The Orange Pi 3 Is a $30 Single-Board Computer with an Allwinner H6 SoC

Shenzhen Xunlong Software has recently launched their new Orange Pi 3 single-board computer, which offers superior specs over the Raspberry Pi 3 at the same $35 price point. This is the company’s latest SBC to sport the Allwinner H6 SoC, following the Orange Pi Lite 2 and the Orange Pi One Plus, but offers more features than its predecessors.

Under the hood, the Orange Pi 3 is equipped with a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53, Mali-T720 GPU, up to 2Gb of LPDDR3 RAM, and up to 8Gb of eMMC (optional). Connectivity options include 4X USB 3.0 ports, USB 2.0 host port, micro USB OTG port (with power), HDMI 2.0a port, mPCIe 2.0 slot, and 3.5mm audio jack with CVBS AV. Networking is done through an Ampak AP6256 module with 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0, and Ethernet port.

Rounding out the Orange Pi 3 feature set is a 26-pin GPIO header, 3-pin header with UART (debugging), IR receiver, power button, and power/status LED indicators. On the software end, the board is compatible with the usual operating systems, including Android 7.0, Ubuntu, Debian, and other Linux flavors; however, images for those are not yet available.

The current price list for the Orange Pi 3 depends on the options — $29.90 with 1Gb RAM, $34.90 for 2Gb RAM or 1Gb RAM with 8GB of eMMC, or $39.90 for 2Gb RAM and 8Gb of eMMC. It should be noted that CNX-Software found the board’s PCIe controller doesn’t map the PCIe address correctly in Linux-based operating system due to quirks with the H6, so drivers OSs will need to be modified.