Orange Pi Zero 4: A733 + PCIe NVMe + GbE in a 55×50 mm Board, From $26.50

The Orange Pi Zero 4 is a postage-stamp SBC with server-grade I/O: the Allwinner A733 (dual Cortex-A76 + hexa-core A55 + RISC-V RT core, 3 TOPS NPU), Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6, and (the part that matters) a PCIe Gen3 x1 slot you can put an actual NVMe drive on. The Zero line has always been "surprising hardware in a tiny board," but it's also always lived on microSD. This one finally doesn't have to.

It shipped about two weeks ago (CNX coverage, Aug 31), and unlike launch week on most Orange Pi boards, the product page now has working image downloads: Debian, Ubuntu, Arch-based Orange Pi OS, Android (plus source trees and a user manual).

The specifics//

Price and where to get it: five RAM tiers from Orange Pi: $26.50 (1GB) / $37 (2GB) / $52 (4GB) / $63 (6GB) / $83 (8GB). The 4GB board was ~$67.99 on Amazon US at time of writing; it's volatile, so re-check before you order. There are also AliExpress storefronts (Xunlong and others, linked from the product page); EU buyers in CNX's comments were seeing roughly €57 plus shipping for the 4GB board.

Key specs:

• SoC: Allwinner A733 — dual Cortex-A76 @ up to 2.0 GHz + hexa-core Cortex-A55 @ up to 1.79 GHz, plus a single RISC-V E902 real-time core (up to 200 MHz)
• GPU: Imagination BXM-4-64 MC1 — OpenGL ES 3.2 / Vulkan 1.3 / OpenCL 3.0
• NPU: 3 TOPS, on-die
• Video: 8Kp24 H.265/VP9/AVS2 decode, 4Kp30 encode; mini HDMI 2.0 and USB-C DisplayPort Alt mode, both up to 4Kp60, independently (dual-display capable)
• RAM: 1–8GB LPDDR5/LPDDR4x soldered (16GB exists in the spec sheet but isn't sold yet)
• Storage: microSD slot; footprints for eMMC (up to 32GB) and UFS 3.0 (up to 128GB); PCIe Gen3 x1 via a 16-pin FFC connector. This is the NVMe path
• Networking: GbE RJ45 (MotorComm YT8531C PHY), dual-band Wi-Fi 6 + BT 5.4 with IPEX antenna connectors
• Cameras: 2× 4-lane MIPI CSI
• Expansion: 26-pin color-coded GPIO header (17 GPIO, 4 UART, 3 I2C, SPI) plus a 13-pin function-interface header (I2S, IR Rx); it's not the classic 40-pin Pi layout
• Power/form factor: 5V/3A over USB-C; 55×50 mm, 21 g

Openness: it's a vendor board, not open hardware. The schematic and user manual are published, the Linux build tree is on GitHub (orangepi-build), but the A733 is not mainlined; Allwinner's kernel work lags, and CNX's read is that the mainline hopes have quietly died. Expect vendor-kernel images now and Armbian support later, the same trajectory as the Zero 3W line (which Armbian supports with a vendor kernel).

How it actually works: why this board is shaped like an edge node//

The A733's architecture has three blocks that exist specifically for "always-on, low-power, do-a-little-everything" boxes rather than benchmark charts. We covered the full chip in our ArmSoM Sige6 post (same SoC family), so here's what matters at the board level.

The PCIe lane is the whole point. The 16-pin FFC connector carries a PCIe Gen3 x1 link: roughly 800 MB/s of usable bandwidth, an order of magnitude ahead of even a fast microSD card (tens of MB/s). That's not "slightly faster storage"; it's the difference between a board you can run Docker images off and one where every container pull is a waiting game. The catch, stated plainly: it's not plug-and-play M.2. You need an NVMe adapter that mates to the FFC connector (a small PCB + ribbon cable), so budget a few extra dollars and a fiddly install. But once it's on, OS + hot data live on real flash with real endurance, and the microSD slot becomes what it should be — a boot/swap convenience, not your primary storage.

The RISC-V E902 is the sleeper feature. That ~200 MHz coprocessor runs on its own power domain and can service GPIO interrupts, sensor reads, and system monitoring while the A76/A55 cluster sleeps. For a solar- or battery-fed node (garden sensors, a porch camera gateway that only wakes on motion), the main complex can be off most of the time. That's how this class of board hits single-digit-watt idle without a fan (there's a 2-pin fan header if you want one anyway).

Two independent 4Kp60 outputs. Mini HDMI and USB-C DisplayPort are driven separately, so this is legitimately a dual-display box: signage plus dashboard, or camera feed on the wall panel with the admin UI somewhere else, with no HDMI splitter doing weird things in between. Combined with two CSI camera inputs, it's one of the cheapest "camera in, display out" gateways you can buy that isn't an old Raspberry Pi 4 repurposed from a drawer.

The big.LITTLE split does the usual work. A76s take latency-sensitive bursts (web UI, model preprocessing), the six A55s carry steady state (containers, automations, sync). It is not a Pi 5 for sustained all-core compute; the Sige6 post has the benchmark numbers if you want them.

The honest take//

• The 1GB tier is a toy. $26.50 buys you a demo board and a soldering project, not a node. 4GB at $52 (or ~$68 on Amazon) is where this becomes a real purchase; 6/8GB if you're running more than two or three containers plus a camera stack.
• The NVMe path costs extra effort. FFC adapter + ribbon cable, not an M.2 slot in your face. If "plug and play" matters more than "$50," the ArmSoM Sige6 gives you soldered eMMC and a real M.2 x2 slot, for $119+ with US duties on top.
• Soldered storage is config-dependent. The eMMC/UFS are footprints; what actually ships populated depends on the configuration you order. Verify before assuming your board has onboard flash beyond microSD.
• Not open hardware, and not mainlined. You're buying into Allwinner's ecosystem maturity curve: vendor images today, Armbian-with-vendor-kernel later, upstream Linux whenever. If that trade-off bothered you last time, it will this time.
• No PoE. It's a 5V/3A USB-C board, which is fine for a desk or a rack with a proper PSU; the Sige6's one-cable PoE story is still a real differentiator if you're mounting boxes in awkward places.
• Who shouldn't buy it: anyone shopping for a Pi 5 desktop replacement (wrong chip class), anyone who needs open schematics as a license condition rather than a courtesy, and anyone whose only budget line item is $26.