Orange Pi 5 Pro Review: Best Bang For The Buck

The world of single-board computing has been dominated by the Raspberry Pi since the first model was shipped back in 2012. But Raspberry Pi isn’t the only name in the game. Since it made SBCs cool, a number of competitors have popped up, driving innovation forward. One of those brands is Orange Pi, owned by the Chinese company Shenzen Xunlong Software.

Orange Pi released its first SBC in 2014, hot on the heels of the original Raspberry Pi, and has been churning out powerful alternatives ever since. Its latest offering is the Orange Pi 5 Pro, which competes directly with the Raspberry Pi 5 and manages to outperform it in many areas. So, what is the latest Orange Pi capable of?

Orange Pi 5 Pro 16GB LPDDR5

The Orange Pi 5 Pro is one of the most powerful SBCs in its class and is a viable, if not better, alternative to nearly every use case for a Raspberry Pi 5.

Pros

• Small form factor
• Powerful RK3588S chip
• Full-size HDMI ports

Cons

• Very little community support
• Lack of accessories
• Clunky documentation

Prices, specs, and availability

If you want to pick up an Orange Pi 5 Pro, your two options are Amazon and AliExpress. On Amazon, it will cost you $128 with free delivery. If you pick it up from AliExpress, you’ll pay slightly less at $109 with $12 shipping.

When it comes to specs, the Orange Pi might be the best SBC in its category. It runs on the Rockchip RK3588S 8-core processor at 2.4GHz and has 16GB of LPDDR5 memory (8GB and 4GB versions should be coming soon), so you can have all the tabs open.

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Design and features

Before I go any further, I just need to say how much I hate the blue LED on this thing. It may be the brightest LED I have ever come across on an SBC, and it flashes all the time. Thankfully, there’s at least one case out there that you can print which will mitigate this issue. So far, I’ve just been putting a piece of cardstock over it so that it doesn’t blind me.

Other than the LED, the OPi5 Pro has a lot of goodies packed onto its tiny form. Right off the bat, I love the full-sized HDMI ports. There are two of them, one is HDMI 2.1 and the other is 2.0, which support 8K and 4K video, respectively. There’s also a 30-pin MIPI display port if you’re trying to make something a bit more bespoke with your Orange Pi. There are also two MIPI ports for cameras on the back of the board, and on the front there is a microphone and a 3.5mm audio jack.

When it comes to storage, you have lots of options. I’ve been using the MicroSD card slot so far, but the Orange Pi also has a PCIe 2.0 ×1 M.2 slot for an NVMe or SATA SSD card, an eMMC socket on the back, and a place to solder an SPI chip if you prefer (although you can’t have both SPI and eMMC).

The Orange Pi supports Bluetooth 5.0 and BLE, Wi-Fi 5, and has a gigabit ethernet port. The OPi also supports power-over-ethernet. I have read that it is compatible with the Waveshare PoE HAT for the RPi5 (both have 40 GPIO pins), but you’ll have to snip some of the internal USB pins to make it fit, but I’m not sure that it’s worth it.

At the heart of the OPi5 Pro is the Rockchip RK3588S CPU, the same chip used on the Orange Pi 5 board. The integrated GPU is the Arm Mali-G610 that supports OpenGL 3.2 and Vulkan 1.2. The RK3588S also has an integrated NPU that can run at 6 TOPS, which isn’t a lot, but it is a lot for an SBC.

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Software and performance

Orange Pi makes seven “official” operating systems available on its website, some of them with Orange Pi branding. Orange Pi OS (Arch) is probably the most official of the bunch, similar to how Raspberry Pi has a Debian build optimized for its machines. There are also first-party builds of Orange Pi OS (Droid), Orange Pi OS (OH), OpenWRT, Ubuntu, Debian, and Android 12.

Linux-based operating systems

Of the official OS images, Orange Pi OS (Arch) is the most user-friendly. Orange Pi OS (OH) is optimized for multi-terminal functionality and Orange Pi OS (Droid) has some issues which I’ll get into shortly. OPi OS (Arch) has a fully fleshed out GUI with all the features you’d expect in a general purpose OS. It even has a pre-installed app store with a bunch of Chinese apps you’ve likely never heard of, as well as open source classics like VLC and Audacity.

Orange Pi’s official Debian build is one generation removed from the latest version, but if you’re coming to Orange Pi from Raspberry Pi, this will be a soft landing for you since it works almost exactly the same. I even managed to get Pi-Apps up and running (with only a few warnings) and was able to use it to install some other apps.

Between the two, OPi OS (Arch) has a slight edge in terms of responsiveness. Neither of them could handle full 4K video without dropping more frames than a clumsy glazier, but I didn’t have any trouble playing 1440p videos at 60fps.

One of the biggest issues with both images was the lack of standard package lists. I had to edit the apt/sources.list file on both builds to be able to install things. One thing I did get up and running was SuperTuxCart. It didn’t run very well at peak settings, but ran great at lower settings. One thing I couldn’t get running was RetroPie. I was confounded by the lack of expected libraries.

Android-based operating systems

I have to start by saying how convoluted it is to flash either the OPi OS (Droid) or Android images onto an SD card. One option involves using a USB-A to USB-A cable which I don’t have. The other method involves downloading a tricky-to-find application from the Orange Pi website that’s entirely in Mandarin by default and can only be changed to English by editing a file. Thankfully, the instructions in the OPi5Pro manual cover the process. Unfortunately, those instructions are over 100 pages deep into the manual. Still, to Orange Pi’s credit, it works.

Orange Pi OS (Droid) is a horrible experience. Worse than slow, everything lags and windows/apps will randomly close without warning. The OS longs to be on a touch tablet, but the Android interfaces that pop up waiting for touch input are out of proportion to everything else on screen. There is an app store, but all of the UI was in Mandarin and I couldn’t get any apps to install. I tried to sideload some apps, but that didn’t work either. Orange Pi OS (Droid) is not worth the trouble to install.

On the other hand, the stock Android 12 image was wonderful to work in. It comes with the Play Store already installed, which makes adding more apps much easier than on OPi OS (Droid). Things do run a bit slower on Android than they did on the Linux builds, but that discomfort was offset by the familiarity of working with Android, albeit with a mouse instead of direct touch.

Everything was terrible on the OPi OS (Droid) build, but I didn’t have any issues at all with the Android build. Videos ran at the same quality that they did on the Linux builds, and the gamers will be happy to know that the OPi5Pro has no problems playing Wii games on Dolphin.

Competition

The top competition for the Orange Pi 5 Pro is probably itself. The Orange Pi 5B uses the same chip and comes in at around the same price. The biggest differences are the 5B has just one HDMI, two USB-A ports, two USB-C ports (one for data, one for power), two MIPI display ports, and three MIPI camera ports. The NanoPi R6S also has the RK3588S chip and costs about the same, but with its three ethernet ports, has a different use case.

Of course, most people are going to be looking at the OPi5Pro as an alternative to the RPi5. The Raspberry Pi is cheaper than the Orange Pi and easier to get your hands on, but it loses out in most other comparisons and doesn’t actually compete on the same level at all.

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Should you buy the Orange Pi 5 Pro?

If you’re in the market for the best SBC you can buy for around $100, there isn’t anything better than the Orange Pi 5 Pro as far as specs go. If you’re good at solving computer-related problems on your own, definitely get the OPi5Pro. If you’re not comfortable goofing around on the computer, in particular Linux, you might want to pass this one up since Orange Pi doesn’t have the same community support that Raspberry Pi has nurtured over the years, and you’ll be left to your own devices to solve problems.

There also aren’t a lot of first- or third-party accessories for the OPi5Pro yet. There aren’t any HATs that are made to work with it, or bespoke heatsinks or fans. In some respects, the OPi5Pro is an SBC in search of a community to support it. If these things are important to you, this isn’t the SBC for you.

But, if you are willing to get your hands dirty and experiment a bit, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Orange Pi 5 Pro for your next project.

Orange Pi 5 Pro 16GB LPDDR5

The Orange Pi 5 Pro is the best SBC you can buy at around $100. Unless you need the massive community around the RPi5, you’ll probably be happier with the extra horsepower on the OPi5Pro.