Banana Pi Mini PC Open Source Mainboard - A7 DualCore / 1GB DDR3 / HDMI CVBS LVDS/RGBDual core CPU, 1G RAM, and Highly Expandable with HDMI, USB, GPIO, Mic, Ethernet, IR, etc.

I really like this computer. I bought it because I've been using my home file server for other stuff, like bittorrent and vpn, and they have interfered with its normal functioning. This is the cheapest way to get a decent dedicated server for that kind of thing. As a plus I can leave it on 24/7 and it doesn't budge the needle of my electricity consumption or take up any space. I am running stock Fedora 23 (minimal spin) on a 32 GB SD card and it works quite well for everything I need it for.The only significant problem I have observed with the device itself is that the ethernet starts up in gigabit mode but then flips down to 100 megabit after a minute or so. Kind of annoying and seems likely to be a hardware issue. That's really the reason for the 4 stars.There were some other gotchas, but they are likely Fedora's fault not the hardware:1. The boot loader loads the OS even if you press a key to stop it...so you can't go into single user mode from boot2. The initial-setup script did not run, so I had to edit the password file from another computer before I could log in3. I had to expand the root partition to fill the card manually using gparted (definitely Fedora's fault)I mention these software issues mainly because people's concern with this as opposed to the raspberry pi is that the software may not be as debugged and community not as strong for this. I haven't used a raspberry pi, but the above issues give you an idea of where you stand on the software side. Stock ARM Fedora, couple of glitches but nothing big.According to my kill-a-watt, this consumes 3 watts. I have it running on a samsung 2amp charger from a phone or tablet that I must have owned at some point. Completely silent, of course. HDMI and USB ports work well. Haven't used it for SATA, but I will eventually.I'm glad I got this instead of a Raspberry pi. Not only do I expect the SATA connection to come in handy, but it was quite processor-bound as I was updating. Imagine how the Raspberry would have coped with it. Anyway, the performance seems decent for something that sucks less power than the phantom load of many of my turned-off devices.One more thing: I ordered this normal prime shipping on Friday afternoon and it arrived Saturday morning. So fast! Great job, Amazon!

I'm using mine as a File server with a 1Terabyte 2.5" hard disk drive attached to the SATA port and over 700g of data on the drive. The power supply was purchased at ALDI's; it's a BAUHN 2.5amp phone charger and it runs the Banana Pi, the attached sata hdd, and a Raspberry Pi to boot! I installed Raspian from lemaker.org, Samba, VSFTPD, TightVNCServer, GPARTED, MySql, and MySql Workbench.I love this little computer and it works great. Flawless if I ignore SD card failure, and much faster than my Raspberry Pi. I recently configured it to run off the hdd instead of the SD card so I won't have to deal with another SD card failure. It's easy; just three steps. First, I partitioned the hdd into three partitions: /dev/sda1 is ext4 label=os, /dev/sda2 is ntfs label=data, /dev/sda3 is ext4 label=swap. Second, I copied the root folder "/" to /dev/sda1. Third, I edited fstab and uEnv.txt to use /dev/sda1 as root "/" and boot partition. I also changed the swapfile location to /dev/sda3 to minimize writes to the SD card. I use ntfs for data so I can easily access my data using a Windows pc if the device breaks.It's been running perfectly for over a year now, except for the SD card failure.Pros: Fast, 1000g ethernet, built-in SATA port, very low power consumption. Fast enough to watch full-length motion pictures via a network connection.Cons: Not as much software support as the Raspberry Pi. However, I search the Raspberry Pi forums for software solutions for my Banana Pi! They're practically twins.Conclusion: This little 'hobby' computer can do it! And it's fun! My poor Raspberry Pi is neglected because it's just too slow.

The device arrived on time and was sort of what i ordered. It works perfectly, but the reason i gvae it 4 stars is because i didn't get the original board that was advertised, but instead got the revised version of the Bpi-m1. Other than that it still is technically the same model (i just got the updated version with a different layout of the on-board circuit components and the logo printed on it) it still had the exact same layout, and specifications mentioned. plus i can't complain too much because it does work with the banana pi images. the only image i had any problems with was the android 4.4 image, but lemaker stated that it was still buggy anyway. the board however works and is recommended as an alternative to the raspberry pi model B.

Buy the newer model with the i2s buss available (missing on this model) if you think you will use it (like for audio). Just enough different from a Raspberry Pi to have some software compatibility problem, but the Banana Pi is well supported by the people who built it, so if you need the extra power go ahead and get one. I was surprised that it can boot to a full Linux Desktop, that basically could replace my big quad-core box for most standard chores. Maybe could be a good car-puter too, if I can find nice car-puter software for it. If you are just starting out with Linux SBCs, a real Raspberry PI might be less confusing to start with.