Orange Pi

So, overall – the Orange Pi Zero 2W is undoubtedly a well-designed SBC. With good software support and decent performance, there’s a lot to love here, especially if you’re searching for a compact system. The expansion board is what truly seals the deal for us, as it brings full-size connectors only found on larger boards and packs them into a tiny footprint – while managing to keep the price extremely competitive.

The market is more competitive than ever, and boards powered by the RK3588 no longer have the enormous performance lead they used to, letting other systems’ strengths shine. Squashed between the Raspberry Pi’s gargantuan community and flawless software compatibility of Intel-based SBCs, RK3588 boards have to work much harder to prove themselves.

The Orange Pi 5 Plus definitely does just that, being one of the finest boards equipped with the powerful ARM SoC. Its connectivity features and video capabilities are unrivaled, and its performance is still top-notch.

The Orange Pi 3B is a budget SBC. For only $30 it offers a surprisingly streamlined and well-optimized system which is quite pleasant to use. As a Raspberry Pi 3 replacement it delivers, offering more sheer processing power, actual cryptographic acceleration and a very basic, but useable NPU. The Orange Pi 3B is perfectly suited as a small IoT edge node or a home automation server. Android supports makes it viable for digital signage or as a media server — or even as a tiny retro gaming box.

With all of this said, the Orange Pi 3B currently might just be the most capable low-cost SBC on the market.

Yet another SBC landed on our review desk. This time around it’s the Orange Pi 5, a recently released RK3588S-based high-end model from Orange Pi – a company whose main products are ARM-based SBCs oriented towards makers. These are the most common type of SBC – with significantly more rare x86-based ones forming the majority of the rest (RISC-V CPUs are also used in single-board computers, rather seldomly, however).