Radxa Zero: A powerful Raspberry Pi Zero W alternative that starts at US$15

Radxa has revealed the Zero, its latest single-board computer (SBC). As its name suggests, the Radxa Zero is an alternative to the ageing Raspberry Pi Zero W that the Pi Foundation launched in 2017. Unsurprisingly, the Radxa Zero is considerably more powerful than the SBC that inspired it.

Specifically, Radxa equipped the Zero with an Amlogic S905Y2, an SoC that features ARM Cortex-A53 cores and an ARM Mali-G31 MP2 GPU. According to Radxa, the Zero should achieve 70% of the performance that the Raspberry Pi 4 manages. Additionally, Radxa has included a microSD card slot, a micro HDMI port and two USB Type-C ports. It is worth noting that one operates at USB 3.0 speeds, with the other running at USB 2.0.

There is also a colour-coded 40-pin header that is compatible with the Raspberry Pi ecosystem and a choice between two Bluetooth/Wi-Fi modules. Radxa will offer the board with the Ampak AP6212 or Ampak AP6256, which offer Bluetooth 4.0/WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0/WiFi 5 connectivity, respectively.

The 65 x 30 x 5 mm board will be available in four variants. Radxa has manufactured 100 samples so far to send to developers and hopes to begin mass production within eight weeks. The Radxa Zero will be available in the following configurations:

• 512 MB LPDDR4 RAM, no storage, Ampak AP6212 - US$15
• 1 GB LPDDR4 RAM, no storage, Ampak AP6212 - US$20
• 2 GB LPDDR4 RAM, 8 GB eMMC flash storage, Ampak AP6256 - US$30
• 4 GB LPDDR4 RAM, 16 GB eMMC flash storage, Ampak AP6256 - US$45

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