MangoPi MQ-QUAD Review: A True Raspberry Pi Zero 2 Competitor - 4 cores & 1GB of RAM benchmarked

In a time when Raspberry Pi’s are few and far between, alternative options such as the MangoPi MQ-QUAD are increasingly interesting and needed. In this review we cover the features, functionality and performance of the Allwinner H616 Quad Arm A53 core CPU. This single board computer is designed to be a drop in replacement of the Raspberry Pi Zero as it features the same form factor (65x30mm). This board is shipped with 1GB of DDR3 RAM.

There are two linux distributions provided by MangoPi, tina-linux and debian. These actually appear to be the software images provided by OrangePi for their products. We used the debian image for our benchmarks. Performance in Coremark, PHPbench, GZIP, SmallPT and more are presented to hopefully answer the question of should you buy the Mango Pi MQ-PRO if you are looking for a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 and can’t get your hands on one.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:04 Pricing
01:50 In the box
02:10 Form Factor
02:37 Features
04:55 Software
05:14 Benchmarks
07:39 Power Consumption
08:30 Conclusions

-- Equipment we use regularly --
The following links are affiliate links where we may make a small percentage on qualifying sales through these links. Use the respective UK or US links listed.

All videos and tutorials on this channel and mentioned websites are for educational purposes only.

[sjoer]

If you want to use the external connector for WiFi you need to move the resistor from the internal antenna to the external one. There are two unoccupied pads nearby.

[Not_IgorH]

Great video. It is so hard to find the pi zero and I only heard about the MQ-Pro. Now I'll probably go with the MQ-Quad in my project. Thanks a lot!

[yusufcosgun]

If MangoiPi's manufacturer offers more support, it's a nice alternative, but they don't do anything about it. I've been using it for a few weeks and it's giving me a headache.
Also nice review thank you

[AndrewAHayes]

I bought some Orange Pi Zero 2 boards and USB expanders for running Octoprint and Octodash for my 3D printers to free up the Raspberry Pi3 and 4 boards I had been using, I would love to see a comparison between the Mango and the OPiZ2.

[tiranoid]

Thank you for these detailed videos dude 🤠

[kyouhyung]

Are you willing to share your general method of setting up these obscure Pi clones? In many cases I end up not being able to make much use out of these products due to the lack of support materials and software.

[zeendaniels]

Definitely an upgrade. I see a clear spot to use it as brain to run Klipper for a 3D printer.

[australai]

Nice review. It seems the main connectivity difference is not the USB-C, but the misc connector instead of the MIPI-CSI connector. Would like to see this using a camera.

I got one of these a few months ago and found also that the video output was unusable due to artifacts/tearing/corruption when trying to output 4K, so that's worth noting (it is okay at 1080P, but there there was a distracting amount of flicker with the mouse cursor still).

It's also worth noting that this thing runs hot and needs the big passive heatsink enclosure they sell with it to run without throttling. It is unclear whether your tests were done with cooling, but it will perform better with it.

May I also suggest you get an FNB58 USB power meter? They're a relatively inexpensive way to properly log the power level to your PC and have a screen with oscilloscope style graphing as well.

[photovideoman]

Would love to know how the WiFi/Bluetooth support is... But that's a promising alternative to the RPi version.

[evandenenden]

I tested the H616 and all went well until the CPU did get overheated.
The default CPU speed and high quality heatsink did not prevent the Mango Pi get overheated. (70°C)
After less than 2hours the Mango Pi was dead. I tested 4 boards, all are in no time overheated.

[ChandlerKluser]

Great video, with a fair comparison between Orange Pi Zero 2

But I will skip this board waiting for better CPU ones!

[dreadmn]

Really nice was searching for smth like this

[dokols]

Neat thing with rpi zero was that it was $5.

[torrikusu]

Now I'm interested if you can change the soldered ram into a higher capacity

[indisputablefacts]

Is heat-dissipation a concern with these chips? I only have experience with Raspberry Pi 2, and it definitely could suffer problems there. Stacking the ram could complicate it.

[threedorks]

The biggest advantage of the h616 is the video hardware encoding/decoding

[vmened]

Dear author, can i ask you specify in video description info about compatible cams? Thanks in advance. 🎉

[eledikohabib]

How about software support?...like GPIO and all

[HighfireX]

I'm curious if you'd be interested in reviewing the stm32c0 microcontrollers. Low flash / ram single core arm cortex m0+ with documeted low power modes in exchange for a supposed lower price to compete with 8 bit micros.

[wenbinzhong]

Hi, Orange pi has a H616 board called OrangePiZero2, which has more peripherals. Actually, OrangePi is the second largest SBC manufacturer after RasPi. Please do checkout their product lines.