The Orange Pi 5 is a credit card-sized computer that beats the Raspberry Pi by several notches when it comes to performance, memory and connectivity. And although it will be more expensive than these, we hope that it will be available to all users.

We have already discussed several times how the success of the Raspberry Pi has prompted several Chinese integrators to enter a market segment that they handle like no other. Logical considering that most of the components are produced in this country. If last week we saw the UP 4000, a Raspberry Pi clone with an x86 processor, now comes something new The biggest competitor of the British company in the field of minicomputers single board.

Orange Pi 5, good level SBC

Shenzhen Xunlong, the company behind the development of the Orange Pi, which is “cool” in the market as a complete PC with a keyboard (Pi 800), now announces a new SBC board, the most powerful it has produced so far.

This is largely due to the ARM processor Rockchip RK3588S which acts as the main engine. This is an octa-core SoC (four ARM Cortex-A76 cores at 2.4 GHz and four Cortex-A55 cores at 1.8 GHz), Mali-G610 MP4 graphics and a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for AI.

Its memory capacity is four times that of the Raspberry Pi 4 and can reach up to 32 GB LPDDRx4. Its connectivity is also excellent, with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, support for microSD memory cards and a large number of ports:

• 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C (powered and DisplayPort 1.4 supported).
• 1x USB 3.0 type A
• 2x USB 2.0 type A
• 1*HDMI 2.1
• 1 Gigabit Ethernet LAN.
• 1 x 3.5mm audio jack.
• 1 x DC power jack (supports 5V/4A power supply)

It also has a built-in microphone, and header 26-pin, MIPI D-PHY and MIPI CSI connectors for cameras or displays. The Orange Pi 5 measures just 100mm x 62mm and weighs 46 grams. Basically, it will have official support for Android 12 and Debian 11.

No price was provided, and it’s clear that it will cost more than the Raspberry, but Shenzhen Xunlong tends to set very competitive prices for all the hardware it sells, and it will certainly be the cheapest board with this Rockchip SoC.