With an appearance very similar to that of the popular Raspberry Pi, the new family of Rock Pi 4 Plus boards presents one of the most attractive rivals if you are looking for a real alternative to this development board for your future or current projects.
Rock Pi 4 Plus
Radxa has launched a new family of Rock Pi boards. Yes, those other boards that are one of the best alternatives to the Raspberry Pi and that now with more reasons can still be qualified that way. Although it is also a bit unfair, because for a long time the company has been offering products that, without being so popular, are capable of a lot.
The new family or model is the Rock Pi 4 Plus and it could be said that it is basically an upgrade where the faster processor is what varies along with an integrated eMMC storage that already comes with a preloaded Linux-based operating system. Thus, installing another operating system on an SD card is an option. Because unlike the Raspberry Pi, you can take it out of its box, connect and start using it thanks to Twister OS.
However, doing a review of everything that this development board offers, here is a quick review of each and every one of its main features.
Technical characteristics Rock Pi 4 Plus
- RK3399 OP1 processor with 2 ARM Cortex A72 cores at 2 Ghz and 4 Cortex A53 cores at 1.5 Ghz that should provide 10% more performance
- Graphics MP4 Mali T860
- LPDDR4-3200 memory
- Model B + have WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 while the A + configurations do not
- Gigabit Ethernet port
- GPIO connector
- Know MIPI DSI and MIPI CSI for screens and / or cameras
- HDMI output
- Audio output
- 2 x USB 2.0
- 2 x USN 3.0
- M.2 connector with support for NVMe SSD storage drives
- Micro SD card reader
As you can see, they are very complete boards and with practically nothing to envy the most current Raspberry Pi. So they are very interesting for certain types of projects that you want to carry out and where for some reason or another they can fit better than the aforementioned Raspberry.
Rock Pi 4 Plus price and availability
This new family or improved version of the existing Rock Pi 4 will be available in most online stores where previous generations can be found, such as Amazon. And regarding the price, everything will logically depend on the configuration that is purchased. Because there is not only model A + and B + , also changes in RAM and internal storage. These would look like this, although it could change depending on supply and demand:
- Rock Pi 4 A + with 2GB of RAM and 16GB eMMC would cost $ 49
- Rock Pi 4 A + with 4GB of RAM and 32GB eMMC for $ 65
- Rock Pi 4 A + with 2GB of RAM and 16GB eMMC cost 59 dollars
- Rock Pi 4 A + with 4GB of RAM and 32GB eMMC would cost $ 75
As you can see, for price and specifications, they are a very interesting proposal that really competes with the Raspberry Pi in all aspects. Although it is true that the Raspberry Pi 4 wins in terms of RAM memory configuration, so depending on what type of use they may be more or less recommended. But if you were looking for alternatives, here is one more for you to choose from.