Orange Pi Zero 3W is Raspberry Pi Zero-sized SBC powered by an Allwinner A733 octa-core Arm Cortex-A76/A55 SoC paired with up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, a microSD card slot, and footprints for eMMC flash or UFS storage.
Other features include a 4K-capable mini HDMI port, two USB-C ports, one with DP 1.4 Alt mode, a MIPI DSI display connector, two MIPI CSI camera connectors, a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 module, and a 40-pin GPIO header.
OrangePi Zero 3W specifications:
- SoC – Allwinner A733
- CPU
- Dual-core Arm Cortex-A76 @ up to 2.00 GHz
- Hexa-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ up to 1.79 GHz
- Single-core RISC-V E902 real-time core up to 200 MHz
- GPU – Imagination Technologies BXM-4-64 MC1 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.3, OpenCL 3.0
- VPU
- 8Kp24 H.265/VP9/AVS2 decoding
- 4Kp30 H.265/H.264 encoding
- AI accelerator – 3 TOPS NPU
- CPU
- System Memory – 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 12GB, or 16GB LPDDR5 at 4,800 MT/s
- Storage
- MicroSD card slot up to 128GB
- Footprint for optional 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 64GB eMMC flash module
- Footprint for optional 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB 2-lane UFS 3.0 module
- Video Output
- Mini HDMI 2.0 port up to 4Kp60 resolution
- 4-lane MIPI DSI connector
- USB-C port with DisplayPort Alt mode up to 4Kp60
- Support for dual independent display setups
- Camera interface – 2x 4-lane MIPI CSI connectors
- Networking – Dual-band WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 module (Cdtech 20800D8-00) + IPEX antenna connector
- USB
- USB 3.1 OTG Type-C port with DisplayPort 1.4 Alt. mode
- USB 2.0 Type-C power port
- Expansion
- 40-pin color-coded GPIO header supporting GPIO, UART, I2C, SPI, and PWM.
- PCIe Gen3 x1 FPC connector
- Misc
- Power and BOOT through holes
- 2-pin fan header
- Power Supply – 5V/3A via USB-C connector
- Dimensions – 65 x 32 mm
- Weight – 14 grams
Orange Pi plans to provide Orange Pi OS (Arch), Ubuntu, Debian, and Android (15) images for the Pi Zero 3W, but all links on the product page currently point to empty Google Drive shares. They should become available in the next few days or weeks.
The Orange Pi Zero 3W is very similar to the Radxa Cubie A7Z introduced last year, but replaces the micro HDMI port with a mini HDMI port and LPDDR4 with LPDDR5, and adds one MIPI CSI camera connector, one MIPI DSI display connector, as well as a footprint for an eMMC flash. We were previously promised mainline Linux support for the Allwinner A733 SoC, but it’s clearly not happening when looking at recent Linux changelogs, including the one for the just-released Linux 7.0.
The 16GB version is not available yet, but Orange Pi released pricing for the Zero 3W SBC as follows:
- 1GB RAM – $25
- 2GB RAM – $35
- 4GB RAM – $50
- 6GB RAM – $60
- 8GB RAM – $80
- 12GB RAM – $99.90
- Cooling fan – $5.99
Those prices seem reasonable in a world where the Raspberry Pi 5 8GB now sells for $175. You can purchase the boards with the cooling fan on AliExpress and on Amazon with a small markup.
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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I just got a sales flier from Micocenter. The Rpi5/16GB is on *sale* for $199. What a world AI has brought us.
[ there were discussions about ‘shareable’ (or even socketed) memory between computing devices, but only with low(er) interest on that detail, thinking about the RAMs unutilized from older hardware (>=(LP)DDR3/4, >=4GB?)? (thx) ]
Merci beaucoup Monsieur Jean-Luc,
Tres Bien Orange PI Zero
Bonjour
this is a great little chip for video inference, too bad the camera stack Sucks so bad outside pi world
3A is not little… and no audio jack…
And no Ethernet.
Who gives a s*..* about the Ethernet when you get an Octacore 4-5 times cheaper than the way slower crappy pi5
Cdtech 20800D8-00 seems to be AIC8800D80.
It’s a shame that kernel support has seemingly not happened. I guess big customers don’t care about upstream support, they just want the vendor to supply a relatively recent kernel with patches applied
Someone on GitHub ported drivers from the vendor kernel to mainline 6.18. It is also possible to run 7.0 with minor changes. In addition, it is also easy to run gpu, npu, usb, all of which are supported in the current Linux kernel
>In addition, it is also easy to run gpu, npu, usb, all of which are supported in the current Linux kernel
Could you explain how to easy run gpu on current (6.6) Linux kernel because all available Linux images does not support gpu at all and OpenGL fallback to software render. Also no DRM/KMS support.
I have been following Orange Pi for some time. I even bought one of their boards, once upon a time. But it is an empty promise. Great price, great specs but the software and support are just not there. They put out a board, some software (NONE is available for this board right now) and then they change to a new model in 6 months and then the previous board is a footnote. No more software updates. Lots of shine, but no guts! I would love to have such a small, capable board. But I won’t buy. It is a waste of my money.
There are usually at least one or two strong efforts by community members but you raise a very valid concern.
I share the exact same experience and opinion. I precise I had envisaged twice Orange Pi for business projects with 1+ year between both, and each time arrived to the same conclusion. It’s a pitty as the hardware looks good.
Same experience. Even fresh available Linux images half backed and most staff does not work at all, like GPU (OpenGL, EGL, DRM/KMS)
If the 16 GB version is ever available, I’ll eat my shoe
Alas, software is always the downside of these Allwinner boards.
Raxda’s equivalent to this board is still lacking in software.
I don’t have much hopes about orange pi either.
Mostly a phantom release. You can’t get the cheapest models as usual. No EMMC variant available (optional means nonexistent, apparently). The 4 gb model is the only one you can get, with a nice 6 USD extra (56 USD, plus shipping). At 60 USD, the 6gb model should be the sweet spot, but again, you can’t get it anywhere. And that’s almost the same price of the Orange Pi 5 not long ago. Those prices only look good now because of how everything went to hell.
Let me guess, sold out everywhere on the planet.
Good manufacturing processes mankind have.