Announcement of PineTab 2 and PineTab-V: guinea pigs for innovators

Pine64, a company that produces devices based on the Linux operating system, has introduced two models

Both new products received 10.1" IPS screens with a resolution of 1280x800 pixels (16:10), stereo speakers, 3.5 mm headphone jacks, 5 MP cameras with flash, 2 MP selfie cameras, 6000 mAh batteries and 15W supportBoth tablets come with detachable keyboards included and offerAn insane array of connectors: two USB Type-C (one 2.0 and one 3.0), microHDMI, a 3.5mm headphone hole, a 5-pin POGO for the bundled keyboard, and even free PCIe on the board.

And although most of the characteristics of the PineTab 2 andPineTab-V are identical, the whole point of the tablets is exactly where they differ: chipsets. PineTab 2 is based on the RockChip RK3566 processor with Mali-G52 graphics and is designed for those who are interested in adapting Linux and its software to the ARM architecture. By default, it comes on the beta version of DanctNix Arch Linux, but the user, of course, is free to change it to any other OS. Due to the use of a rather old processor, the communication capabilities of PineTab 2 are very limited: Bluetooth 5 and Wi-Fi 4.

Pine64 for some reason mirrored the official render

But PineTab-V is aimed at enthusiastsRISC-V architecture, which has been actively developing in recent years. This is an architecture with an open instruction set, chips based on which, theoretically, can become even more energy efficient than ARM processors. PineTab-V is based on a StarFive JH7110 quad-core processor with IMG BXE-4-32 graphics and offers fairly modern communication protocols: Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. Since the development of RISC-V is still in its early stages and there are no popular stable builds of Linux for it yet, the tablet comes with factory debugging software instead of the operating system.

	Technical characteristics 
	Pine64 PineTab 2	Pine64 PineTab-V
Network	-
Firmware	DanctNix Arch Linux (beta)	Factory debugging software
Screen	10.1", 1280×800 dots, 16:10, IPS
Chipset	RockChip RK3566, 22 nm CPU: 4 x Cortex A55 x 1.8 GHz GPU: Mali-G52	StarHive JH7110, 28 nm CPU: 4 x SiFive U74 x 1.5 GHz GPU:IMG BXE-4-32
Ram	4/8 GB LPDDR4
ROM	64/128 GB eMMC
SIM and memory card	microSD up to 2 TB
Camera	5 MP, OV5648, 1/4", 1.4μm, flash
Selfie	2 MP, GC02M, 1/5", 1.75 μm
Battery	6000 mAh
Charging	USB Type-C 2.0, 15W
Wireless interfaces	WiFi 4 Bluetooth 5.0	Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.2
NFC	-
Biometrics	-
Sound	Stereo speakers
Water protection	Not declared
Dimensions and weight	242 x 161 x 9mm 520 g 990 g with keyboard
Price	$159.99 / $209.99 (13,000 / 17,000 rubles)

© Ilya Nerybov.

According to Pine64