# Orange Pi 6 Plus

18 Hacker News commenters recommended Orange Pi 6 Plus and 30 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for strong multicore CPU performance, large RAM and fast I/O for an ARM board. Critics agree its driver and kernel support lags, so it suits SBC tinkerers.

## Why people recommend it

- Strong multicore CPU performance (4 comments): "this new Orange Pi 6 Plus is much faster than Orange Pi 5 Ultra and anything that came before" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46407445)) "this SoC's CPU is much faster than a mere Intel N150 (especially for multicore use cases)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46402098)) "the high end of the performance is impressive" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46404491))
- Good IO and large RAM (2 comments): "this has much better IO than equivalent RK3588 compute modules / boards though" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47775668)) "Looking back I should have bought many of those just for the 64Gb of RAM" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791132))
- Compiles software and future targets (2 comments): "You can get any software to compile on this SBC." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46407450)) "It allows you to build for what is coming." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46402846))
- Works well in practice (2 comments): "I can pick it up and take it outside with a USB battery pack and it just works." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47774850)) "it ended up working surprisingly well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46414106))

## What people warn about

- Weak driver and kernel support (6 comments): "Hardware video decoding support for h264 and av1 just landed in 7.0 so it hasn't been a great bleeding edge experience" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47773293)) "Yet another board which will never have proper upstream support because the SoC vendor refused to implement the ARM BSA standard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46402843)) "NPUs like this tend to have one thing in common: being decorative without drivers and support 9 times out of 10." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46403909))
- Vendor software support lacking (5 comments): "Their approach to software support does leave a lot to be desired." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46404825)) "they forked UBoot and did not release their modifications" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777543)) "It's too much of a pain being limited in your distro choice because you are limited to specific builds." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47772612))
- Power draw and missing accessories (4 comments): "this board seems to be using the CIX CPU that has power management issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46401877)) "And here I was thinking the Pi 5 which idles at 3W was unreasonably high." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46403947)) "It is still achieved with an add-on and not integrated into the board." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46413822))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Raspberry Pi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/raspberry-pi.md): 425 recommend
- [Raspberry Pi Zero](https://hackerapproved.com/p/raspberry-pi-zero.md): 77 recommend
- [NVIDIA Jetson](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-jetson.md): 28 recommend
- [Raspberry Pi 2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/raspberry-pi-2.md): 12 recommend
- [SpacemiT K3](https://hackerapproved.com/p/spacemit-k3.md): 12 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Orange+Pi+6+Plus+single+board+computer+32GB&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Orange Pi 6 Plus", https://hackerapproved.com/p/orange-pi-6-plus/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).