I actually just bought an Orange Pi Zero 2 a couple weeks ago, due to the Raspberry Pi shortage. It arrived the other day and I had no issues throwing the Debian Server image on it and had her up and running as a Pi-hole DNS server in no time. Loving it so far, a very nice Pi alternative, but the con being what you mentioned, there is less support and not a as large of a community.
Yeah, tell me about it (Orange Pi Zero 2 user here) - paper specs look great, but then you won't even boot Armbian and realize that it has no upstream kernel support, only vendor patched kernel.
Rk3399 has great linux support. How good is vpu on rpi4 on rpi os 64 bit out of the box?? really bad! So, I dont get what people say about support, specially referring to desktop usage. Rpi has a huge community, that doesn't mean support at all. I use a lot of rk3399s and they do work great on mainline. Not easy to get vpu working, neither on rpi4 on aarch64 (and considering the vast resources rpi has). I have many things to criticize on this particular model, not the soc or their support on mainline linux. At least not in comparison with what rpi delivers. Rk3399 is FAR superior, tons of I/O (4x pci 2.0 lanes, 2 usb 3.0 interfaces, real interfaces, not like rpi4) , similar cpu power, much stronger gpu. There is nothing to debate regarding desktop usability between them.
@@alx8439 media decoding capabilities. Vpu means vision processing unit. Vpu on vlc on rpi os 32 bits works great, not inside the browser on my side, but on aarch64... it sucks, at least it was like that 2 months ago
Armbian is the go to Orange Pi's OS...they do a VERY good job of building it! What is cool it comes stock with zram already running! I have several Orange Pi's running at my house and they work well...however I would recommend heatsinks and active cooling...the processors do love to run a bit on the hottish side Always do a full apt update and apt upgrade on a fresh install just to make sure all the packages are up to speed
That's because Armbian overclocks their CPUs by default. You can decrease the frequency back to normal in the settings; I always do whenever I run an Armbian image.
@@liquidmobius : These CPUs when they're at peak clocks will heat up. Nearly as much as the overclock. The only time you can kind-of get away without a heat-spreader or a sink is when you're running in Conservative or Low-power mode.
Ive started buying orange pi's and banana pi's for my projects.the built in emmc storage is handy too as it saves an extra purchase of SD cards. Their OS options are somewhat limited and many of them are EOL/EOS versions of debian or Ubuntu. It would be great if they had better support for newer kernels
And this right here? Folks? THIS is why I say what I say about these boards. With a Pi, you get a MODERN distribution with MODERN software. With these? X-D You'll need to have my chops (I develop embedded Yocto Linux builds for the Fortune 500 under contract...) to maintain the boards. Seriously.
I bought one. It works great. The Orange Pi 5 is coming out now which is in the same price range or lower and has an even better processor. I ordered one from Amazon for eighty something dollars including shipping and TN sales tax.
Back in time I really loved the Orange Pi PC before the chip shortage and COVID. They were very cheap compared with Raspberry Pi. I could get a Orange Pi Zero 512 MB ram with power cable and a copper heatsink for approx. $12. With Armbian as OS, they were my favorite for small projects. How I think the Orange Pi PCs with Allwinner H2, H3 and H5 SoCs are too expensive compared with the Orange Pi PCs with Rockchip and Allwinner H6 SoCs which cost a little bit more.
Having 2 extra cores is definitely an interesting proposition... I often use my rpi to build docker images for ARM for my company, because it's actually significantly faster than QEMU (like an order of magnitude faster). Assuming the software is decent enough (as others have said it does run Armbian), then you could add the rpi repos and create a franken-debian with more software available.
Excuse me for my ignorance, but does the source code compiled let’s say on Linux @ RK3399 with its all cpu specific customization and optimization will work on some different ARM (c) Cpu linux?
They don't work QUITE the way you think they would. If you're using low-power, mostly occasional web serving, yeah, it CAN make a difference. If you're doing compute heavy stuff, it falters in several differing ways and your mileage may vary. Some tasks will gain from the slightly higher clocks on the two A72 cores. Other tasks gain from having FOUR A72's instead of just two at slightly higher clocks. It is for this reason that I claim that unless your Coreplex farm (The CPUs you have in the SoC) is one-for-one identical except for clocks, memory, etc. you really CAN'T make these comparisons except by trial and seeing if it works out better or not. It's also why I can't understand why people go on and on about being a "Pi-Killer". Nope. Unless you're talking a Xavier NX at Pi4 8Gb prices, you don't even remotely have one. You have something that works as a REALLY good alternative for application .
The whole point of the raspi was low cost. You could run a full linux with gpios for 30-50 bucks. While I agree that $100 is still a good value, it is not the Insane value that was the whole point of the raspi.
Main problem with these - short support and no community really. Plenty of ploblems with stability, you end up (in best case) with armbian after a while and then it end up in trash. The community is a differentiator between usable miniPC and ewaste. With the RPi shortages, I've started to use cheap Celeron-based miniPCs with far more performance comparing to RPi and comparable power consumption. Plus far better support as it is generic x86-64 architecture :(
I had the same problem with the WiFi connection on my Orange Pi 3 LTS. The fix was to install an older version of Armbian than the current (I settled on Bullseye)
I love XFCE, but it seems like a heavy choice for this. MATE would have been better if they wanted a "standard" GUI, but iceWM or the like would have been a smarter choice.
What are you even talking about? XFCE might not be LXDE levels of light, but MATE is an entire Gnome fork. It's definitely not as heavy as you're making it sound.
The reason there's so much lag in his video is that he's likely using deoptimised drivers (basically x direct drawing instead of using a memory buffer), which would cause the video drawing to be cpu bound.
@@flynn3649 Proper video drivers and lower output resolution would help. But the desktop experience isn't what the Raspberry Pi (and its counterparts) is all about anyway. It's more about servers, IoT, and single-purpose devices with optimized, low resolution GUI.
I installed wayland and all menus slowdowns are gone. There’s a note about Mali T860 drivers support for X Org, they even dropped it in their proprietary drivers starting from some recent past
I suspect it is a missing kernel component for Wi-Fi. I have the same error. I will give the Armbian crew a shout on it. Please donate to Armbian I do because of the great work they do to maintain all these SBC'S even if it's a few quid for a beer. I bought the same board, its quite an improvement from the last version
Orange Pi looks interesting, thankyou. Those "Cable kits" though... Screwfix or any good hardware store does exacly the same at a fraction of the price. MT1, MT2 or MT3 sticky back PVC trunking is all those are really. screwfix does trunking in 2M lengths for a couple of quid
GREAT STUFF !! thanks.. with RPi being 1). HARD TO FIND, and 2.) WAY over priced now.. the Orange Pi and Banana Pi. are going to now take off I hope and get more support and community. !! love to see more Orange Pi videos..
Okay there are a few very big issues with the Orange PI i should point out to folks. 1) Cooling is a big issue with these boards, out of the box there is no prebuilt cooler that will fit this board, all the cases use fans over the CPU but nothing to draw the heat away from the die; while thats fine if you know you want the fan directing cold air over the supplied heatsinks then it works. However if you accidentally wire the fan upside down, you're in for a throttled nightmare 2) There is no prebuilt cases or hardware available specifically for the Orange PI builds, that means you're going to have to either be able to 3d print a case that fits the unit or you're going to have to buy the plastic prebuilt and gasket/seal the clip together cases so that they don't warp with the heat, or as i experienced; crack when the case temperature exceeds the ambient temp. 3) When a new board is released, the old ones are no longer supported (see the Orange Pi Lite v Orange Pi Lite2), when the updated board was released, the older board stopped receiving regular updates, forcing you to use raspbian download directly from their site (since APT updates no longer work on the custom build) and losing a lot of the boards functionality (since changes to the OS are made to make it compatible with the board directly since the GPIO is not aligned to the same jumpers and several of the voltage points are on the opposite rails) 4) The micro USB input has a habit of being loose on the board, so unless you have a good soldering iron you're in for a bad time if it comes loose. This is a theme if you use any of the input/output ports on a regular basis for any length of time other than set and forget. At first i thought i might have just got a bad batch but after my 20th variation on these boards i can say it is the build quality overall 5) the GPIO is not 1 for 1 with a Raspberry PI. So while the board claims to be cross platform, you will need to individually jumper wire the 6 - 8 wires which are misaligned with gpio jumper cables which generally makes a mess when it comes to expansions that use the full 40 pin layout. I realise that there are adapters on aliexpress for converting those pins but i shouldn't need to have another piece on every unit just to convert the GPIO to align to the spec. 6) If you're looking to use the board to run any of the M.2 or hard drive expansion sets that worked with the Raspberry PI, you're out of luck. I've tried many times to get a solid answer from geekboard and other manufacturers of these types of expansion boards, and never had an answer other than its untested but should work (which is not an answer you want to hear if you know the GPIO headers are borked from the start). While it may be compatible with the Raspberry PI standard, the GPIO header pins being mixed up and the difference in the location of the different chipsets means the test pins used on many of those expansion boards don't work (since the part is in a different place on the PCB) Other than those few issues, if you're running it as a server or as a standalone operation where you're using the GPIO to read sensors or control relays etc. you should find the board more than capable.
Would i continue to buy these boards, yes and no. Yes if my needs where strictly only for servers & adding zigbee home automations etc. But beyond that scope i think its safe to say that Raspberry PI & Rock PI are still king of the landscape.
On cooling that's not a big issue,one can easily put a small heatsink from old routers,set top boxes, PC's... ,and when buying one already knows it doesn't have one unless you order it with, On the GPIO's I think when buying it one shouldn't assume its a RPi for crying out loud! So no need to complain if you want an Orange you get an Orange not a Raspberry be prepared for the taste. It does what it's made for and I can't complain cause I knew when I bought it what to expect no catches, I can use it with my pi2 via ESP32 no problems and I bought an arduino 45 sensor kit that work on both ESP32 and OPi running Micropython
@@martinmtawali7359 yes but we're talking about a 1 for 1 replacement for a raspberry pi 4b here, which this post suggests can be achieved with an Orange Pi 4 LTS. Which is not entirely true. If i have a Raspberry Pi 4b and a Orange Pi 3 and i unbox and run them 24/7 as a server and within a year I have to unplug the Orange Pi 3 to check why the board isn't working, thats not exactly a good omen. The LTS series i haven't tried yet (they came out after I purchased the last lot of boards), so I'm going to try those because they have USB-C; but so far I've replaced all the Orange PI boards and none of the Raspberry Pi
The added clockspeed is interesting. I might try this to run a hypervisor/virtual environment to take care of some monitoring and network apps on my local network where the subpar video/desktop performance won't matter.
I know this is anecdotal but I've bought 4x arm based SBCs. Raspberry Pi 2, an OrangePi, a Cubie and an ODroid. Only Raspberry still works after 5-6 years.
first of, the gpu on the Orange pi is the same that was used on the Banana pi and it is horrible in comparison to the GPU on the raspberry pi 4, which is probably why you experience lag on the desktop. second of, the raspberry pi might have a stock clock speed of 1500mhz, but that is mainly because it's sold without cooling, take something like the pi400 which comes in a keyboard and have passive cooling, i believe the stock clock speed is 1800mhz on that. the raspberry pi can be safely overclocked to 2000mhz but cooling is recommended in order to keep the life span of the pi intact. back to the gpu, it is probably the only thing holding back the SBC's out there, if the pi could get just a little more boost on the gpu side of things it would actually be a good cheap desktop pc, a raspberry pi 4 specs can be as high as, CPU 2100mhz, RAM/memory 8gb, storage either micro sd cards or simply get a usb connected nvme or sata slot. the only thing i'd wish they'd do with these SBC's is upgrade the GPU, ofc the CPU matters as well, but the CPU is strong enough for what the use case of them are, on a computing side of things they do wonders, but on the graphical acceleration they are terrible and the only one just holding on is raspberry pi, and i think that is mainly because of how many people actually have been part of building up support for the raspberry pi. you can't watch streaming services like netflix, disney and what ever from the get go, but search a little online and you find that people have already solved this issue, people have already solved how to run x86 programs on arm devices like the pi. there is no way any SBC is beating the raspberry without upgrading the GPU.
Good thing you point out the GPU performance, do you think it's just weaker or it's a driver support thing? I heard some SBCs work better with android because they have full hardware acceleration support.
@@junovicz not actually sure, it could be driver support but i think it's mainly just the power of the GPU. but i gotta admit, i love the Pi's for their low power consumption and the many different usage there already is for them. most who have no idea what to do can easily find step by step guides to make almost anything out of the raspberry pi. my personal use case after many years is still just a portable retro machine, using a power bank when travelling, able to run N64 and PSx games, what more do you really need ;)
The Raspberry Pi 4 had a CPU change due to a minor fault, which changed the speed from 1.5GHz to 1.8GHz, same as the Pi 400. The difference is the last letter in the serial number - B is 1.5, C is 1.8
This was a good illustration of why the Pi is worth buying over the Orange variants. The latter have no real community support, and the software and drivers are pretty dire. They also lack libraries and hardware support for the video decoding, and OpenGL etc. So unless you just want to tinker with flashing an LED and a very basic desktop, they're not really worth it currently.
I think your info is a little outdated, and raspberry pi 4s basically don’t exist for any sane price right now. So it’s not like there’s a lot of good choices.
The lag in the OS shell menu is caused by incredibly inefficient coding. A computer should not require extensive hardware acceleration just to re-render a menu. Even Windows 3x had similar menus which worked just fine with the CPUs at the time, it's now over three decades later and the CPUs cannot cope?
Hi @TechHut , I just bought one and its on the way. Your review is good Thank you for your time doing this review but you havent mentioned how to Power Orange PI 4 LTS for 24/7 operation. Should I use drum Jack Power adapter with 5V 3A or 5V4A with Type-C Connection? Thanks which Power source did you used could you name a brand and model please
the rockpi 4c+ was a better replacement imo, same connectors as the rpi 4 (so case compatibility is a possibility) and it has the same chipset as this device
Perhaps a little off topic but is it possible to add an led to indicate power is on? It’s for a custom case; I want an external light. If it is possible can you please point me towards instructions?
A review about the Orange Pi 5 would be great. We found also thatt Fedora runs on the Raspberri Pi4 and supports to official 7 inch Raspberri Pi touch display. Is nt that great? The PinePhone with Ubports could not convince us, but Fedora with touch display? A review about this would be great also. Thanks for all of your great reviews, Techhut.
Wow great vid, bar the So called cable tidy for a few bucks i can go to my hardware store and get 3 mt long… and with all the same basic bits to go along with
Could you explain to us why is the Orange Pi in stock available and the Rasberry Pi 4 and higher not? And second could you also test OpenPLC on OrangePi and CodeSys on OrangePi
I don't know what that error is or what network manager it comes with by default, but I'd try disabling it and installing NetworkManager and using its control software, nmcli. I don't know if it works on non-Systemd systems, as I've always ran with Systemd. But to enable it in Systemd, "NetworkManager" is case-sensitive; that was frustrating. `# systemctl enable NetworkManager` . You probably also have to `# systemctl start NetworkManager` if you don't want to reboot to turn it on. You can also manage your wired connections through it.
How is the device tree overlay support? I recently bought a Libre Renegade and their GPIO device tree is minimal, quite disappointed with that purchase.
i wish they made the 4 lts in 1 or 2 gb models. I dont do gui installs so i never really use more than 1 gb memory. the nest part of the pi is the community like he said, but the shortage is a pain. especially when i see the videos of people buying 100 to make some dumb project.
You can run pi 4s at 1.8 GHz no problem if you put a heat sink on them and it is officially support as in its set to 1.8 GHz out of the box with the raspberry pi OS, so that’s not really an advantage of the orange pi since the pi 4 can do that too.
I run my Raspberry Pi 4 4 gigs of memory Raspberry Pi OS 64 overclocked at 2ghz in a DeskPi case (good heatsink and fan). Usually runs in high 40 degrees to low 50 degrees C. Makes an OK desktop.
@@jeffreyalwine1990 I’m sure you can probably overclock the orange pi 4 too. My point was more that the officially supported clock speed of the pi 4 was increased to 1.8 GHz so it really isn’t an advantage for the orange pi as the official max clock speeds are the same.
From the product page: "It can run Android 8.1,Ubuntu16.04,Ubuntu18.04,Debian9" - looks like this is abandonware. Come on, it's 2022, it's Ubuntu 22.04 and Debian 11 which are current now.
Got the Orange Pi Zero 2 which has a lot more power than the pi zero 2, but the support is so bad and the updates take years ... So I guess there won't be another orange pi in my life.
4GB is not enough, 8GB is the absolute minimum acceptable. I don't think the mini PCI-E is compatible with SSDs either, so you'd need a PCI-E Controller for any kind of reasonable storage which almost certainly you couldn't boot from, so you'd have to mess with grub on the emmc or sd card for that. I guess they're okay for fiddling, but any serious use it's woefully inadequate.
@@nasateen13 Really? You get 1080 @30 right? That's what I was trying, and it could alllllmost, but a lot of buffering. Does it matter if I using Raspbian 32 bit or whatever it's called? When I got my Pi the 64 bit operating system wasn't out.
@@vadermasktruth Yeah 1080 no joke. I've only used stock Raspberry pi 64bit, I haven't used 32 bit yet. I also ran TH-cam out of curiosity on android PrimeOS and it too ran 1080, I have the cpu set to 2.3 ghz for PrimeOS. It could be internet your connection?
Is it not the 6core version, I bought one 2020 ish, been bullet proof, except for getting libraries to run software meant for rpi.. (mainly gpio pin mapping, OPI & wiringpi for Rk3399)
I have done no raspi, arduino whatsoever, but installing fresh xface was really a bad choice I would go for a window manager if I were them and also a question whoever answers: what's wrong with no gui on these devices? I get that folks want gui on pcs and all, but gui on these things don't make any sense to me
I don't trust these RPi clones, Banana Pis gave me magic smoke around the time we still waited for the RPi 2 and the RK3366 seems to be hit and miss as far as support goes. As far as SD Card read and write speeds go, I recently set up DietPi on my old RPi 2 which I use in favour of my NAS and the Pi 4 I added to it because this old SBC can still be empowered from my router's USB port which comes in handy in my country with prices for electricity going to explode. DietPi itself is pretty amazing because it uses the RAM as a RAM disk of sorts to reduce use on the SD card and because it actually adopts the idea Raspbian's devs came up with when they introduced raspi-config by distributing their own dietpi-config that allows to even more things on the TUI without the need to ever set up config files or use the term like a champ. The OPi4 certainly would benefit from it as well.
I beilieve that tge current linux kernel (5.x) isnt compatiable with orange pi devices which might be the reason you are getting that error. I know that for the orange pi 3 lts the only way to get wifi working at this time is to use armbian cli the debian version (bullseye) not the ubuntu version (jammg) You could also try Manjaro since they recently said they added support for the orange pi 3 and 4 lts. Not sure if wifi works on there though
Why wouldn't they match the form factor of the old 3b+? There are so many cases and accessories still being sold for the Rpi3 series! This is fine for people who leave a naked SBC sitting on their desk as their daily driver PC - you know, nobody.
Are you actually sure it's orange pi os? The website says it says coming soon. Anyway. I just pre ordered the orange pi 5. RP availability is yeah and the scalper pricing is absurd.
Compared to the pi400 or an slightly overclocked Pi4 the little extra performance doesn't justify replacing them with this one? But sure if you already don't have anything current gen pi this might be an option if you are not to dependant on the user base which means being a linux geek.
Pine64 is the only company actually trying to compete with software support against RPi (not likely achieveable, but at least they're *trying*) so I think they're basically the only competitor worth a damn.
uhm.. your sponsor sells way to expense cable trays you can get for a few bucks in 2 meter length in your local harware store... what you showed were k25, and k40 cable trays.. quite standard in the electrician world... even the items that came with it are simply available in the hardware store.. so i would not recoment that kit because for that price you can get 10 boxes of that stuff. but the review is very nice!
That is the worst delay I've seen on any Pi like device. Even the half baked Armbian on my Dev term was better. I would look and see if dietpi works on that board, I have it running on an older RK powered device and it works reasonably well. If not try Armbian and see if that processor has better support now. You may also want to try Manjaro, I'm pretty sure the Devterm guys have the RK3399 into the main line arm port with GPU acceleration, I know the Devterm specific version plays videos fine on my A06 (RK3399).
big caveat emptor. I've bought several OrangePi models over the years and are far more finnicky than the Rpi. Issues with power, GPU, awfully updated and poorly documented OS images, and so on. The Zero ones are the worst, they tend to just die without any warnings
Did you compare the power draw of each? Less power draw = more battery life. That on it's own wins the competition. Raspberry Pi 4, the power is 2.875 Watt when idling. Orange Pi 4 LTS, the power is 4.22 Watt when idling. Raspberry wins that competition. How many other comparisons did you decide to miss? I mean, why would you not consider the power consumption?
there is no beat from rpi unless you build same thing and sell it cheapr. there no need make it faster and ask more money. try make under 35buck SBC that use lower power. we have rpizero thats enought supposed be 5buck but reality 25
![fellow fellow - พรุ่งนี้ไม่มีใครรู้ feat. INK WARUNTORN [OFFICIAL MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QP6JyjYx_W0/mqdefault.jpg)
I actually just bought an Orange Pi Zero 2 a couple weeks ago, due to the Raspberry Pi shortage. It arrived the other day and I had no issues throwing the Debian Server image on it and had her up and running as a Pi-hole DNS server in no time. Loving it so far, a very nice Pi alternative, but the con being what you mentioned, there is less support and not a as large of a community.
i use the brave browser and it has Made my pi-hole absolete
I ordered an orangepi for the same purpose, but I was skeptical of the performance so I ordered orangepi 3 LTS. i know its an overkill !! but still
@@samsungemployee5243 not everything that needs ad/tracker blocking uses a browser.
So many competitors came and went. Even if the specs surpass those of Rpi, the support is always subpar. 🙏
Yeah, tell me about it (Orange Pi Zero 2 user here) - paper specs look great, but then you won't even boot Armbian and realize that it has no upstream kernel support, only vendor patched kernel.
@@JG-mz7hg unfortunately SBCs are still wild west territory :D
Rk3399 has great linux support. How good is vpu on rpi4 on rpi os 64 bit out of the box?? really bad! So, I dont get what people say about support, specially referring to desktop usage. Rpi has a huge community, that doesn't mean support at all. I use a lot of rk3399s and they do work great on mainline. Not easy to get vpu working, neither on rpi4 on aarch64 (and considering the vast resources rpi has). I have many things to criticize on this particular model, not the soc or their support on mainline linux. At least not in comparison with what rpi delivers. Rk3399 is FAR superior, tons of I/O (4x pci 2.0 lanes, 2 usb 3.0 interfaces, real interfaces, not like rpi4) , similar cpu power, much stronger gpu. There is nothing to debate regarding desktop usability between them.
@@microlinux what do you mean by vpu here? A gpu?
@@alx8439 media decoding capabilities. Vpu means vision processing unit. Vpu on vlc on rpi os 32 bits works great, not inside the browser on my side, but on aarch64... it sucks, at least it was like that 2 months ago
I wish every SoC review will be more like this one, very professional, informative, and concise.
yep
OrangePi seriously needs more community support
Especially after that Microsoft Repo fiasco by Raspberry pi foundation
Armbian is the go to Orange Pi's OS...they do a VERY good job of building it! What is cool it comes stock with zram already running!
I have several Orange Pi's running at my house and they work well...however I would recommend heatsinks and active cooling...the processors do love to run a bit on the hottish side
Always do a full apt update and apt upgrade on a fresh install just to make sure all the packages are up to speed
That's because Armbian overclocks their CPUs by default. You can decrease the frequency back to normal in the settings; I always do whenever I run an Armbian image.
@@liquidmobius : These CPUs when they're at peak clocks will heat up. Nearly as much as the overclock. The only time you can kind-of get away without a heat-spreader or a sink is when you're running in Conservative or Low-power mode.
Ive started buying orange pi's and banana pi's for my projects.the built in emmc storage is handy too as it saves an extra purchase of SD cards. Their OS options are somewhat limited and many of them are EOL/EOS versions of debian or Ubuntu. It would be great if they had better support for newer kernels
And this right here? Folks? THIS is why I say what I say about these boards. With a Pi, you get a MODERN distribution with MODERN software. With these? X-D
You'll need to have my chops (I develop embedded Yocto Linux builds for the Fortune 500 under contract...) to maintain the boards. Seriously.
@@frankearl9285 or just use armbian. It supports even the original, eol pi.
In stock and half the price of a Rpi 4....plus the software benefits. This is actually a cool proposition!
Suuuuuuure
I bought one. It works great. The Orange Pi 5 is coming out now which is in the same price range or lower and has an even better processor. I ordered one from Amazon for eighty something dollars including shipping and TN sales tax.
Back in time I really loved the Orange Pi PC before the chip shortage and COVID. They were very cheap compared with Raspberry Pi. I could get a Orange Pi Zero 512 MB ram with power cable and a copper heatsink for approx. $12. With Armbian as OS, they were my favorite for small projects.
How I think the Orange Pi PCs with Allwinner H2, H3 and H5 SoCs are too expensive compared with the Orange Pi PCs with Rockchip and Allwinner H6 SoCs which cost a little bit more.
Having 2 extra cores is definitely an interesting proposition... I often use my rpi to build docker images for ARM for my company, because it's actually significantly faster than QEMU (like an order of magnitude faster). Assuming the software is decent enough (as others have said it does run Armbian), then you could add the rpi repos and create a franken-debian with more software available.
Excuse me for my ignorance, but does the source code compiled let’s say on Linux @ RK3399 with its all cpu specific customization and optimization will work on some different ARM (c) Cpu linux?
@@echoptic775 you can't use KVM to virtualize an ARM box on a x86 machine
They don't work QUITE the way you think they would.
If you're using low-power, mostly occasional web serving, yeah, it CAN make a difference. If you're doing compute heavy stuff, it falters in several differing ways and your mileage may vary. Some tasks will gain from the slightly higher clocks on the two A72 cores. Other tasks gain from having FOUR A72's instead of just two at slightly higher clocks.
It is for this reason that I claim that unless your Coreplex farm (The CPUs you have in the SoC) is one-for-one identical except for clocks, memory, etc. you really CAN'T make these comparisons except by trial and seeing if it works out better or not. It's also why I can't understand why people go on and on about being a "Pi-Killer". Nope. Unless you're talking a Xavier NX at Pi4 8Gb prices, you don't even remotely have one. You have something that works as a REALLY good alternative for application .
Great review! Keep doing reviews like this!
As always writing a comment to support the channel
OrangePi have a bad rep for software support.... It relies on community to do most of the good stuff
Yeah, looking at the download section on their website kinda gives that away.
Armbian...it seems to just work and work WELL
@@TechHut You mean the Google Drive section? ;P
Yeah, i had few zeros and especialy Wifi is PiB :)
Amazing test. Thanks a lot for this precious information, buddy! Hugs from Brazil!
The whole point of the raspi was low cost. You could run a full linux with gpios for 30-50 bucks.
While I agree that $100 is still a good value, it is not the Insane value that was the whole point of the raspi.
A RPi at any price, with no availability, is a non-contender.
Main problem with these - short support and no community really. Plenty of ploblems with stability, you end up (in best case) with armbian after a while and then it end up in trash. The community is a differentiator between usable miniPC and ewaste. With the RPi shortages, I've started to use cheap Celeron-based miniPCs with far more performance comparing to RPi and comparable power consumption. Plus far better support as it is generic x86-64 architecture :(
I had the same problem with the WiFi connection on my Orange Pi 3 LTS. The fix was to install an older version of Armbian than the current (I settled on Bullseye)
I love XFCE, but it seems like a heavy choice for this. MATE would have been better if they wanted a "standard" GUI, but iceWM or the like would have been a smarter choice.
What are you even talking about? XFCE might not be LXDE levels of light, but MATE is an entire Gnome fork. It's definitely not as heavy as you're making it sound.
The reason there's so much lag in his video is that he's likely using deoptimised drivers (basically x direct drawing instead of using a memory buffer), which would cause the video drawing to be cpu bound.
@@flynn3649 Proper video drivers and lower output resolution would help. But the desktop experience isn't what the Raspberry Pi (and its counterparts) is all about anyway. It's more about servers, IoT, and single-purpose devices with optimized, low resolution GUI.
I installed wayland and all menus slowdowns are gone. There’s a note about Mali T860 drivers support for X Org, they even dropped it in their proprietary drivers starting from some recent past
@@alx8439 Can you check if OpenGL acceleration works in Chromium by typing chrome://gpu?
I suspect it is a missing kernel component for Wi-Fi. I have the same error. I will give the Armbian crew a shout on it. Please donate to Armbian I do because of the great work they do to maintain all these SBC'S even if it's a few quid for a beer. I bought the same board, its quite an improvement from the last version
I've been really looking forward to this video! Thank you
Orange Pi looks interesting, thankyou. Those "Cable kits" though...
Screwfix or any good hardware store does exacly the same at a fraction of the price.
MT1, MT2 or MT3 sticky back PVC trunking is all those are really. screwfix does trunking in 2M lengths for a couple of quid
GREAT STUFF !! thanks.. with RPi being 1). HARD TO FIND, and 2.) WAY over priced now.. the Orange Pi and Banana Pi. are going to now take off I hope and get more support and community. !!
love to see more Orange Pi videos..
Okay there are a few very big issues with the Orange PI i should point out to folks.
1) Cooling is a big issue with these boards, out of the box there is no prebuilt cooler that will fit this board, all the cases use fans over the CPU but nothing to draw the heat away from the die; while thats fine if you know you want the fan directing cold air over the supplied heatsinks then it works. However if you accidentally wire the fan upside down, you're in for a throttled nightmare
2) There is no prebuilt cases or hardware available specifically for the Orange PI builds, that means you're going to have to either be able to 3d print a case that fits the unit or you're going to have to buy the plastic prebuilt and gasket/seal the clip together cases so that they don't warp with the heat, or as i experienced; crack when the case temperature exceeds the ambient temp.
3) When a new board is released, the old ones are no longer supported (see the Orange Pi Lite v Orange Pi Lite2), when the updated board was released, the older board stopped receiving regular updates, forcing you to use raspbian download directly from their site (since APT updates no longer work on the custom build) and losing a lot of the boards functionality (since changes to the OS are made to make it compatible with the board directly since the GPIO is not aligned to the same jumpers and several of the voltage points are on the opposite rails)
4) The micro USB input has a habit of being loose on the board, so unless you have a good soldering iron you're in for a bad time if it comes loose. This is a theme if you use any of the input/output ports on a regular basis for any length of time other than set and forget. At first i thought i might have just got a bad batch but after my 20th variation on these boards i can say it is the build quality overall
5) the GPIO is not 1 for 1 with a Raspberry PI. So while the board claims to be cross platform, you will need to individually jumper wire the 6 - 8 wires which are misaligned with gpio jumper cables which generally makes a mess when it comes to expansions that use the full 40 pin layout. I realise that there are adapters on aliexpress for converting those pins but i shouldn't need to have another piece on every unit just to convert the GPIO to align to the spec.
6) If you're looking to use the board to run any of the M.2 or hard drive expansion sets that worked with the Raspberry PI, you're out of luck. I've tried many times to get a solid answer from geekboard and other manufacturers of these types of expansion boards, and never had an answer other than its untested but should work (which is not an answer you want to hear if you know the GPIO headers are borked from the start). While it may be compatible with the Raspberry PI standard, the GPIO header pins being mixed up and the difference in the location of the different chipsets means the test pins used on many of those expansion boards don't work (since the part is in a different place on the PCB)
Other than those few issues, if you're running it as a server or as a standalone operation where you're using the GPIO to read sensors or control relays etc. you should find the board more than capable.
Would i continue to buy these boards, yes and no. Yes if my needs where strictly only for servers & adding zigbee home automations etc. But beyond that scope i think its safe to say that Raspberry PI & Rock PI are still king of the landscape.
This was a very useful comment, it should be pinned.
On cooling that's not a big issue,one can easily put a small heatsink from old routers,set top boxes, PC's... ,and when buying one already knows it doesn't have one unless you order it with,
On the GPIO's I think when buying it one shouldn't assume its a RPi for crying out loud! So no need to complain if you want an Orange you get an Orange not a Raspberry be prepared for the taste. It does what it's made for and I can't complain cause I knew when I bought it what to expect no catches, I can use it with my pi2 via ESP32 no problems and I bought an arduino 45 sensor kit that work on both ESP32 and OPi running Micropython
@@mars_official as for me, home automation a RPi or OPi is overkill, an ESP32 does it so well running a microdot async server
@@martinmtawali7359 yes but we're talking about a 1 for 1 replacement for a raspberry pi 4b here, which this post suggests can be achieved with an Orange Pi 4 LTS. Which is not entirely true. If i have a Raspberry Pi 4b and a Orange Pi 3 and i unbox and run them 24/7 as a server and within a year I have to unplug the Orange Pi 3 to check why the board isn't working, thats not exactly a good omen. The LTS series i haven't tried yet (they came out after I purchased the last lot of boards), so I'm going to try those because they have USB-C; but so far I've replaced all the Orange PI boards and none of the Raspberry Pi
The temps on the orange pi 4 will get hot. If you purchase one make sure to buy a heat sync to go along with it.
Could you try a Latepanda single board computer? i see almost no one try it for a NAS, PI Hole etc..
I got mine, can’t wait to try them out. 😊
The added clockspeed is interesting. I might try this to run a hypervisor/virtual environment to take care of some monitoring and network apps on my local network where the subpar video/desktop performance won't matter.
I know this is anecdotal but I've bought 4x arm based SBCs. Raspberry Pi 2, an OrangePi, a Cubie and an ODroid. Only Raspberry still works after 5-6 years.
A video about the VPN AP would be great. Looking forward to it.
first of, the gpu on the Orange pi is the same that was used on the Banana pi and it is horrible in comparison to the GPU on the raspberry pi 4, which is probably why you experience lag on the desktop.
second of, the raspberry pi might have a stock clock speed of 1500mhz, but that is mainly because it's sold without cooling, take something like the pi400 which comes in a keyboard and have passive cooling, i believe the stock clock speed is 1800mhz on that.
the raspberry pi can be safely overclocked to 2000mhz but cooling is recommended in order to keep the life span of the pi intact.
back to the gpu, it is probably the only thing holding back the SBC's out there, if the pi could get just a little more boost on the gpu side of things it would actually be a good cheap desktop pc, a raspberry pi 4 specs can be as high as, CPU 2100mhz, RAM/memory 8gb, storage either micro sd cards or simply get a usb connected nvme or sata slot.
the only thing i'd wish they'd do with these SBC's is upgrade the GPU, ofc the CPU matters as well, but the CPU is strong enough for what the use case of them are, on a computing side of things they do wonders, but on the graphical acceleration they are terrible and the only one just holding on is raspberry pi, and i think that is mainly because of how many people actually have been part of building up support for the raspberry pi.
you can't watch streaming services like netflix, disney and what ever from the get go, but search a little online and you find that people have already solved this issue, people have already solved how to run x86 programs on arm devices like the pi.
there is no way any SBC is beating the raspberry without upgrading the GPU.
Good thing you point out the GPU performance, do you think it's just weaker or it's a driver support thing? I heard some SBCs work better with android because they have full hardware acceleration support.
@@junovicz not actually sure, it could be driver support but i think it's mainly just the power of the GPU.
but i gotta admit, i love the Pi's for their low power consumption and the many different usage there already is for them.
most who have no idea what to do can easily find step by step guides to make almost anything out of the raspberry pi.
my personal use case after many years is still just a portable retro machine, using a power bank when travelling, able to run N64 and PSx games, what more do you really need ;)
@@gargoyled_drake yeah emulation on SBCs is pretty neat, pair it with a mini portable monitor + a gamepad and you got a very pretty machine.
I am interested in the firefly roc-rk3588s-pc. It is a whole lot more powerful than the Raspberry Pi 4. You should do a review on it.
Unfortunately all rk3588 based stuff is still very expensive. For 400+ dollar/euro there are so much better options.
The Raspberry Pi 4 had a CPU change due to a minor fault, which changed the speed from 1.5GHz to 1.8GHz, same as the Pi 400. The difference is the last letter in the serial number - B is 1.5, C is 1.8
Good to know.
Could you run Linux Mint on this board?
This was a good illustration of why the Pi is worth buying over the Orange variants. The latter have no real community support, and the software and drivers are pretty dire. They also lack libraries and hardware support for the video decoding, and OpenGL etc. So unless you just want to tinker with flashing an LED and a very basic desktop, they're not really worth it currently.
I think your info is a little outdated, and raspberry pi 4s basically don’t exist for any sane price right now. So it’s not like there’s a lot of good choices.
Based on Debian. Do you have to switch to a different user account just to use sudo?
The lag in the OS shell menu is caused by incredibly inefficient coding. A computer should not require extensive hardware acceleration just to re-render a menu. Even Windows 3x had similar menus which worked just fine with the CPUs at the time, it's now over three decades later and the CPUs cannot cope?
Blame it on Debian, but I personal like to use Ubuntu and Manjaro (Arch base).
I Think it was more to do with the video chip couldn't handle the 2k video mode he was in. I would say keep it at 1080p or less
Hi @TechHut , I just bought one and its on the way. Your review is good Thank you for your time doing this review but you havent mentioned how to Power Orange PI 4 LTS for 24/7 operation. Should I use drum Jack Power adapter with 5V 3A or 5V4A with Type-C Connection? Thanks which Power source did you used could you name a brand and model please
For the price where you offer the short cable ducts, you can also get a 2 meter piece in the hardware store.
the rockpi 4c+ was a better replacement imo, same connectors as the rpi 4 (so case compatibility is a possibility) and it has the same chipset as this device
Perhaps a little off topic but is it possible to add an led to indicate power is on? It’s for a custom case; I want an external light. If it is possible can you please point me towards instructions?
A review about the Orange Pi 5 would be great. We found also thatt Fedora runs on the Raspberri Pi4 and supports to official 7 inch Raspberri Pi touch display. Is nt that great? The PinePhone with Ubports could not convince us, but Fedora with touch display? A review about this would be great also. Thanks for all of your great reviews, Techhut.
Wow great vid,
bar the
So called cable tidy
for a few bucks i can go to my hardware store and get 3 mt long… and with all the same basic bits to go along with
i believe this a RPI competitor but some library from RPI not compatible with OPi4, like the DHT22 library
The biggest comparison I want to know between the Raspberry and the Orange is whether the Orange is affected by the chip shortage...
Could you explain to us why is the Orange Pi in stock available and the Rasberry Pi 4 and higher not? And second could you also test OpenPLC on OrangePi and CodeSys on OrangePi
I don't know what that error is or what network manager it comes with by default, but I'd try disabling it and installing NetworkManager and using its control software, nmcli. I don't know if it works on non-Systemd systems, as I've always ran with Systemd. But to enable it in Systemd, "NetworkManager" is case-sensitive; that was frustrating. `# systemctl enable NetworkManager` . You probably also have to `# systemctl start NetworkManager` if you don't want to reboot to turn it on. You can also manage your wired connections through it.
I am getting a orange pi 5 and I want to do time lapse with my printer can you do a video on that or do you have anything on setting it up?
Thanks for a good review of this Orange board. As other already mentioned, I would not buy Pi clone without an Armbian support for it.
How is the device tree overlay support? I recently bought a Libre Renegade and their GPIO device tree is minimal, quite disappointed with that purchase.
I'd like to see a video about the Orange Pi5 - and more RISC-V please.
11:54 looks like you used armv7 for the rpi and aarch64 for the orange? Consider redoing the rpi benchmark with aarch64 too.
Good point. Is cheating comparison xD.
This should be pinned
The Orange Pi suits me better as I have a headless server set up and no need for graphics and hdmi. Fast memory is far more important for a server
The think I find most frustrating about this and other RPI competitors is the lack of PoE.
OLD RPI4's are 1.5, New RPI4's run at 1.8!
For the low low price of $75 per GHz.
Where do I get the same keyboard? It's awesome!
i wish they made the 4 lts in 1 or 2 gb models. I dont do gui installs so i never really use more than 1 gb memory. the nest part of the pi is the community like he said, but the shortage is a pain. especially when i see the videos of people buying 100 to make some dumb project.
You can run pi 4s at 1.8 GHz no problem if you put a heat sink on them and it is officially support as in its set to 1.8 GHz out of the box with the raspberry pi OS, so that’s not really an advantage of the orange pi since the pi 4 can do that too.
I run my Raspberry Pi 4 4 gigs of memory Raspberry Pi OS 64 overclocked at 2ghz in a DeskPi case (good heatsink and fan). Usually runs in high 40 degrees to low 50 degrees C. Makes an OK desktop.
@@jeffreyalwine1990 I’m sure you can probably overclock the orange pi 4 too. My point was more that the officially supported clock speed of the pi 4 was increased to 1.8 GHz so it really isn’t an advantage for the orange pi as the official max clock speeds are the same.
What keyboard is this?
Think they have the Orange Pi 5 coming out with up to 32Gb ram (yes LPDDR4 ram), that's cool as hell
anyone knows when that is coming out? i wont mind waiting a lil bit more for a better spec board
@@Warmax356 late 2022, early 2023 but you know how it goes with release dates.
From the product page: "It can run Android 8.1,Ubuntu16.04,Ubuntu18.04,Debian9" - looks like this is abandonware. Come on, it's 2022, it's Ubuntu 22.04 and Debian 11 which are current now.
Does it work on Raspbian OS?
I was looking into buying a orange pi just yesterday they look quite capable
Got the Orange Pi Zero 2 which has a lot more power than the pi zero 2, but the support is so bad and the updates take years ... So I guess there won't be another orange pi in my life.
Please can you make videos for Orange Pi3b or 5 ...& how to custom compile Mali GPUs ... for Kodi & Kellyfin. VPU transcoding no viewer ever tells
My Orange Pi 800 doesn't have a browser. I was able to install Firefox, but how do I install Chromium that you show on your drop down menu.
Raspberry Pi 4 is overclockeable. Is the Orange Pi also?
4GB is not enough, 8GB is the absolute minimum acceptable. I don't think the mini PCI-E is compatible with SSDs either, so you'd need a PCI-E Controller for any kind of reasonable storage which almost certainly you couldn't boot from, so you'd have to mess with grub on the emmc or sd card for that. I guess they're okay for fiddling, but any serious use it's woefully inadequate.
Even overclocked, I can't get my Raspberry Pi 4 8gb to play TH-cam 1080, only 720 at 30fps.
Really? I got mine about a week ago and it can play 1080 just fine
@@nasateen13 Really? You get 1080 @30 right? That's what I was trying, and it could alllllmost, but a lot of buffering. Does it matter if I using Raspbian 32 bit or whatever it's called? When I got my Pi the 64 bit operating system wasn't out.
@@vadermasktruth Yeah 1080 no joke. I've only used stock Raspberry pi 64bit, I haven't used 32 bit yet. I also ran TH-cam out of curiosity on android PrimeOS and it too ran 1080, I have the cpu set to 2.3 ghz for PrimeOS.
It could be internet your connection?
Is it not the 6core version, I bought one 2020 ish, been bullet proof, except for getting libraries to run software meant for rpi.. (mainly gpio pin mapping, OPI & wiringpi for Rk3399)
Ty for showing headless.
To Manny reviews like this ignore headless, where SBC are at the most likely use case
will this run fpp for xlights and a lightl show
will it work with linux cnc?
I have done no raspi, arduino whatsoever, but installing fresh
xface was really a bad choice
I would go for a window manager if I were them
and also a question whoever answers:
what's wrong with no gui on these devices?
I get that folks want gui on pcs and all, but gui on these things don't make any sense to me
is this a good board for running ubuntu server or other with docker and some containers ? just for learning things nothing major, maybe a NAS ?
The very first word in the description is a typo.
Which OS has the best support for the WiFi chip on the Orange Pi 4 LTS ?
I don't trust these RPi clones, Banana Pis gave me magic smoke around the time we still waited for the RPi 2 and the RK3366 seems to be hit and miss as far as support goes.
As far as SD Card read and write speeds go, I recently set up DietPi on my old RPi 2 which I use in favour of my NAS and the Pi 4 I added to it because this old SBC can still be empowered from my router's USB port which comes in handy in my country with prices for electricity going to explode.
DietPi itself is pretty amazing because it uses the RAM as a RAM disk of sorts to reduce use on the SD card and because it actually adopts the idea Raspbian's devs came up with when they introduced raspi-config by distributing their own dietpi-config that allows to even more things on the TUI without the need to ever set up config files or use the term like a champ.
The OPi4 certainly would benefit from it as well.
Hi need help there a way to make retroconsole I habe the same orange pi 4lts I dont found to much support for retro game
I beilieve that tge current linux kernel (5.x) isnt compatiable with orange pi devices which might be the reason you are getting that error. I know that for the orange pi 3 lts the only way to get wifi working at this time is to use armbian cli the debian version (bullseye) not the ubuntu version (jammg)
You could also try Manjaro since they recently said they added support for the orange pi 3 and 4 lts. Not sure if wifi works on there though
4b also has npu (ai) built in but lacks the usb 3 port I believe, that's if its still available..
Why wouldn't they match the form factor of the old 3b+? There are so many cases and accessories still being sold for the Rpi3 series! This is fine for people who leave a naked SBC sitting on their desk as their daily driver PC - you know, nobody.
Curious to knows what's holding them too.
finally, a cheap way to make a linux tablet. I'm gonna use a 1080p touchscreen with this
Are you actually sure it's orange pi os? The website says it says coming soon. Anyway. I just pre ordered the orange pi 5. RP availability is yeah and the scalper pricing is absurd.
The error looks like kernel module error
Maybe (if available) try a different kernel module for the wifi
$72.99 + $9.99 shipping + tax = Price gouging. Exploiting the shortage of Raspberry Pi.
Can you make a tutorial how to install window on this?
Compared to the pi400 or an slightly overclocked Pi4 the little extra performance doesn't justify replacing them with this one? But sure if you already don't have anything current gen pi this might be an option if you are not to dependant on the user base which means being a linux geek.
Pine64 is the only company actually trying to compete with software support against RPi (not likely achieveable, but at least they're *trying*) so I think they're basically the only competitor worth a damn.
The RK3399 is a little behind now with the RK3588 out now.
cool. but it would be good to see 8Gb ram version, because some of us might want to install ubuntu on this Orange Pi.
Raspberry pi 55$?? Lol, dont be silly... more like 150$for 4gb. And orange pi 4 lts 4gigs is 100$
Yeah MSRP are so far from real prices on shelves.
Can it be a Kodi box?
uhm.. your sponsor sells way to expense cable trays you can get for a few bucks in 2 meter length in your local harware store... what you showed were k25, and k40 cable trays.. quite
standard in the electrician world... even the items that came with it are simply available in the hardware store.. so i would not recoment that kit because for that price you can get 10 boxes of that stuff.
but the review is very nice!
Whats ur keyboard?!
That is the worst delay I've seen on any Pi like device. Even the half baked Armbian on my Dev term was better. I would look and see if dietpi works on that board, I have it running on an older RK powered device and it works reasonably well. If not try Armbian and see if that processor has better support now. You may also want to try Manjaro, I'm pretty sure the Devterm guys have the RK3399 into the main line arm port with GPU acceleration, I know the Devterm specific version plays videos fine on my A06 (RK3399).
It would be cool to see someone installing an OS with proper GPU acceleration support.
I don’t understand a thing yet I watched it with popcorn
big caveat emptor. I've bought several OrangePi models over the years and are far more finnicky than the Rpi. Issues with power, GPU, awfully updated and poorly documented OS images, and so on. The Zero ones are the worst, they tend to just die without any warnings
Zero models die quickly? Good thing you point that out, given the price it's kind of expected, but good to know.
Did you compare the power draw of each? Less power draw = more battery life. That on it's own wins the competition. Raspberry Pi 4, the power is 2.875 Watt when idling. Orange Pi 4 LTS, the power is 4.22 Watt when idling. Raspberry wins that competition. How many other comparisons did you decide to miss? I mean, why would you not consider the power consumption?
there is no beat from rpi unless you build same thing and sell it cheapr. there no need make it faster and ask more money. try make under 35buck SBC that use lower power. we have rpizero thats enought supposed be 5buck but reality 25
System hang on that resolution.Yea rocky just pump that res maybe to 8k.