Orange Pi Zero 3W overview and first start

I’d like to talk about the new “little orange” — the Orange Pi Zero 3W, which was released this year.

Specifications:

  • SoC: Allwinner A733

  • CPU: 2 x Arm Cortex-A76 cores (up to 2.0 GHz) + 6 x Arm Cortex-A55 cores

  • GPU: Imagination PowerVR BXM-4-64 MC1 (Supports OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.3, OpenCL 3.0)

  • Neural Processing Unit: Up to 3 TOPS @INT8; supports mixed-precision computation (INT8, INT16, FP16, and BF16)

  • Coprocessor: Xuantie E902 RISC-V Real-Time Coprocessor (up to 200 MHz)

  • RAM: 4/8/12/16 GB LPDDR5

  • Storage: Onboard footprints for eMMC and UFS are available, but there are currently no boards for sale with them populated. Of course, there is a TF card slot

  • Wireless Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 (BLE) with an external antenna

  • Video Output: Mini HDMI 2.0, 4-lane MIPI-DSI, Type-C (Supports DisplayPort Alt Mode, up to 4K@60fps)

  • Video Input: Two 4-lane MIPI CSI interfaces

  • PCIe: 1 x PCIe 3.0 1-Lane FPC connector

  • GPIO: 40-pin expansion header (supporting GPIO, UART, I2C, SPI, PWM)

  • Power Supply: 5V / 3A via USB Type-C


Bottom view::


The kit included a heatsink with a small blower-style cooling fan:

Applying thermal pads to the PMIC, CPU, and LPDDR chips.





It’s best to unfold the antenna so its wire doesn’t get pinched under the heatsink. Install the heatsink and tighten the screws diagonally.


Even without applying much force, the tightened screws caused the PCB to flex. You shouldn’t leave it like this — it’s better to loosen them by a few turns until the board sits flat.

Connecting the fan header:

Now it’s time to move on to the software. It’s best to start with the official image (I haven’t seen any other options available yet).

Official images can be downloaded at the following link: Orange Pi Zero 3W — Service and Support

As of May 2026, only Ubuntu and Debian builds are available. For my initial tests, I chose Ubuntu.

Caution! Be extremely careful when selecting the target disk. An error in
the device name (/dev/sdX or /dev/rdiskN) will result in complete data
loss on your primary drive. Double-check the destination path twice!

First, let’s find the identifier for our MicroSD card:

## MacOS
diskutil list

## Linux
lsblk

We will flash the image directly from the archive to avoid wasting time extracting a separate file:

## macos
## If the system has already mounted the card, you need to unmount it:
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskXXX

7z x -so rangepizero3w_1.0.0_ubuntu_jammy_desktop_xfce_linux6.6.98.img.7z | sudo dd \
    of=/dev/rdiskX \
    bs=4M \
    status=progress

## linux
7z x -so rangepizero3w_1.0.0_ubuntu_jammy_desktop_xfce_linux6.6.98.img.7z | sudo dd \
    of=/dev/sdX \
    bs=4M \
    status=progress \
    conv=fsync

The first boot takes several minutes. The system opens the desktop immediately. If a user password is required, try “orangepi”.

I ran a few subjective tests:

  • YouTube: in Firefox at resolutions above 480p, frame drops are noticeable, especially in full-screen mode.

  • VLC: 1080p video playback is also accompanied by a significant drop in frame rate.

  • Geekbench 6: The result was 639 points in Single-Core and 1559 points in Multi-Core. Results

After several minutes of stress testing, the system reached 52°C.

I checked the power consumption at idle and during CPU stress tests — it is noticeably higher compared to the previous Orange Pi Zero 3 (which consumed 820 mW at idle and 1.8 W under stress test). Orange Pi Zero 3: Power Usage Benchmarks and Efficiency Tuning

Overall impressions: The interface runs quite smoothly. Compared to the previous Orange Pi Zero 3 or 2W, there is no noticeable desktop lag—applications open and respond quickly. Video playback still needs to be figured out: it requires additional configuration to enable hardware acceleration for decoding and video output.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

YD-RP2040 Module

Image
I want to tell you about the rather inexpensive YD-RP2040 module and show some examples of working with it. Photos and Schematics Top view: Bottom view: The module’s electrical schematic can be found here https://github.com/initdc/YD-RP2040/blob/master/YD-2040-2022-V1.1-SCH.pdf Differences from the original Raspberry Pi Pico This board has several key hardware differences from the standard Raspberry Pi Pico module. Key changes:  - Flash memory : The module can be fitted with a larger Flash memory capacity — 4MB (32Mbit) or even 16MB (128Mbit) instead of the 2MB in the original.  - Voltage regulator : The DC-DC step-down converter is replaced with a cheaper and less efficient linear regulator. This has freed up pin GPIO23, which was used to control the DC-DC converter in the original Pico.  - RGB LED : A WS2812 addressable LED (Neo-pixel) is connected to the freed GPIO23 pin. Unlike the original Pico, this board has two additional buttons:  - RESET — for a ...
Read more

How to Add CH32V Support to PlatformIO

Image
CH32V are quite cheap RISC-V architecture microcontrollers from WinChipHead (Nanjing Qinheng Microelectronics). There is also CH32F — these are microcontrollers based on the ARM architecture. To get started, we will need two things: A CR-CH32VXX development board (devboard) with a CH32V003 — which is one of the cheapest microcontrollers. And a WCH-LinkE — a programmer for the CH32V. You can find standard WCH-Link programmers on sale, but they are not suitable for the CH32V00x series because it uses a single-wire programming and debugging protocol. And this is only supported by the more expensive WCH-LinkE. By the way, there are projects that turn an RP2040 into a similar programmer, but the official utilities (MounRiver Studio) do not support anything other than WCH-Link. However, I don’t use the official IDE anyway. Therefore, I will probably try doing this and describe the process in the near future. Why do I use PlatformIO instead of MounRiver Studio? On the one hand, Mou...
Read more

Orange Pi Zero 3 - exploring GPIO

Image
GPIO (General-Purpose Input/Output, or General-Purpose Pins) is a fundamental concept that came into the world of powerful SoCs (System-on-a-Chip) directly from the realm of microcontrollers. It is the main bridge for your single-board computer to interact with simple external devices, in addition to more complex hardware interfaces (such as I2C, SPI, UART, or I2S). While specialized protocols transmit data streams, GPIO allows you to work at the lowest level -controlling individual digital signals. With each pin you can: Read the state (input): For example, check if a button is pressed, or if the signal is “1” or “0”. Control the state (output): For example, turn on an LED, activate a relay, or send a signal to another component. In this article, I want to provide a quick overview of the methods for working with GPIO on the Orange Pi Zero 3 (which is based on the Allwinner H618 SoC ). Of course, these methods are not unique and can be applied to other single-board computers a...
Read more