Orange Pi 6 Launches: New 45 TOPS AI SBC Beats Raspberry Pi HATs in Speed

• Maybe you missed it? Orange Pi 6 Plus Review.
• Orange Pi 6 Overview: An introduction, complete specifications, and key features.

Initially announced on December 4, 2025 – Shanghai At the CIXTech 2025 ecosystem conference in Shanghai, the Orange Pi 6 Plus made its official debut alongside the new Orange Pi 6 model.Now that it’s officially released, this new board is positioned as a more affordable alternative to its predecessor. It features the same CIX CD8160/CD8180 SoC with a 12-core 64-bit ARM processor but offers fewer interfaces.

Specifications

Orange Pi 6 Interfaces

Exclusive first-look photos (engineering sample).

PCB Layout schema

What else is in the pipeline?

The Orange Pi team is working on a new Orange Pi CM6 Pro powered by the CIX CD8180 SoC, designed to be compatible with NVIDIA’s Jetson Orin Nano Super.

First look at an exclusive photo of the engineering sample.

A true Raspberry Pi 5 killer in terms of both price and hardware specifications

1. Orange Pi 6 vs. Raspberry Pi 5 with AI HAT+ 2

The Orange Pi 6 Plus wins because it is an integrated system, whereas the AI HAT+ is an add-on that faces bottlenecks.

1.1 Performance: 12-Core vs. 4-Core

The performance gap in 2026 is no longer small; it’s a generational leap.

• Orange Pi 6: Uses the CIX CD8180 SoC with a massive 12-core architecture (4x Cortex-A720 High-Perf, 4x A720 Main, 4x A520 Efficiency). This allows for “snappy” desktop performance that rivals x86 laptops.
• Raspberry Pi 5 + AI HAT+: Still relies on a 4-core Cortex-A76. Even with the HAT, the CPU often hits 100% utilization when managing the data flow between the Pi and the external accelerator.
• Memory Bandwidth: The Orange Pi 6 Plus uses 128-bit LPDDR5, providing up to 96 GB/s of bandwidth. The Pi 5 uses older LPDDR4X, which creates a bottleneck when moving large AI models (like Llama 3.2) to the NPU.

1.2 Price: The “Hidden Costs” of Raspberry Pi

While the Raspberry Pi 5 starts cheaper, the total “AI-ready” cost is higher.

• Raspberry Pi AI Build:
  • Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB): $80
  • AI HAT+ 2 (40 TOPS): $130
  • Active Cooler + Power Supply: $25
  • Total: ~$235
• Orange Pi 6 Plus Build:
  • Orange Pi 6 Plus (16GB RAM / 45 TOPS): ~$199 – $220 (often includes heatsink).
  • Total: ~$210

Summary: Why the Orange Pi 6 Wins

1. Latency: Because the NPU is on the chip, there is zero delay in processing camera or sensor data.
2. Storage: It features Dual M.2 NVMe slots, allowing for 7GB/s read speeds. The Pi 5 requires even more HATs to support high-speed NVMe.
3. Future-proof: 16GB–32GB of RAM allows you to run modern 2026 LLMs (like DeepSeek or Llama 3) locally, which is nearly impossible on a standard Raspberry Pi.
4. For roughly the same price (or less), the Orange Pi 6 gives you double the RAM (16GB vs 8GB), triple the CPU cores, and integrated 5G Ethernet which the Pi 5 lacks entirely.

Final Thoughts

A stripped-down Orange Pi 6 Plus could potentially outperform the Raspberry Pi 5, thanks to its more powerful hardware, including dual 5GbE ports, a 12-core processor, and up to 32GB of RAM. This is particularly relevant now that the price of the Raspberry Pi 5 has begun to rise to $145 due to the global RAM chip shortage.

Price and Availability

More powerful and a lot cheaper? [Last Update: 2026-06-17]

Finally, the board has officially been released, and production has already started. The first samples should be available in a few days. We can confidently state that the upcoming board will be much more affordable and accessible to everyone. Although the final price hasn’t been set yet, we will update this article as soon as we have more information to share.