Creating an inexpensive and compact SBC board has made the Raspberry Pi even more popular. This is due to the Pi Zero or Raspberry Pi Zero, an SBC board that has made it possible to create new projects with reduced dimensions.
And it has also made several projects create a scaled-down version of your Raspberry Pi replica. In this aspect it stands out NanoPI, a board that was born as a copy of the Rasberry Pi and now has a reduced version that tries to imitate the steps of the Raspberry Pi Zero. This shortened version it's called NanoPI NEO or also known as NEO.
NanoPI NEO is a plate with reduced dimensions, 40 x 40 mm, with an Allwinner quadcore processor at 1,2 Ghz. There are models with 256 Mb of ram or 512 Mb of ram. All these versions of NanoPi NEO have a slot for microsd cards that will provide the internal storage that the user wants as well as an ethernet port.
In addition NEO has a microusb port that will not only connect the board with any other device but can also be used as a power source for the board. Like the Pi Zero, NEO has a USB port and a GPIO port, however on this board it does not have a usb 3 port or a 72-pin GPIO, we will have a USB 2.0 port and a 36-pin GPIO.
NanoPi NEO is compatible with Ubuntu Core
NanoPI NEO supports u-boot and Ubuntu Core, as well as other systems that are compatible with Allwinner, a range of operating systems that do not miss the raspberry computer software.
The price of Nano PI NEO will be a strong point that other alternatives do not have, in this case we are talking about priced at $ 7, a higher price than Pi Zero but acceptable for many users and many projects.
Personally I find this NanoPi model very curious and possibly a great alternative to Pi Zero, but Is AllWinner really that functional? Although many devices use the processors of this brand, still not much software that supports it and that may be a problem for certain projects, so we must be attentive to the project that we want to build with NanoPI Neo Do not you think?