Last Updated on January 11, 2025 by pg@petergamma.org
Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org
struggled with this question in recent years.
Biblioman09 from Spain is as far was we know the most profound Orange Pi 5 reviewer in the world
Here his profound Orange Pi 5 playlist:
click next to see the next video of the list.
We think it is worth to keep an eye on the Orange Pi 5 and what works with it in case the Raspberry Pi 5 will go up to 400 USD through the stocks. The Orange Pi 5 is around 90 USD on Aliexpress. It seems currently somehow to be linked as far as price is concerned to the Raspberry Pi 5.
An affordable alternative from which we think it is worth to keep an eye on is the Orange Pi 3 and Orange Pi zero 2.
In the armbian forum, the Orange Pi 5 is alive:
https://forum.armbian.com/forum/206-orange-pi-5
And seems to be the Orange Pi which is most alive SBC of the Orange SBCs.
Here is the armbian discussion about the Orange Pi zero 2 w:
https://forum.armbian.com/forum/140-orange-pi-zero-2
But this device seems not to be very completely supported yet.
The armbian community remind us a bit of the Pine64 discussion about the Pinephone. There seem to be quiet a view posters which are interested in Orange Pi s . And the are usable in principle, but are they more than demo devices? Do we see those not only rarely in the shops, as compared to Pi s? And if Orange SBC would be good, whould they not picked up for instance by Digitec Switzerland? But Digitec did not, and Digitec did also not pick up the Pinephone to sell it in their shop.
If we compare this to the Raspberry Pi forum, we can see that there is a lot going on every day.
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/search.php?search_id=newposts
I recently found there a discussion how to build a print server from a Pi. An instruction or a discussion I found quiet helpful. Such discussions for applications are quiet rare in the armbian forum.
The big advantage of Rasberrry Pi OS over armbian is that Raspberry Pi OS has been debugged over the last 10 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_OS
A good Raspberry Pi alternative are also the used Raspberry Pi s on eBay and Richardo Switzerland. If you do not need the latest model Raspberry Pi s are there always on stock.