What just happened? Shenzhen Xunlong Software has launched its latest single-board computer, the Orange Pi 5 Max. Designed as an alternative to the Raspberry Pi 5, the new development board offers a few minor hardware and software upgrades over its Orange Pi 5 Pro predecessor that was announced a few months ago.
The Orange Pi 5 Max is powered by the Rockchip RK3588 SoC that comes with an octa-core CPU comprising four Cortex-A76 performance cores running at up to 2.4GHz, and four Cortex-A55 efficient cores running at up to 1.8GHz. This is a notable upgrade over the Orange Pi 5 Pro that ships with the Rockchip RK3588S.
The new chip incorporates an Arm Mali-G610 MP4 “Odin” graphics processor with support for OpenGLES 1.1, 2.0, and 3.2, OpenCL up to 2.2, and Vulkan1.2. There’s also an NPU offering 6 TOPS of AI performance, suitable for on-device machine learning and AI workloads.
The Orange Pi 5 Max is available with either 4, 8, or 16GB of LPDDR5 memory alongside an optional eMMC storage module. The device also features an M.2 NVMe slot that supports most PCIe NVMe SSDs. Additionally, there’s a microSD card slot that can be used for mass storage.
Wired connectivity options on the Orange Pi 5 Max include two full-size HDMI ports, four USB-A ports (2x USB 3.2 Gen1, 2x USB 2.0), and an RJ45 Ethernet socket with 2.5 GBit/s speed. It’s another upgrade over the Orange Pi 5 Pro, which offers a standard Gigabit network port. The Pi 5 Max also supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3/BLE for wireless connectivity.
Other connectivity options include an M.2 2280 PCIe / SATA disk slot, one MIPI LCD port, three camera ports (including one on the back), a set of 40-pin GPIO expansion ports, and a TF card slot.
According to the manufacturer, the new SBC is ideal for embedded devices used for edge computing, smart security, and more. It supports a slew of operating systems, including Orangepi OS (Droid), Orangepi OS (Arch), Orangepi OS (OH), Ubuntu, Debian, and Android12.
The Orange Pi 5 Max is available for purchase on eCommerce site AliExpress starting at $75 for the 4GB model. The 8GB and 16GB variants are priced at $95 and $125, respectively.
