Orange Pi Zero 2W 1.5GB LPDDR4 Allwinner H618 Quad-core Cortex-A53 Single Board Computer with 16MB SPI Flash, Support WiFi and BT5.0, Development Board Run Android 12 TV/Debian/Ubuntu(Zero 2W 1.5G)

Initial impression. A tiny thumbstick sized sbc with 1 gb ram, quad core A53, USB c, gpio, power efficient, and 4k output for 20 bucks in 2023?? I was shocked that they matched the size of the small raspberry pi zero, so I ended up ordering 2 so I could put all my 3d printed cases to use... Plus to compliment my other orange pi projects such as the orange pi 5, and OP zero 3 which this is based off. Also, pleasantly surprised that they included a breakout radio antenna and gpio pins in the purchase, considering raspberry pi would have charged extra.In the past I have owned every generation of raspberry pi, and I'm comfortable enough to state that OP has evolved into an acceptable alternative fruit for IOT, and maker projects. I'm so impressed that orange pi is offering these at such a price point, with solid hardware, and shocked with a full working OS on day one. This is a big step for orange pi, as their team is putting together very competitive and reliable products, with a growing community behind them and not sending out half baked products like their competition (radxa!). Therefore catching up to raspberry pi, offering a super product at lower price points. In my opinion beating the raspberry pi zero 2w which this board mimics is hard target as those boards are powerful for headless projects with a long supported community. Based on my 2 days with it, This beats it because it has an efficient core for a snappy video display, with more ram and overall built better, and seems to run well even without a heatsink, but would advise just to put on to give it long life. So far the orange pi OS desktop is snappy for playing around with( as I was able to run a single browser and still used only 75% of the 1 gb ram). I only wish their built in app store was more reliable. Regardless it seems to be stable enough to run well with the 1 gb, so headless will be no problem down the road... Like with the other Orange offerings the community(Armbian are you listening??) will probably have a Headless OS build soon.I use the sister product OP3 zero with Android using almost the same specs, and makes for a wonderful 4k plex media streamer. I would splurge for the 2gb version if you plan to run these as display desktop, but for most 1 gb can get you by if you don't need the GPU... On the other hand, The GPU g31mp2 found in the allwinner h618 should be plenty for a pocketable emulator, and this could be where this board finds the greatest support community. As I continue to learn more about it's capabilities, I will continue to update. I hope this helps this review helps folks who are considering trying other SBC fruits, as the first impressions for this board is very good.

software support is not stellar (first 2 armbian images would not boot, 3rd time is the charm). However the AllWinner datasheets are fantastic, you can program DMA, UART, SPI, I2C, etc all directly from the info in the datasheet. just mmap /dev/mem and start setting registers. Kernel support and DTB overlays are iffy, however OpenGL support seems stellar /dev/dri/cardX shows up perfectly. I2S worked out of the box for me. Idles much cooler than RPi chips. Pin compatibility with rpiX is so/so, a couple pins may be different, check the datasheet. GPIO rise and fall times are not stellar (IMHO). I'm a bit spoiled from using rpi5 with nice clean crisp 20Mhz GPIO. You may need to add a schmidt trigger to get nice clean GPIO edges. Power draw is a little high in the default config. Read the datasheet on the PMU to turn off un-needed components.

Used this to add klipper to my ender3 v2. Worked with debian 12 bookworm (terminal mode, no gui) although i had to try a couple times. Will need a mini hdmi adapter as i didnt find a way to configure wifi and ssh before compiling the image like you can on rbp. I did try a desktop version orange pi version and could barely browse youtube

Make sure it fits your requirements, it does NOT support Pi cameras. The connector onboard is NOT for CSI-2. The software support is terrible, too. The official Ubuntu and Debian builds were still from 2023 (as in 2025). The community doesn't help much either since it isn't very active. Armbian seem to be the only option, and it works great. But again, this is not my choice if I need to use GPIO, I2C, etc. You are limited to the USBs.

Would have to say. Orange Pi is the most difficult, oddball SBC on the market. They support almost no hardware, config tools are almost useless, and the ports for screens and cameras does not work with anything or anyone elses devices. Oh. And they do not have customer support. It is non existant. Really disapointed. Should have bought a raspberry pi. Orange pi can go straight to hell..... i just skipped the board on the river by my house. I feel much better now. ..!., ,.!..

Since that RPi Zero 2w sold out at Microcenter and RPi 5 not available at that time, I decide to try out Orange Pi zero 2w which have more memory and processing power (quad core 1.4ghz). It's well worth money. The only thing I had trouble with variant of Linux (Arch, Debian, and Armbain and lastly Ubuntu). Tried Arch and it runs smoothly and quick, Debian runs good but screen bit blurry, Armbain failed to boot because it's for Orange Pi Zero, not Zero 2w. All 3 of Linux distros failed to download softwares that I need because server at "HaweiCloud.com" are lacking updates which needed for Orange Pi... Also Widevine will not install for Chromium nor DRM for Firefox.Because I want to watch Netflix (to test out how it runs on it). Lastly installed Ubuntu from Orange Pi download and ran good. Was able to get it updated and installed several apps except Firefox. I just found website that will allow me to install custom Linux with all options, https://uthings.uniud.it/building-mainline-u-boot-and-linux-kernel-for-orange-pi-boards .. Orange Pi will not boot Raspbery OS because of boot file are not the same. You will have to create or download one made for Orange Pi just like non-Raspbery signal board computer that have different chipsets, each of them have its own U-boot file.. Try download and install aarch64, not Armhf file. It runs on 64 bit. It will be great project to work on...