NanoPi R4S as Soft Router
NanoPi R4S as Soft Router by Flashing OpenWRT. It comes with two reall Gigabit Ethernet ports: one as WAN; another as LAN. also with ultra small size: 72x72x29mm (including case), bigger than NanoPi R2S: 61x60x26mm (including case).
Highlight comparing with NanoPi R2S:
- CPU: RK3399, more powerful
- Two real Gigabit network port
- 4GB LPDDR4 optional
- USB-C Power supply
| SoC | Rockchip RK3399 |
| CPU: | big.LITTLE，Dual-Core Cortex-A72(up to 2.0GHz) + Quad-Core Cortex-A53(up to 1.5GHz) |
| GPU: | Mali-T864 GPU，supports OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenCL, DX11, and AFBC |
| VPU | 4K VP9 and 4K 10bits H265/H264 60fps decoding, Dual VOP, etc |
| DDR3 RAM: | 1GB DDR3/4GB LPDDR4 |
| Storage: | no Onboard eMMC |
| Network: | one Native Gigabit Ethernet, and one PCIe Gigabit Ethernet |
| PMU Power Management: | RK808-D PMIC, cooperated with independent DC/DC, enabling DVFS, software power-down, RTC wake-up, system sleep mode |
| USB Host: | two USB 3.0 Type-A ports |
| Debug Serial Port/UART0: | one Debug UART, 3 Pin 2.54mm header, 3V level, 1500000bps |
| microSD Slot: | 1 |
| GPIO: | 2×5-pin header: SPI x 1, I2C x 1 4-pin header: USB 2.0 |
| LED: | 1 x power LED and 3 x GPIO Controlled LED (SYS, LAN, WAN) |
| PCB Dimension: | 8 Layer, 66 mm x 66 mm |
| Power: | DC 5V/3A, via USB-C connector or Pin header |
| Working temperature: | -20℃ to 70℃ |
| OS Support | FriendlyCore 20.04 (64-bit) (Linux-4.19.111 + U-boot-2017.09) FriendlyWrt 19.07.5 (64-bit) (Linux-5.10 + U-boot-2017.09) |
OpenWRT image for NanoPi R4S
The official image of OpenWRT has not been released by the manufacturer.
Peformance of NanoPi R4S
Disadvantage:
- Bigger than NanoPi R2S
- More expensive than NanoPi RS2
- USB-C power adapter more expensive
- Openwrt is not supported officially yet.
Conclusion
Overall , Naopi R4S is mch powerful as soft router. Its performance exceeds some low-end x86 CPU, but do believe the multi-task ability still weaker than x86 software. 4G RAM seems little waste to be a soft router, but potential to do more things in future.
Current price: US Dollar
- 1GB with metal case: $67
- 4GB with metal case: $78
Hence, it’s good device as soft router, much powerful, but not cost value one.