Banana Pi's BPI-WIFI6 Mini Is a Cute Little Two-Port Wi-Fi 6 Router Board for Under $30
With Wi-Fi 6 on board and a slot for a cellular modem, Banana Pi's new single-board computer targets cost-conscious network projects.
Banana Pi has launched a new, compact single-board computer designed for network appliance and gateway use, built around a resource-limited Arm Cortex-A9 chip but offering Wi-Fi 6 connectivity at a very low cost: the BPI-WIFI6 Mini.
"It is a mini size Wi-Fi 6 router solution," the company writes of its latest design, which offers a feature-, size-, and cost-reduced alternative to the full-scale BPI-WIFI6. "Wi-Fi protocol version support to IEEE 802.11ax, backward compatible 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, can support the highest rate of 3Gbps, [2.4GHz] will reach 573.5Mbps, while 5G[Hz] will reach 2401.9Mbps."
The single-board computer, brought to our attention by Liliputing, isn't exactly a speed demon: built around the Triductor TR6560 system-on-chip, it has two Arm Cortex-A9 cores running at 1.2GHz and just 128MB of DDR3 memory — plus 128MB of SPI flash storage. The focus, then, appears to be on network performance for a low power envelope — and on delivering that performance at an approachable price.
The board uses Triductor's TR5220 Wi-Fi chip to deliver a 2×2 Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) dual-band Wi-Fi 6 connection, with connectors for dedicated 2.4GHz and 5GHz antennas plus a shared 2.4/5GHz antenna connector. This, the company claims, delivers over 2.4Gbps throughput under ideal circumstances — though the board's two Ethernet ports are only gigabit, which will limit what you can do with the wireless throughput.
There's a nano SIM slot, designed for use with an M.2 B-key slot designed to accept an optional cellular modem, with Banana Pi saying it has successfully tested the Quectel RM500U for that purpose, and a USB 3.0 Host port for further expansion. A fan header provides room for active cooling, if you need it, while power comes through a USB Type-C connector with USB Power Delivery (PD) negotiation to 12V.
This isn't the first miniaturized board design Banana Pi has unveiled this month: last week the company launched the BPI-M4 Zero, which took the Allwinner H618 quad-core system-on-chip from its full-size sibling and placed it on a Raspberry Pi Zero footprint board designed to act as a successor to the BPI-M2 Zero for space-constrained applications requiring additional processing power.
The BPI-WIFI6 is available to order on Banana Pi's AliExpress store or $29.60, a claimed 25 percent discount over the planned standard retail price of $39.47.