Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 758 Comments on Giveaway Week โ€“ NanoPi R5S router

Giveaway Week โ€“ NanoPi R5S router

Itโ€™s that time of yearโ€ฆ CNX Software giveaway week! For the 9th edition, weโ€™ll have seven items to give away, five that I will send myself, and two that will be sent directly from two companies that accepted to add their own products to the giveaway.

Weโ€™ll start the giveaway with NanoPi R5S router based on Rockchip RK3568 SoC with 2 GB DDR4 RAM, 8GB eMMC flash plus an M.2 socket for NVMe SSD, two 2.5GbE Ethernet ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, as well as HDMI 2.0 video output and two USB 3.0 ports.

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I reviewed the NanoPi R5S router with OpenWrt and Ubuntu 20.04 โ€œFriendlyCoreโ€, but I had to call this a โ€œpreviewโ€ since 2.5GbE was far from optimal, sometimes only a little faster than with a Gigabit Ethernet link. But I can see the company has released new images, including one based on the latest OpenWrt 22.03, so hopefully the performance has improved. Debian with desktop and Android 12 images are now available as well so the HDMI port has become more useful.

At the time of the review, I also tested an M.2 NVMe SSD on the board/router. It could reach about 380MB/s read and write speeds which may seem low, but the values are expected since the router relies on a PCIe 2.0 x1 interface.

The giveaway includes the router fully assembled. So youโ€™ll just need a 5V/3A USB power adapter if you want to boot the pre-installed OS.

To enter the draw simply leave a comment with your country and whatever else youโ€™d like to say (no links in the body of the comment). If the country is missing, Iโ€™ll consider the entry void. Other rules are as follows:

  • Only one entry per contest. I will filter out entries with the same IP and/or email address.
  • Contests are open for 48 hours starting at 10 am (Bangkok time) every day.
  • Comments will be closed after 48 hours. If comments are open, the contest is still going on.
  • Winners will be selected with random.org, and announced in the comments section of each giveaway.
  • Iโ€™ll contact the winner by email, and Iโ€™ll expect an answer within 24 hours, or Iโ€™ll pick another winner.
  • Note that I may not be able to contact people who log in with Facebook, Twitter, or Google, so itโ€™s better to use an email address to enter the draw.
  • Shipping
    • $18 for registered airmail small packet or ePacket for overseas shipping payable via PayPal within 48 hours once the contest (for a given product) is complete.
    • If Paypal is not available in your country, you can still play, and Iโ€™ll cover the cost of sending the parcel by Sea and Land (SAL) without registration if you win.
  • Iโ€™ll post all prizes at the same time, around the 16th of November, except for products shipped directly by companies which will be handled separately.
  • Iโ€™ll make sure we have 7 different winners, so if you have already won a device during this giveaway week, Iโ€™ll draw another person.

Good luck!

If you donโ€™t win and youโ€™d like to buy the NanoPi R5S gateway with the metal case, you can do so on the FriendlyELEC store,ย  Amazon or Aliexpress for $75 and up.

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758 Replies to โ€œGiveaway Week โ€“ NanoPi R5S routerโ€

    2. Greetings from the UK. Enjoy your articles and I love to tinker with new tech and gadgets.

  4. United States, and I love reading the reviews and articles you post of various SBCs!

  5. Olivier, France.
    Thanks for the nice gesture !
    Iโ€™ve switched my elderly mom to an Android desktop instead of Windows, that way all her devices look and work the same. But itโ€™s hard to find Core A7x TV boxes. Sheโ€™s currently on an A72 H96Max, but thatโ€™s Android 6 and the last update forced the Launcher to Android TV, which is bad. Iโ€™m planning to get her better hardware w/ more recent Android, as soon as I find a good+affordable deviceโ€ฆ looks like itโ€™s going to be a dev board, not a TV box.

  12. Hello from Kingdom of Bahrain.
    I enjoy reading cnx articles.
    Keep up the good work.

  29. Hi from Russia.
    Thanks for giveaway. RK3568 is interesting SoC, I would like to test it for my purposes)

  37. Gizme from Taiwan.

    Iโ€™ve bought several NanoPi Neo products from FriendlyElec. They are solid built and well supported. I am sure the R5S could be the best choice for my home router. Hope this is my day.

  38. I just recently got 1000/1000 fiber connection installed in my apartment so this would be perfect.
    Sweden!

  45. I tested the NanoPi r4s, despite of a little issue on the management of MTU and VLAN tagged packeds on the WAN port, this little box was awesome to replace the router provided by my FRENCH fiber ISP.
    looking forward for the NanoPi r5s capabilities.

  83. Hi there from India, I wonder how this would compete with the solid-run cubox that I had a few years ago? After that broke I have not used any ARM box for more than 5 years.

  89. Greetings from Belgium.
    That would be a good addition to the different types of SBC I have.

    Best regards

  90. Another entry here from Finland.

    I never win anything, so I expect not to win anything in this one, either, but oh well, I guess I wonโ€™t lose anything either by joining the rowdy crowd of needy nerds!

  100. I ported the R4S to Talos and plan on doing the same for the R5S, if only I had one here in Germany.

  101. Greetings from Germany. Like to read news from CNXSoft as I get info on devices I otherwise would not have found. Thanks!

  117. Greetings from Belgium, the land of the waffles. Enjoyed the reviews so far, would be great to give it a run, potentially with a reverse proxy and a home assistant (and some other containers)!

  129. oh Iโ€™ll post from all my vpn IPs now โ€“ really want that !
    :)) joking โ€“ George from France

  134. Sweden, the weather here sucks. Give me some hardware โ€œsunshineโ€ ๐Ÿ™‚

  146. As always, greetings from Romania. I may be the second one here, but there are a lot more Romanians reading your website.

  148. Switzerland. This is such a nice little box for router, NAS or small server experimentation.

  157. Germany-based here
    Thanks for your great (p)reviews and tips over the years! Just trying my luck this time around.

  162. Hi from France !

    Iโ€™m reading this awesome blog every days ! For years now !

  164. Spain. Thank you for this initiative, this blog is one of my favorites that read every day!

  182. Colombia here ๐Ÿ™‚ โ€ฆ Trying ๐Ÿคžโ€ฆ Thanks for the giveaway!

  199. Cheers from the USA!
    I would be keen to tinker with this router board in the homelabโ€ฆ.
    Thanks for your generous contest!!

    โ€” Mike R.

  200. I live in United States, Colorado, Boulder. As an embedded developer I would love to get my hands dirty on this board.
    Thanks

  209. Greeting from Singapore, Would like to try this as as small vpn server when I travel out of Singapore..

  229. Belgium. Looks like a nice device to get into 2.5GbE networking. Thanks for all your articles!

  243. Iโ€™m glad to see giveaway week back! But, I wouldnโ€™t touch a FriendlyELEC device even if it was free, but thanks for doing this anyway!

  249. Greetings from Romania!
    I am curious about the VPN performance for this little guy.

  253. Greetings from the US. This looks like something Iโ€™d like to experiment with.

  255. Expect some more registrations from Brazil since youโ€™re Google-trending here ๐Ÿ™‚

  262. Hi from Slovakia! Long time reader, love the website. Thanks for all your hard work ๐Ÿ™‚

  268. Greetings from the USA!

    Would love to be able to upgrade my home router! Already have a few OpenWRT devices working as APs and they are working fantastically well, so Iโ€™m definitely interested in switching to a 2.5GbE device capable of using OpenWRT, vs the stock firmware-ed Archer C7v4 that Iโ€™m using now ๐Ÿ‘

  277. Indonesia!
    It will be a great replacement (and also addition) to my wifi setup which currently running on old AMD Llano using Ubuntu as DHCP and pi-hole server. Recently been searching for a nice replacement for it so I can also do bandwidth monitoring but havenโ€™t been able to find one. This NanoPi seems to be a really good candidate for my use case!

  286. United States
    Iโ€™m on the road a lot, so a tiny router like this would be perfect for my carry-on!

  295. Hello from France. This could be a very interesting addition to my network as a software router or openvpn server .

  298. France
    Thank you Jean-Luc and all the commenters for the great news and discussions.

  299. United States
    I appreciate your work, itโ€™s part of a select few information sources that define my current understanding of the worlds.

  307. Belgium
    I have a 128GB NVMe SSD burning a hole in my pocket but, more importantly, this would be serious upgrade to my 5 years old rpi

  311. Hello from the United States. Neat device. It looks like it could be a fun project.

  315. Hello from Turkey.
    Itโ€™s very nice of you that sending to countries which doesnโ€™t or banned PayPal.

  317. From Morocco, cnx still my best source of information abouts sbcs box and roboticsโ€ฆ

  325. Guten Tag from Germany! Would be cool if my Fritz!Box can finally take a break lol
    Love your Posts btw

  332. Greetings, always enjoy your articles about small board computers, Arizona, United States

  338. Hi I am Sam I am a young it enthousiast but I donโ€™t have the money to buy devices like the NanoPi so I would really like to win one. Greetings from Belgium

  339. From the Netherlands (and Holland, South Holland in particular) โ€“ and what a cool little box ๐Ÿ˜

  347. Oregon, USA here. Been thinking about buying on of these for months to use as a WiFi router, to replace my current dreaded Google WiFi router๐Ÿ˜ž
    Please pick meโ˜บ๏ธ

  348. United States in Maryland. Iโ€™m thinking this could be a cool lightweight user terminal.

  353. USA here. I was very interested in trying this out for my mobile streaming rack when I read the review.

  358. United States ritchie county wv hope to win I donโ€™t think Iโ€™ve ever won anything my life luck is never on my side. Lol

  362. From the United States, love reading your articles on interesting tech that is usually never covered by other rmedia outlets.

  363. TEXAS! Well, it used to be a country anyway, and despite the words of lots of folks here Iโ€™m proud itโ€™s part of the United States of America. Lets get past all the partisan BS and get back to making this the greatest country on Earth!

  383. Greetings from USA !^.^!
    That would be so cool to turn it into a game streaming device like steam stream

  389. United States. although currently in Nova Scotia Csnada for a couple of weeks

  413. Soumik, USA.

    Always wanted to replace my Asus router with an SBC. Thisโ€™ll work perfectly!

  425. United States of America

    Iโ€™ve been considering building my own, but I wouldnโ€™t mind this instead.

  430. United Kingdom

    Would love to play around with this. Iโ€™ve been researching setting up my own Openwrt or pfsense router for a while.

  436. Greetings from the UK! Looking forward to seeing what else youโ€™re giving away this week.

  439. Time flies so fast! Canโ€™t believe itโ€™s already the 9th edition.
    Greetings from Romania.

  446. Wow, what an amazing opportunity, Iโ€™d like to get my hands on one. Greetings from the Netherlands

  449. Iโ€™m from the rural US. Iโ€™m just about to get terrestrial internet again for the first time in a long time. This would be a wonderful way to get back into networking!

  452. Iran

    I like to have non-x86 high performance system. But you know, here in Iran, things went bad. Government censored the internet heavily and some platforms censored us too. My people currently in center of historical protest for freedom with #Woman, #Life and #Freedom.

    In addition, accessing to new boards and chips is near impossible. If possible, due unbelievable inflation, prices are too high.

  455. My appreciation in advance from Peru, this would make a good addition to the virtual classes Iโ€™m giving ๐Ÿ™‚

  458. Spain, rafa, would love to tinker with this bad boy as a router! Thank you for the oportunity to win!

  467. United States

    I do not have a router atm, Iโ€™m running a router in a vm on my proxmox server that is also using that router for internet access. This would be really useful to me.

  472. Greetings from 9k ft in the foothills above Boulder, Colorado USA. If I win, perhaps this will round out a low voltage DC solar powered IT cabinet. Just enough ports for 2 backup internet connections and some internal wireless lans and vlans without needing a switch, and more horsepower than raspberry.

    75 bucks for starters is not bad if youโ€™d compare to similar sized router board devices.

  475. Israel calling๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ฑ
    I love reading the reviews and thank you for the chance to win

  476. United States

    I donโ€™t know why I love little SBCs like this, but I do. Hoping that OpenWRT catches up to this hardware soon. Wishing I had the skill set to make the commits.

  485. United States!
    Very interested in getting a few more SBCs together for home network projects! Thanks for the giveaway!

  487. Hello from France.
    I would be pleased to host this little boy that would probably perform better than the R2S i already own !

  494. United Kingdom ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง I would love to use it as an OpenWRT speed test server with iperf3 and LibreSpeed headend. Plus TailScale for ease of management.

  497. Would love to have my own gateway/cloud in a little box to experiment with! Greetings from Germany ๐Ÿ™‚

  500. Germany. Uh the R5S is on my wishlist for month now! Would be a perfect replacement for my old OpenWrt Router

  501. Hello from Romania. Iโ€™m thinking is time to add a 2nd internet connection if i win this Pi router ๐Ÿ™‚

  514. Canada
    This cutting edge technology would change the way how routers will affect industry.

  525. Thanks for the news and the giveaway! I landed here a few months ago with some help from Google, and Iโ€™ve been coming for more info on a daily basis ever since.

    Greetings from Spain

  528. USA , or United States, Tennessee to be even more specific.. thank you for the chance!

  530. Hello from Singapore. I owned the Nanopi R4S, a capable machine on its own, did not realize R5S would drop so soon. Is that 3 gigabut ports I see? Should be fun to experiment with.

  532. Australia. Thanks heaps for cnx-software site, itโ€™s interesting and Iโ€™ve learnt quite a bit on the hardware side from it โ€“ and also from the people who comment. Cheers

  534. United Kingdom
    Good luck to everyone who enters, But please let it be me lol.

    I hope everyone has a good day

  542. Italy here!
    nice giveaway, thereโ€™s a lot of comments ,chanche to win are very low, but why not.

  545. Germany. Would love to play around with this little thing. Could be a nice router between the two rock5b in the shelf ๐Ÿ™‚