MangoPi MQ-PRO Review: RISC-V Raspberry Pi Zero Alternative?

In a time when Raspberry Pi’s are few and far between, alternative options such as the MangoPi MQ-PRO are increasingly interesting. In this review we cover the features, functionality and performance of the Allwinner D1 RISC-V based SoC. 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 available in both 512mb or 1GB of DDR3 RAM variants.

There are two linux distributions provided by MangoPi, tina-linux and armbian. We were only able to get armbian working but also settled for an ubuntu server image designed for RISC-V systems. Performance in PHPbench, GZIP and SmallPT 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 and can’t get your hands on one.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:44 Pricing
01:47 Form Factor
02:17 Features
04:00 Allwinner D1
05:05 Software
06:20 Benchmarks
07:50 Conclusion

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[kailiu]

I checked it out. It has an ARM version which is cheaper and alternative to RPi Wireless. RISC-V is still in its infancy, lack of GPU, only one core, more bugs... But it is a good starting point.

[MeTube]

I have this version of Mango Pi. I run a port of Armbian (yes ARMbian). This board is good for trying out and testing, but not a deployment. The D1 is quite a ropey implementation of RISC V.

[gern_blandston]

having the wifi antenna connector is actually a pretty big advantage over the pi0!

[alexscarbro]

Given that this might be a good starting point for RISC-V development, how about a bare-metal tutorial on developing programmes (without an O/S) using the available toolchain(s)?

[paulwratt]

There are more OS available than you have mentioned and tested. You need to keep an eye on the gh project _Awesome Mango Pi MQ Pro_ by _boosterl_ which tracks a detailed list of working OS's and variants (there are 12 at time of post, both desktop and headless).

[thegreenpickel]

What's the power consumption? That was the best part of the zero being between a microcontroller and an SBC.

[YvanJanssens]

I think a major omission in this video are the nuances where the D1 really shines; I have used several D1-based boards, and there are a few situations where I would prefer a D1 over the Pi Zero. The first one is power consumption - performance is similar to an OG Raspberry Pi, but power consumption is scarily low. When running the Hercules-390 emulator with MVS 3.8j and several clients connected to WiFi and SD I/O happening, it was consuming less than 100mA @ 5V. This makes this an excellent candidate for situations where power is constrained or you need to get the most out of a battery. Another good thing about this chip. Another big strength of the D1 chip is that it has a variant (D1s) that comes in an (el)QFP128 package with 64MB of DRAM included in the package. This chip is perfectly doable to hand-solder since you don't have to deal with SMD, and it needs almost no support components besides SPI flash for your small Linux-based image. This effectively allows you to build your own Linux-based devices with average-ish soldering skills.

[PlatimaTinkers]

Hey this is a great video, thanks for showing me this - definitely buying one now, since I seemingly keep killing RPiZeroW's haha.

[DrewryPope]

hi "faster is better" at 6:57 should be "smaller is better" or "faster is better (smaller bars)"

[PeterJasper]

Thanks for your review ... I found that only the outside USB-C powered the board and not the inner one. I loaded Ubuntu Server and it is helpful if you have a USB to Ethernet adaptor, otherwise you need to download and manually install the wifi drivers and configure the network (text file). A single processor is restrictive, but as a new riscV board one this is a great start.

[australai]

Nice to see you look at MangoPi! I have an MQ-Quad I got a few months ago and will be very curious to see what you think of it. It is unfortunate it doesn't have any MIPI connectivity, as it would be a good board to pair with a camera. I found it to perform pretty well, but video output at 4K was unusably broken. At lower resolutions it was okay, save for frequent mouse flicker. It runs warm, so the heatsink case is pretty essential.

[histrigaming]

The file Compression probably uses operations, not realized on the RISC CPU

Still a great alternative and a nice look at the architecture of the future :)

[frhyuhy]

What are the development options for this board? Is there an arduino plug in? What compilers ect.

[SlinkyD]

Thanks for the info. Nice video.

In short, not worth the time or money. Rather play around in QEMU until somethung capable hit the market.

[shihabhossain]

Can we make this into Google assistant?

[aaro_n]

Find me an Ubuntu image for the mq. I've had one for months and it's a paperweight

[darknetworld]

It good there is progress for new type of chips.

[flytie]

No matter beffy the specs are, if the support it non existent. Then why release it

[zk_]

Do you know if this board will run klipper?

[conorstewart]

From the Ubuntu server it looks like they are just copying sipeeds RV Dock distro, I’m not sure how similar the boards are, they both use the D1 but might there not be differences to do with external components and drivers, etc?