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The Orange Pi 5B is a single-board computer that features a Rockchip RK3588S processor, support for up to 32GB of RAM and plenty of I/O options including an HDMI 2.1 port, Gigabit Ethernet, and several USB ports.
It’s a lot like the Orange Pi 5 that launched late last year, but the new model adds a few things. It has built-in support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 and in addition to a microSD card reader it comes with an eMMC module for 32GB to 256GB of built-in storage.
Prices start at around $90at AliExpress or $100 at Amazon for a model with 4GB of LPDDR4RAM and 32GB of eMMC storage (note that both stores charge extra for shipping from China, so you may have to factor in another $10 to $15 to ship to an address in the United States).
You can also pay extra at Amazon for up to 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and an optional 5V/4A USB Type-C power supply. While the board’s makers mention that it should also support up to 32GB of memory, there aren’t any models with that much RAM available for purchase yet.
Or if you don’t need the wireless capabilities or built-in storage, you can save a few bucks by picking up the original Orange Pi 5 – a 4GB RAM model is available from Amazon for $83.
Each model of the Orange Pi 5/5B is powered by the same RK3588S processor featuring:
- 4 x ARM Cortex-A76 CPU cores @ 2.4 GHz
- 4 x ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores @ 1.8 GHz
- Mali-G610 MP4 graphics
- NPU with up to 6 TOPS AI performance
Other features include a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port (with support for DisplayPort 1.4 video output), a USB 3.0 Type-A port, and two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a MIPI-DSI display connector, MIPI-CSI camera connector, 3.5mm audio jack, onboard microphone, and 26-pin header.
Supported software includes builds of Android 12 and GNU/Linux distributions including Debian 11, Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 20.04, and Orange Pi OS (which is the name used for the company’s custom operating systems based on either Arch Linux or Android).
The board measures 100mm x 62mm (about 3.94″ x 2.44″), making it a little larger than a Raspberry Pi 4, but significantly more versatile.
via CNX Software
Why did they copy Raspberry Pi’s name?
Because it’s a similar product and they can. There have been Chinese companies doing this for almost as long as there have been Raspberry Pis.
It doesn’t matter how fantastic the hardware is if the software cannot run it because the drivers haven’t been developed.
Isn’t Armbian pretty well-supported on the Orange Pi offerings?