Bonus: If you want to go deep into SanDisk Extreme microSD card capabilities this document from Western Digital offers a nice comparison across the different sizes.