Orange Pi 4A is a new low-cost credit card-size single board computer (SBC) powered by an Allwinner T527 octa-core Cortex-A55 processor with a 2TOP NPU and offered with either 2GB or 4GB RAM.
The board also comes with multiple storage options: a 128 or 256Mbit SPI NOR flash for the bootloader, an eMMC socket for up to 128GB modules, an M.2 socket for NVMe SSDs, and a microSD card slot. It’s also equipped with four USB 2.0 ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, three display interfaces (HDMI, MIPI DSI, eDP), two camera interfaces, and a 40-pin “Raspberry Pi” header. The Orange Pi 4A is somewhat equivalent to an octa-core Raspberry Pi 3/4 with some extra features.
Orange Pi 4A specifications:
- SoC – Allwinner T527
- CPU
- Octa-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ up to 1.8GHz (four cores) and up to 1.42 GHz (four cores)
- XuanTie E906 RISC-V core @ 200MHz
- GPU – Arm Mali-G57 MC1
- VPU – H.265 4Kp60 decoding, H.264 4Kp60 decoding, H.264 4Kp25 encoding
- AI accelerator – 2 TOPS NPU
- Audio DSP – HIFI4 @ 600MHz
- CPU
- System Memory – 2GB or 4GB LPDDR4/4X
- Storage
- 128Mbit SPI flash by default, option for 256Mbit
- eMMC socket for modules with 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB capacity
- M.2 M-Key (PCIe 2.0) socket for NVMe SSD
- MicroSD card slot
- Video Output
- HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60
- 4-lane MIPI-DSI connector
- eDP 1.3 connector
- Audio
- 3.5mm headphone jack audio input/output
- Digital audio output via HDMI
- Camera
- 2-lane MIPI-CSI camera interface
- 4-lane MIPI-CSI camera interface
- Networking
- Gigabit Ethernet port
- Wi-Fi 5.0 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE via Ampak AP6256 module
- USB
- 4x USB Type-A 2.0 ports including one (top left) used for firmware flashing
- 4-pin header (unpopulated) with USB 2.0 for expansion
- Expansion
- 40-pin color-coded Raspberry Pi-compatible GPIO header with GPIO, UART, I2C, SPI, PWM
- 4-pin ADC connector for 2x ADC up to 1.8V input
- Debugging – 3-pin serial debug header
- Misc
- Boot, Reset, Power buttons
- Power LED
- 2-pin battery connector for RTC
- Power Supply
- 5V/5A input via USB-C port
- 2-pin 5V output header
- Dimensions – 89 x 56 mm
- Weight – 52 grams
Orange Pi says the 4A SBC supports Ubuntu, Debian, and Android 13. The documentation is still a work in progress as while there are links to a user manual, schematics, tools, OS images, and SDKs/source code hosted on Google Drive all those are empty. We were told the Orange Pi 4A would get mainline Linux support at the Orange Pi Developer Conference 2024, but I can’t find any reference to T527 in recent Linux changelogs, and only a minor change for A523 (its tablet equivalent) in Linux 6.11.
Having said that, it’s not the first Allwinner T527 SBC we’ve covered as the Avaota A1 open-source hardware SBC was introduced in April 2024 and ran/booted Linux 6.6 at the time. MYiR Tech also launched an Allwinner T527 system-on-module that was eventually integrated into a digital signage/smart display board, and Boardcon has its own SoM and devkit based on the processor..
Official pricing for the Orange Pi 4A is $35 for the 2GB RAM version and $40 for the 4GB RAM variant. Provided the software works, that’s pretty good value considering the features offered. The Allwinner T527 SBC 2GB RAM and 4GB RAM models are listed on Amazon without pricing, but you can also purchase the board on AliExpress for the stated prices plus shipping and taxes if any.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Strange to see this shipping with Android 13 considering I just recently picked up a Teclast P85T tablet which has an A532 and it was shipped with Android 14.
Even if Teclast’s marketing folks call the SoC wrongly it’s an A523 and when these thingies appeared in the wild they shipped with Android 13, see e.g. https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/1168710
As such either the Allwinner SDK Xunlong uses or their ‘documentation’ is outdated.
Yeah I just assumed it’s some unlisted variation but looking in cpuz confirms it’s an a523, revision r2p0.
Browsing through Geekbench results is funny since it seems Allwinner’s Android 13 SDK relied on kernel 6.6 while the one for Android 14 is based on 5.15 🙂
Can you confirm this kernel version on your tablet?
Yeah you called it right although it’s Android 14, the kernel version is 5.15.119 and the security update is April 5, 2024.
Thanks for checking! Funnily Allwinner’s Android 15 BSP for the sun60iw2 family again relies on the very same 6.6.46 they used with sun55iw3 / Android 13.
I feel like Allwinner is completely out of the game nowadays. They’ve long been focusing on the low-end and low-cost, for example using Cortex-A7 or A53 but that was when their competitors were not significantly better. Nowadays they’re shipping 4 low-end A55 associated with 4 very-low-end A55. That’s already quite irrelevant for a tablet where these cores would suffer by trying to operate a browser, and it’s hard to imagine why anyone would like to embed their chips in other products considering that they’ve just disappeared and do not offer a trustable upgrade path for a long term partnership. Even… Read more »
I just picked up a Tab A7 Lite for $25. 8x Cortex-A53 (1.8/2.3 GHz). Performance is not too hideous for what I’m doing but you better believe I block all ads.
I assume all budget tablets of the future will have at least a 2+6 (A7xx/A5xx) config like the Unisoc T618 that Samsung used. The only problem is that Arm has neglected the Cortex-A55/A510/etc “efficient” cores so much that MediaTek, Qualcomm, and others are using all fast cores instead and getting better efficiency.
The A55 is quite efficient and a good chip with much better memory performance than the A53, making it a good fit for I/O and networking stuff (like the RK3568). It’s just that it’s a bit tight for heavy CPU-bound tasks like today’s browsers. A tablet would need at the very least one performance core.
On the rk3568 vs. the sun55iw3 family, both are fabricated in 22nm while the A523 is newer by 3 years (so newer codecs and longer software support), is faster and, as far as I can tell, is cheaper. Browsing wise, it’s actually pretty tolerable for me using Mull (a firefox fork so hardly ideal) with ublock origin for news sites and such. Though admitadly, I don’t use it for browsing at all but for what amounts to a glorified stopwatch / desktop calculator… And I did replace the default quickstep launcher with Kiss so the RAM usage dropped while there’s… Read more »
> Nowadays they’re shipping 4 low-end A55 associated with 4 very-low-end A55
They’re shipping since few months ‘already’ sun60iw2 silicon (A733 with 6 x A55 and 2 x A76). And as expected single-threaded performance is 2.5 – 3 times higher: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/8784512?baseline=8477102
Ah nice, I wasn’t aware! That’s definitely an improvement, then.
Having said that, it’s not the first Allwinner T572 SBC we’ve covered as the Avaota A1 open-source hardware SBC
You have written wrong accidently
It’s allwinner T527, please change
😊
Hello, where on the board is this?
Power Supply
5V/5A input via DC jack
Thank you.
It was only in my imagination…
It’s 5V / 5A DC via typec