Hello everyone and welcome to the workshop! Today
I'm going to compare the three main small factor SBCs available in the market right now to
see which one I'm going to be using in future projects. I'll be taking a look at the Raspberry
Pi Zero 2W, the Radxa Zero 3W, and the Orange Pi Zero 2W. I'll try to keep them all straight
since the names are so close together. To make it all a little bit more fun, I'll be grading
these boards in three different categories: Ease of Use, because I already have a tendency
to start projects and never finish them, so a board that's easy to use will help me complete a
project, for once! Ease of Use will also include a grade for OS availability, because having
different OSes available can make or break a project. Then, I'll take a look at documentation. I
want to spend time working on my project and not hunting around for answers in a Discord server
somewhere. The third category is performance. These things are computers after all, so we'll have
to grade their performance. But the board with the most processing power might not be the perfect
board if it lacks in other areas. A bonus category will be accessories. Which is also very important.
If you're just trying to knock out a project, using accessories can get you faster to the finish line.
All of the boards I'll be comparing today have the same zero form factor. Raspberry Pi introduced
this very popular form factor when they launched the Raspberry Pi Zero back in November of 2015.
Although the zero boards don't have the same IO as a full-size SBC they're very popular because
of their minute size. Before we compare the boards in these three categories let's take a look
at their basic specs first we have the most recent iteration of the Raspberry Pi Zero board,
the Zero 2W It has a quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 clocked at 1GHz it only has 512 MB of RAM. You
heard that right not even 1 GB of RAM. In fact, this is the board with the least amount of
RAM I'll be comparing today. It has a microSD card slot, 2.4 GHz wireless LAN Bluetooth 4.2
and BLE with a built-in antenna. Mini HDMI, Micro USB ports for connectivity and power. It
also has a CSI camera connector and the usual 40-pin GPIO. It measures 65 mm x 30 mm which are
the same dimensions for all of the boards will be comparing today, since they have the same form
factor. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2W costs only $15 and it is the cheapest of the three boards. Moving
on to the Radxa Zero 3W. This is the newest board from the three that we're comparing today and also
the one with the highest specs. But, you know, a loaded spec sheet doesn't necessarily translate
to better performance or best ease of use. The Zero 3W has a RockChip 3566 on board which is
a Quad-core ARM Cortex A55 CPU clocked at 1.6 GHz also has an ARM Mali G52-2EE GPU. It comes in four
different RAM configurations with 1, 2, 4, and 8 GB of LPDDR4 RAM. The version I have here
is the 2 GB. In addition to the microSD slot also has different versions with 8, 16, 32 and 64 GB
of EMMC. This one is the 16 GB version. It has Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.4 and BLE with an onboard antenna, and
also the option for an external antenna Micro HDMI capable of 1080p at 60 frames per second USB-C for
connectivity and power. Just like the Raspberry Pi it has a CSI connector for camera and of course
the 40-pin GPIO the prices for this one ranges from $16 to $49 depending on the amount of RAM
and the EMMC. The version that I have here is the 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of EMMC and I bought it for
$31. Finally, here are the specs for the Orange Pi Zero 2W. It has an Allwinner H618 chip which consists of
ARM Cortex A53 CPU clocked at 1.5 GHz and it has integrated Mali G31 MP2 graphics. It also comes
in four different RAM configurations with 1, 1.5 2 and 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM; MicroSD card slot and no
option for EMC on this one it has Wi-Fi 6 so 5 GHz Bluetooth 5.0 and there's no mention of BLE in the
specs but I suspect it does have B capabilities Mini HDMI capable 4K 60 fps. So, that's crazy for
such a small board to be able to do 4K60. It does not have a camera connector and instead it has
a 24-Pin expansion connector where you can add Ethernet, additional USB ports, and buttons. They
have this funky little expansion board available for sale but I do not have this expansion board,
so I will not be testing it. Pricing ranges from $20 for the 1 GB RAM version all the way up to
$32 for the 4 GB version. The version I have is the 1.5 GB and I paid $24 for it. One thing that
is interesting about this board is that it is available on Amazon US and you can get it with
free Prime shipping, if you subscribe to Prime, of course. Which might make it cheaper than
the other boards if you consider shipping. Links below! So let's take a look at the very first
grading category in my very scientific grading methodology. Ease of Use. In this category I'll be
taking a look at how easy it is to get the board up and running, the available documentation and
how compatible it is with other hardware Let's start with the creators of the Zero SBC form factor, Raspberry Pi. Getting the Pi Zero 2W setup was a breeze. I fired up Raspberry Pi Imager
I selected the Pi Zero 2 as my board. I was a little bit surprised to only see the Legacy versions of
Raspberry Pi OS which is based on Debian Bullseye. I was expecting to see Bookworm available. And not
even the light version for the Zero 2W is available on Bookworm. Other than this minor hiccup, setting
up my user, remote SSH access, and Wi-Fi credentials was super simple with Raspberry Pi Imager This
makes it for a great user experience. Especially when setting up a board headless, meaning without
the use of a monitor, keyboard, and a mouse attached to the Zero 2W. This couldn't have been easier,
so I'm giving the Raspberry Pi 2W 10 points. Well, let's check out their online documentation. And
spoiler alert, Raspberry Pi has the best documentation out there. Documentation is thorough, accurate
and easy to understand even for someone just getting started in the SBC world. I mean take a
look at the section on how to use their camera modules and the Picamera software. This is just
beautiful. It has hardware information great detail, software information with good examples and how
to get started. This is exactly what I needed So, I'm awarding them another 10 points for their
thoughtful documentation. Great start for the Rasberry Pi Zero 2W with 20 points on the scoreboard!
Let's see how the Orange Pi Zero 2W fairs in this category. First thing I noticed when I landed on
the Orange Pi's website is that they don't use encryption. Alright, let's check the calendar real
quick, yep we're in 2024! How is this still a thing?? Finding the official OS images for the Zero 2W
was easy enough and they have a decent selection of available OSes. It looks like the Orange Pi
OS is based on Arch Linux and they also have a standard Android image. So that's really good. You
know what's not cool, though? The fact that you have to download the images from a Google Drive folder.
At least the folders are organized and I was able to find the image that I wanted for my board, And
hey, take a look! it's Bookworm, the newest version of Debian. So, that deserves some credit. There's also
a third-party image that is Raspberry Pi OS... This is just someone making Raspberry Pi OS available
for Orange Pi boards and it's not one of their first-party images, so keep that in mind. And
fun fact, you can use Raspberry Pi Imager to flash any image to any SD card, even if it's not for a
Raspberry Pi board. So that's what I used to get started on my Orange Pi Zero 2W. I just selected use custom,
and chose the downloaded image. After flashing the image, I wanted to check in the documentation
how to set it up headless. The user manual is a 331 page PDF, which is kind of a pain to navigate
around and use the search function. It's clunky but it's fine. I was able to find the information that
was looking for, like the default password. Setup, though, wasn't as straightforward as the Raspberry
Pi. I was not able to change the username and the password before the first boot and there is no way
to configure Wi-Fi credentials without the use of a monitor and a keyboard. So the Orange Pi Zero 2W is
definitely losing some points here I noticed the document ation has these weird call outs like
this one saying if you can't log in using the default password you shouldn't suspect that it
has a different password. Okay?! I'm awarding them eight points for ease of use. I had to subtract
a couple points here and there for Google Drive situation and not being able to change login
and Wi-Fi credentials without a monitor and a keyboard. I'll give them an extra point for
OS availability, though. I think that's fair! Documentation deserves a 7 because it's
a little bit better than just average. So tallying it up: 16 points for Orange Pi. Not bad! Moving
on to the Radxa Zero 3W! There are only two OS options available: Debian and Ubuntu. So that's a little
bit skimpy. This is odd because on the product page they advertise extensive open-source OS support
but that doesn't seem to be the case for the Zero 3W This is a fairly new board, though, so hopefully
there will be more options available in the future. I first thought they were going to get low
marks in this category but after flashing the SD card I was pleasantly surprised to see options to
change the default login information and the Wi-Fi credentials before the first boot. After flashing
the OS there is this first boot configuration file on a partition that's accessible even on Windows.
So, that's really cool! Installing an OS and getting the board up and running was pretty easy.
I'll give them 9 points for ease of use. Keep in mind flashing an image to the onboard
EMMC is not as easy as the SD card. It involves installing a driver, downloading a proprietary
flasher utility, a bootloader file, and pressing a physical button on the board while you connect
it to your computer. To be fair, though, this is the case for most SBCs that have an onboard EMMC. Even
the Raspberry Pi CM4 works in a similar fashion So, it's getting 4, for worse than mediocre
documentation. Not a good start for the Radxa getting only 13 points in the first round. Can
it recover though? Alright, let's take a look at performance. This will be pretty simple. I'm going
to run a CPU Benchmark and assign 10 points to the best performing board. All the other boards will
get a percentage based on their benchmarking score I hope that makes sense. The Radxa Zero 3W edged out
in this test and takes the top step with 537 on the CPU Benchmark. Good job Radxa! You earned the 10
points on this one fair and square. Maybe they can recover from the initial low score. We'll find out.
Orange Pi takes the second place with a score of 504 this is only 6% worse than the Radxa board
I'm rounding things up a little bit just to make it easier and I'm giving Orange Pi 9 points
for performance. The Raspberry Pi lagged quite a bit behind on this one, getting a score of 361. That's
only 2/3 of the performance of the Radxa Zero 3W. So that means the Raspberry Pi is only getting 6 points
for performance. I know that most people are not going to be using this board as a desktop computer,
but I feel like I have to bring this up. The desktop experience on the Orange Pi Zero 2W running
Debian is much better than the other two boards There's no lag using the menus or moving screens
around and it has a good browser experience. It's really cool to see a board this small that can be
used as a desktop computer. Again, most people are not going to use it this way, but I think it was
worth mentioning. The Experience on the Radxa is not as good as on the Orange Pi, with some visible lag.
You can see it just scrolling through the menus and it feels sluggish overall, which is kind of
expected on a board like this one. So, still pretty good Desktop usage on the Raspberry Pi is very
Okay-ish. Well... that is until you open a web browser. Chromium on the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W is flat out
unusable. After waiting way too long, I just gave up and closed the browser. So, I think the Orange
Pi deserves an extra point for desktop usability Let's take a look at the scoreboard. Raspberry Pi
and orange Pi are tied and Radxa is lagging behind Documentation is really holding back the Radxa
board. If most people won't be using these boards as a desktop computer, what are the use
cases for these tiny little boards? Since they're so small, they're perfect for embedded robotics
projects, a field camera, or even handheld gaming devices. All of these boards are very capable of
being the heart of a robot, but there is one big difference to call out. If you're building a robot
with vision, the Orange Pi doesn't have a camera connector. Remember, this connector at the edge of
the border of the Orange Pi is called a function interface, which is more like an expansion port. Not
a camera connector. Whereas, both the Raspberry Pi and the Radxa boards have dedicated CSI connectors.
This brings us to our bonus category: Accessories Although the Radxa has a camera connector, it is
not compatible with the same number of cameras as the Raspberry Pi. Looking through the device
tree overlays we can see that only has support for the V1 and the V2 Raspberry Pi camera modules.
Raspberry Pi Zero 2W is compatible with the older V1 and V2 camera modules, just like the Radxa but
also the newer camera modules, like the V3, that has autofocus, and the high quality camera module. It's
also compatible with a wide range of third-party camera modules like the Arducam. I was trying to
figure out if there are drivers for the Arducam cameras for the Radxa board but I can't find
anything in the documentation. So, just going to assume Arducam does not support Radxa boards.
Sticking with the camera theme, Raspberry Pi has a nice Python library called Picamera2 that
you can use to control their camera modules. This is pretty awesome, and allows people to create
things like this WebUI that makes it super easy to tweak camera settings and capture images.
I have links for this WebUI down below. Radxa only offers gstreamer bindings to capture picture
or videos from the camera modules and requires more complicated commands, like the one you see on
the screen right now. The Raspberry Pi solution is definitely more polished. So, I think this is where
I landed on the score for this category. Raspberry Pi gets 10 points for supporting a wide range
camera modules and having a healthy ecosystem with tons of accessories available from third parties and
the community. Both Orange Pi and Radxa advertise their boards as having a 40-pin header that is
compatible with SBC accessories. But, this is a little bit misleading. Although the different
functional pins like SPI, UART, and I2C are almost in the same place as the Raspberry Pi, it doesn't
mean that available software for a particular accessory that you're looking for will work on
the Orange Pi or the Radxa boards. With all that being said, Radxa Zero 3W gets 7 points for having
limited camera support and limited GPIO accessory support. Since the Orange Pi doesn't have support
for camera modules and it has the same issue with GPIO accessory support, it is only getting
5 points. I know, it's harsh, but it is what is. So, there you have it! According to my very
scientific grading system, the Rasberry Pi scored the highest. But is it the best for your project?
It really depends on what you want to get out of these boards. Do you need all the CPU performance
you can get in the small package? Then, the Radxa board is probably the best option. If you want to run
Android, well, the Orange Pi is the best option because it is available as a first-party image. If
you're looking for the best support and ease of use, nothing beats the Raspberry Pi in my opinion.
I think some people are going to be mad about this comment. So if you're one of those people, let me
know in the comments. I think this is it for this one. If you have made it this far in the video,
thank you! I really appreciate it! If you leave a comment, make sure to use the word "delighted".
That way I'll know that you're one of the people that watched until the end. Also, feel free to let
me know what kind of projects you're working on and what kind of SBC content you'd like to see
on the channel. So, I'll see you in the next one
