Orange Pi PC Plus is a SBC based on the Allwinner H3 Sistem-on-Chip. I got it last year to see how it compares to the Rapsberry Pi and to use it for different projects, because my RPi 2 was busy being my media center running OpenELEC.
I’ve bought the “Set 1” for around 30$, which comes with a power cable, since the micro USB is used for On-The-Go. Build quality is good, everything works out of the box. That is, after you add in the micro SD card with an OS.
Overall it’s pretty packed:
- On-board 8GB of EMMC Flash
- Wi-Fi
- Infrared
On paper everything looks solid: you get more stuff for less money, when comparing to Raspberry Pi 3. How is it in terms of actual usage?
Hardware: pretty power hungry; it requires the power supply to provide a minimum of 2A, while 3A is recommended (I didn’t get the chance to confirm that this is true yet). Adding heatsink is a good idea too, because it gets quite hot to the touch after running for a couple of hours. Still haven’t tried the on-board Flash, because I’m yet to decide which OS to use, but more on that later.
Software: at first you look at the PC Plus OS download page and think “Wow, that’s a lot of options! Android, all flavors of Ubuntu, even Debian!” Then you try to download a couple of them and get disappointed really fast. Most of the download links are dead, Android requires a bit of hassle to install (you’ll need a program called PhoenixCard), but once you get it running… Good luck figuring out how to switch the UI from Chinese to English and removing all the pre-installed bloatware.
In the end Armbian is the only good solution. Though there is still no Linux kernel version 4 for the desktop variant. And also the situation with drivers for Mali 400 is yet to be fully resolved.
Conclusion time: if you’re planning on running headless (no monitor, no keyboard), then the Orange Pi is pretty good. If you’re just starting out or planning to plug in a display, then just get a Raspberry. With RPi you get a huge community and overall the added hassle is not worth the extra couple bucks you save.