USB-C is much better than USB-micro. Mating cycles differ significantly (connection amount before replecement). C is designed 10000 (10 k) and micro about 1000 (1 k).
I have this SBC with the expansion. Orange Pi has launched the Zero 3 which also has the H618 SoC and supersedes(?) the Zero 2, and it also goes up to 4GB RAM. According to the sunxi project the differences both SoCs are minimal, the H618 has better support for newer versions of Android. In fact, the H61X SoCs were designed for low cost set-top boxes and the Android images provided are Android TV versions, not full Android. I haven't tried it yet, so I can't comment. Performance is fairly good in any of the OSes, but it lacks support from 3rd party OSes like Armbian. I've tried the Orange Pi OS, Ubuntu Desktop and Debian Desktop images (all kernel 6.1). I don't remember having issues with Orange Pi OS but I didn't spent much time with it, I prefer Debian. What I noticed on all of them is that at 4K (UHD) HDMI output the desktop is very graphically glitchy. When I resized to FHD the glitches went away, I think that even basic GPU support is not quite there yet. There are some other minor bugs, like the WiFi strength indicator only works ok after you click it, despite being connected. Changing keyboard layout to my native portuguese layout in the terminal console in Debian was a bit involved, despite everything in the orangepi-config utility being set correctly. Native XFCE preferences won't work at all. Hope Armbian picks up support for the H618 based boards like the Zero 2W and Zero 3, having 4GB of RAM is great. I'm sorry but I can't get myself to trust the Orange Pi images (being updated from repos in China...). Mainline kernel support is being worked on and probably we'll have more choice in the near future. As is, I rather place my trust on the Radxa Zero 3W despite being more expensive and more difficult to buy but the RK3566 is much better supported.
single board computers are still my top favorite thing to see as always and The fake explaining computers better back off commenting on my comment with the same comment over and over again spamming pin every time (i am referring to the scammer)
- Sir. Thank you for reviewing these, amazing. Technological achievements............the power of a full "global system computer" at the price of a chocolate bar.....Chromium to do that world wide web.......... .......it's a great technological achievement Thanks to you..... sir.......!!!
I was hoping for a comparison video like you did with the raspi zero 1w and rpi zero 2w. Thanks for the vid tho. And in your opinion, which is the better board?
There must be many RU-vidrs capable of conveying the same information. I doubt that any could do so in such an engaging way that Chris does it: polished, well paced, and spiced with dry humor (humour). And, praise the Lord, no background music!
It is exciting to see so many new boards similar to the Raspberry PI. When the Orangepi 800 first came out, I picked one up. It was fun to play with, but had many annoyances... programs were broken in some way, no way to transfer most images to the EMMC reliably, Manjaro would break when you updated the OS, etc. We are 2 years along, and the images available have not been updated, and the issues still exist. There seems to be a trade-off between new and available boards, and future support. Just picked up an Intel N100 mini desktop with NVME for just over $120 that has give me no issues. Still interesting though. Love this channel. It gives me an 80's vibe that makes me smile.
A consisten failing of Orange Pi and the reason they can never be the market leaders; is their poor documentation and support. They host the OS files on Google Drive, which quickly rack up bandwidth usage and get blocked by Google! You will be hard pressed to find working links for OS downloads for their older boards. They never reply to any support emails either. How expensive will it be for them to host their files on AWS? or even a cloud HDD from Western Digital? Come to think of it, how are they accessing Google Drive in China?
Hello Mr Scissors! Long time no see! As you say Chris software is everything. The Ubuntu is nice but nearly 2 years old, which is a lifetime in SBCs….😮
The age of the official distro is disappointing, for sure. I've had success with the DietPi for this board. I use it to run a Snapclient for a multi-room audio setup. The added antenna makes for great connectivity compared to the vanilla Pi Zeros I have running in other rooms.
I get the vibe the cool kids are getting into peer-to-peer LoRa mesh networking which is just screaming for a BBS-style app, these little boards may well become the hero of the day.
@@loginregional I missed BBS, the UK had nowhere near the same scene as the US. We had Cefax =), did love the BBS ANSI art tho. Localized mesh networks with no gateways, gatekeepers or bills could be quite useful and fun. Long Range Radio can't handle much by today's standard, but olde world BBS on the other hand. Right I'm off for a game of Legend of the Red Dragon
That's actually a good idea for a video. Perhaps Chris can do a video on peer-to-peer LoRa mesh networking. As for the other commentators, they apparently don't understand the bandwidth constraints of a LoRa network. BBS makes sense for such a network.
@@ominguti6345 im petty sure you need to add an overlay for it, but i dont know if there is one already created or not. OR if there is a option inside "orangepi-config", i would look in there first.
I have the 1 GB version of this board running Pi-hole in headless mode. The only issue can be seen at the 6 minute 41 second mark. If you look closely at the mounting hole near GPIO pins 1 and 2, there are three surface mounted chips. Be very careful when using spacers as they can crush these chips when tightening the case screws. I had to cut away part of my spacer to avoid these chips.
We got retropie working on this board. I was hoping cloud gaming would work based on specs. But it lags. Another situation of lack of driver support. The raspi pi zero2w can run Dreamcast games just fine. This model lacks 3d acceleration. It’s more powerful than raspi zero 2w but hits and misses in performance
I am "of a certain age" and can confirm that making an LED blink with a processor board is tremendously exciting. Even more exciting is making a few of them "chase" like KITT from Knight Rider. Go on, Make the noise with your mouth, you know you want to.
Exactly where orangepi lacks, and Not only only on this model... Is the random Google drive where you are supposed to download a *SERVER* OS!!! They need a proper download site.
Orange Pi hardware is nice, but Raspberry Pi still has better documentation and software support. The RPi Zero 2W isn't quite what I'm looking for yet hardware-wise, but I eagerly await its successor.
I am always astounded when I see a computer, with the specifications such as this, at this price and this form factor. I know I should be used to it by now, but I still find it amazing.... and I must thank you for your work in bringing these to us Chris, you have helped popularise these little marvels to all our benefit..
I think we're both "veterans" in computing and, if anything, I love the fact that I never cease to be amazed by the ever increasing power and smaller sizes of computing devices. Up to a few years before 1992, the first computer that I used to connect to BBSes and then the Internet was a Commodore Amiga - for dial up Internet it was an Amiga A1200 running at 14 MHz with 8 GB RAM using the "iBrowse" web browser. One of my favourite PCs (as a Thinkpad-collecting Linux bloke) is a Thinkpad T22 from around 2002 (a decade after the A1200) that has a Pentium III CPU running at 700 MHz and 512 MB RAM - so 50 times the CPU speed and 64 times the ram of that Amiga A1200, and that was 22 years ago! I didn't own the T22 from new, I bought it in a pile of broken laptops from "everyone's favourite auction site", repaired it and now I use it once or twice a week to program shell scripts on my server via SSH as it has a great keyboard and is a "long lost" way of doing distraction-free computing. I'm very lucky to have "the childlike eyes" of an old computing bloke who has never forgotten the importance of the word "perspective". And I find it utterly shocking (but in a nice way) that I can pick up a used HP, Lenovo or Dell SFF PC with a third or fourth generation Core i5 or i7 CPU and 8 GB RAM on "that auction site" for less money than I'd spend going out for a Chinese meal of an evening - any one of which makes a fine platform for Linux or BSD as a daily driver. At the same time, it's saddening to see people rushing like lemmings into immediate upgrade mode just because Microsoft has churned out another Windows version or some greedy company has churned out another buggy and derivative "game as a service" without even understanding why they're doing it - albeit I can snap up their old hardware cheaply when they get rid of it. Thanks for the effort you put into your content too - I'm still very much a Linux bloke but do have a few BSD systems kicking around as well.
Hi, Chris, as usual a very good review. Thanks. However, I suggest you record the phrase "the GPU isn't enabled" 'cause I don't recall an SBC that did so you can just play it when ever you review an SBC.
Are there actually any non-pi SBCs with GPU drivers? They always advertise them in the specs but then neglect to tell you there's no way to use them...
Hard to believe their own os doesn't work well! Lol. Did you test and Pi OS versions? Would love to see video of that. Thanks for this video. I have 2 1g and 2 4g versions of the Pi 0 2w. Just gave up when their own os wouldn't load.
I've been playing with these boards for few weeks. Be aware these boards are hit and miss. They have a batch on the market that the board overheats and just dies on you with default settings. If you have a board like that, and you ran out of the return window, your only option left to make it stable is to add an active cooling fan.
I look forward to Sunday morning Explaining Computers, this channel has become the new Bob Ross painting program for me, ( compliment ) very good video, thanks for making this video, I look forward to the next one, see you again next Sunday.
"Hello, world" assumes all sorts of connectivity already working in the machine. Making a GPIO pin toggle is the real starting point for an SBC. If you can't do that,you really have a Stupid Broken Computer. :-)* It's odd that something as simple as a terminal isn't properly supported by a supplied OS. That would seem to be a pre-requisite for further development.
Thanks. Mr Scissors gets a cameo while Stanley the knife doesn't. Your eco system and distro needs to be strong enough and big enough to provide any missing pieces of firmware
********* Hello. I don't know English well, sorry for the mistakes. I've been following you for many years. I'm interested in mini computers. Can you install windiws 10 or 11 on Orange Pi Zero for the sake of experimentation? Is this possible? Thank you.
Dear sir, why don't you make videos for GPU compilation stuff ( bit advance though) ... if we xan have GPU / VPU stuff ... KODI running here is fantastic
Hi Chris, thank you for this nice review, got mine Opi Zero2W last week and i managed to get android tv 12 running, and it runs great! but i do want to learn more about GPIO led programming. i want to add some leds to indicate powerup, booting kernel and sd activity in this version. i am a beginner in SBC's so a tutorial how to use these GPIO pins and also how to attach a SPI display to it. on a raspberry pi it is not so difficult to do this, but Orange Pi is an other story. Greetings from the Netherlands!!!!
I know this is an allwinner chip, but i really hope that at least rockchip CPUs will see mainline linux support one day so then we won't have to deal with downloading ISO's from google drive. That being said, these boards are sometimes necessary because the anemic specs rpi puts on their machines (512MB ram, really?) are simply not always enough.
Thanks for this, especially Mr Scissors brief cameo. I'm glad that you tested it doing things that are beyond its intended capability. I don't know why one would want to run a graphical desktop, but it's great that Ubuntu is capable regardless. I may consider one if booting from SSD is possible. It might make for a nifty tiny NAS device.
I just knew about this board this morning while googling for RP Pi Zero W 2 :D. It's much attractive than RP one with 1GB and USB-C ports. I just need a simple setup with Ubuntu so performance is not a big issue in case it's worse than RP Zero W 2 :). Very impressive, thank you.
how has yr Ubuntu setup being faring w the Orange? I seriously considered it because of more RAM & USB-C as well & opted to get a RP Zero 2W due to the stable ecosystem of software & community support. I didn't want my 1st experience w an SBC to be tainted by things breaking all over the place like I see in this video!
@@udance4ever I bought an Orange after a few days I watched this video (and commented above) but I have been busy since that day so I just opened the box to check items inside. Actually it's packaged well and I like it more a few RP Picos I bought in the past :)
@@tiendq hey you get around to playing with yr 🍊? I got my RP Zero 2W & while I knew it going in - 512MB doesn't seem practical for anything but embedded use. once you add a desktop (or any kind of graphical front end like ES in my case - I didn't realize how much memory it eats), u have like no memory left for apps! I prolly will order an Orange Zero 2W soon just to test it out :)
Very nice looking little board, shame it is let down by the software at the moment... but I imagine that will improve with time. The expansion interface is interesting, I had assumed it was a camera / screen interface until you discussed it
It seems a little better than the previous Orange, again the mostimportant aspect in my humble opinion is the software support. Otherwise it's ust a little paperweight. (Good for a tissue?) Also, one would think that the namesake's own OS would be the best and most stable when a product is put out to the world. (Unless you are using the Microsoft business model!)
They missed a trick -- the board itself should have been orange. Branding is important, after all. But otherwise, it is a nice board. I really like the expansion board with all the connectivity. And at $11.99, it's not a bad price. As you point out, some of the software is a bit dodgy. But really and truly, this is not supposed to be a desktop substitute. Plus, (and this is a HUGE plus), the board is AVAILABLE! All in all, this looks like a promising piece of hardware. (PS: Hello, Mr. Scissors! I hope you and Stanley are doing well.)
Ha. The W stands for wireless? I thought at first that it was designed to only draw 2 watts. I am looking for a tiny form factor sbc that can run linux but that draws as little as possible power as possible for battery-powered applications.
If my memory serves me right, this board has identical specs as Orange zero3. 2w has better form factor and better connector layout. With zero 3, i always get the feeling i break hdmi usb-c 6 pretty cramped.
This board is awesome, but the voltage regulator is kind of sensitive to high currents on the USB port. One of mine died a few hours ago after running an APRS decoder for a couple of hours. The culprit was probably the USB audio dongle used. So, beware and have fun!
It's a shame that even the native OS is just not up to par. Also, I'd actually love to see another project with an SBC. A good little project is always fun!
Then build your own OS. You can start by learning how to build Armbian the way you want to or, as I do, teach yourself have to build Gentoo Linux across many different platforms and even build the kernel the way that you want to. These aren't consumer devices, they are hobbyist boards - you get the best out of them by learning to do a bit of "DIY" on them.
@@gloiloidn5752 Good luck! There is a very steep learning curve to overcome with Gentoo Linux but the rewards come later when you start to be able to make use of its power. I started using it back in 2003 and it is still my main OS to this day - but then I am an incessant tweaker!
While the two boards were lying side by side, I had the weird notion of hooking the one's GPIO header to the other's GPIO pins. I wonder if there's any usefulness in that, or if it would just loop-short?
No spotted Rabbits in this edition, but nonetheless, a very informative look. What I'm really interested in is getting something to run CERTBOT without tying up physical resources -- an entire dead laptop (I have a few) just to get ACME certificates every so often is a little nutsoid, it's not like it's 2015 when I had a dozen machines at my disposal. And of course, my plans for the N100M are still on the horizon. And greetings to your inanimate friends, Stanley, Mr Scissors: may all your anti-static bags be easily opened.
Excellent video, as usual. I really like the reviews of the SBCs. One thing that you did not explained, unless I missed, what is the 16 MB of flash used for? Is it a boot monitor of some kind, or can it be programmed to do that? Thanks again for another video.
Great review, Chris! It is an exciting little board. I've had mine for a while but options were much more limited for OSs until recently, it seems. It's also too bad OrangePI doesn't feel like using encryption for their website.
A great review as always and a good little SBC too. It does stink hard that you can't even open the terminal on Orange Pi OS without getting blacked out. That's really silly and I hope that it gets patched quick. Also, this is the first time I'm hearing about 1.5 GB RAM! I had no idea that was a thing. And most importantly, WELCOME BACK, MR. SCISSORS!!! WE'VE MISSED YOU!!! 🎉
Just in case anyone is wondering (I was trying to find out this before), the Argon Pod case fits well with this board, luckily you can hide the antenna inside the plastic lid so it's a very clean way to use it. You just need to be careful with the thermal pad, the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W is thicker than the Orange Pi Zero 2W so you need to use a thicker thermal pad or an extra thermal pad to fit it. You also have to be careful not to bend too much the board so I use more thermal pad on the bottom of the board to compensate the pressure on the top, that's the only inconvenience. I don't have many complains about this board it's very low power, in idle it draws around 1W, I've even been using DietPi OS on it and it's perfect!
Seems like the best usecase is for the GPIO and sensors and maybe a server version of ubuntu if that works well and saving the graphical apps for an N100 or bigger PI.
Great to have another video with Mr. Scissors back at work. I agree that Orange Pi model names and numbers defy explanation. For instance, the OP 800 is closest to...the OP 4LTS in specs and GPIO setup. Even runs Armbian for the 4LTS. Go figure.
These boards would go mainstream if their marketing teams could actually articulate specific use cases on what they do better than a comparably priced Raspberry Pi.
Why do they need to go "mainstream" when they are "hobbyist" boards? You're getting confused with the "anomaly" that is the Raspberry Pi as the single range of SBCs that have a huge amount of support and a large community to turn them into "near consumer" devices - because anything that you, as a newbie, could want to do with a Raspberry Pi will have a YT video or a web site article to follow for you to do it. But these boards were not initially released to be retro gaming platforms or desktop PCs - they were aimed at industrial applications and giving school kids cheap computers on which to learn programming. Sure, the "market" has dictated other uses for these boards since then (like retro gaming and desktop replacements) and that, in turn, has driven advancement in CPU power and memory on these boards - but most industrial applications or kids writing in programs in Scratch don't really need much beyond the original Raspberry Pi boards released back in 2012.
@@j_h_o I am an engineer and a "techie" and I have been for more than 40 years - I programmed my first computer in assembly language back in 1982 and I have had "the computer bug" ever since, both as a hobby and in my work. So, yes, I wouldn't put me in charge of marketing either - I'd be bored senseless within minutes and it's why I deliberately avoid sales meetings and events at work because there is no situation more hideous for me that being in the company of a group of drunk sales and marketing people.
Hey! Something you miss; The OPi Zero 2w runs on DDR4 RAM instead of DDR3 on the Zero 2. And there's also an OPi Zero 3, with the same factor as the 2, but with the same hardware as the 2W and gigabit Ethernet. To add more to the confusion 😂 I'm using this Zero 3 to run Klipper on my 3D printer and frankly it's an overkill.
I just picked up one of these (2 GB model) to run my octoprint server for my 3D printer. I don't have it running yet, but hopefully soon. Thanks for the review and information about the device. Seems like a nice little board to run as a headless server like I plan to do.
As usual, this is a great board, but the software support isn't very good. And I don’t think that the situation will improve much, just as it did not improve for all previous generations of single-board computers from this manufacturer. However, there is hope - community patches may appear in the AUR. Personally I have and use a couple of Orange Pi Zero just because they are the cheapest SBCs. They work well enough for my purposes.
My Blue Iris camera page has become my go-to SBC burn-in utility. On Ubuntu it works just fine, even runs multiple 1080p h264 streams, no problem. And it uses hardly any CPU, never gets hot, and doesn't draw any significant power; so something weird is going on there. On Arch OS it plays OK, but eventually locks up after about ten minutes or so, and it DOES get hot. But the rest of the OS is broke anyway, so... And I couldn't get Debian to install for some reason. It kept asking for a second disk? Maybe I'm just clueless! lol. And, what can you do on Android, without thumbs? I got this board because I want to put a camera in a metal building, where currently resides an RPi ZeroW that can't keep a connection. Plus I want something light weight that can run OpenCV on a battery pack -- because who doesn't want solar powered internet-based object tracking and face recognition in their tool shed, am I right??!! Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out the software (I'm hardly the python guru). It's been sitting on my coffee table for weeks, while I watch RU-vid videos! :)
