Sipeed Longan Pi 3H: Alternative to the Raspberry Pi with full-size ports

Sipeed is now offering a new single-board computer, the Longan Pi 3H. Strictly speaking, it is a carrier board on which a corresponding computing chip is attached. An Allwinner H618 is used as the SoC, which has four Cortex A53 cores with a clock frequency of 1.5 GHz each. For graphics processing, there is the Mali-G31 MP2 GPU. Depending on the configuration selected, the LPDDR4 RAM amounts to 2 or 4 GB. As is absolutely standard for such boards, a microSD card slot is available, and the Sipeed Longan Pi 3H can also be expanded by 32 GB of eMMC memory.

In terms of build. the system is roughly the same as the Raspberry Pi Zero, but higher. The connections come in their typical form. A Gigabit Ethernet port is installed, plus two USB 2.0 ports and one HDMI 2.0, meaning that high-resolution image content can be output. Power is usually supplied via USB Type C and therefore 5 volts.

Wireless connections are possible via WiFi 6, while Bluetooth 5.2 allows for the connection of an external headset. The pin header for connecting sensors and actuators is compatible with the Raspberry Pi and supports I2C, SPI and UART, among others. 

The model is now available for direct import at a starting price of just under $20, plus shipping costs. Delivery should be relatively quick and take place within twelve days.