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Software wise
Like the previous Banana Pi R4, the R4 Pro uses the same SoC, the Filogic 880 (MT7988A) from MediaTek. Being a brand-new product fresh off the line, the unit we received came with a slimmed-down, pre-flashed OpenWrt snapshot from Banana Pi, but without any usable packages. While there are still a few bugs to work out, we’re confident that official mainline updates will soon be available on the OpenWrt website, just like with other Banana Pi router boards.
BPI-R4 Pro bootstrap configuration
The R4 Pro comes with a simple bootstrap switch that basically lets you choose how the system files are booted on the device. You can choose from three bootstrap operation methods: SD card, SPI NAND, or eMMC. The simplest option is to burn the OS image file onto a microSD card and set both switches down.
The best choice for now!
Until a newer, more stable version of OpenWrt is released, the best approach is to burn the latest snapshot image file onto a Micro-SD card. Once the final version is available, you can then burn it onto the eMMC / SPI-NAND Flash.
To burn the image, check the R4 Pro documentation page and prepare a microSD card with a suitable capacity of 32GB–64GB. If you run into boot problems like we did, consider switching to a reliable brand like SanDisk, which worked great for us.
It is already on presale.
Yes, I know, thank you.
Hi, the main problem about the BPI R4 is its BE14 Wifi NIC (6 antennas and many shielding/noise problems).
In your pictures, we can clearly see the new BE19 NIC with 14 antennas: did you test it? Is it going to be released to the public this year? Thank you!
HI. Not yet, but from what I’ve heard, it should officially be released in a few weeks.
Thank you so much! Will you make a new post when the BE19 will be out? Did you have the R4 Pro for testing or these are just info from the company?
Not yet, but I’ll probably test the R4 Pro and the Wi-Fi expansion board and review them once both are ready and available.
For now, it’s just general news info.