Buying guide

If you are looking to acquire an Allwinner based device, then chances are that you are looking for the device with the best community support.

While some development boards are very common in our sunxi community, and they therefor are best supported, we have the ability to easily support just about any A10, A13, A10s and A20 based device (support for newer SoCs, like A31, A23 and A31s, is still lagging behind). This means that we can easily bring up previously unknown devices, but it might still be a good idea to choose the best known hardware.

= Recommended Development boards =

Open Source Hardware
At sunxi we fully support the OSHW initiative, as this gives people the freedom to adapt hardware designs to their own needs.

Olimex
Currently, Olimex is the only company creating Allwinner based OSHW, and Olimex actively contributes to the sunxi project. We particularly recommend:
 * A10-OLinuXino-LIME: An ultra cheap board with 512MiB RAM, HDMI, ethernet and SATA.
 * A13-OLinuXino: A more full featured board with 512MiB RAM, optional 4GB NAND and optional 4GB Wifi.
 * A20-OLinuXino-Micro: The most powerful and complete olimex board, with 1GB RAM, 4GB NAND, ethernet, SATA and HDMI.

Olimex devices offer a lot of expansion possibilities through GPIO connectors, or Olimex's own expansion modules.

Community Hardware
Some companies actively participate with and contribute to the sunxi community. While they don't always produce OSHW devices, schematics tend to be available.

Cubietech
Cubietech has been working with the sunxi community from the start, and the devices they create come with full schematics.
 * Cubieboard: The original cubietech board. Comes with an A10 SoC, 1GB RAM, 4GB NAND, SATA, Ethernet and HDMI.
 * Cubieboard2: An updated cubieboard with an A20 SoC.
 * Cubietruck: A full featured A20 board with 2GB RAM, 4GB NAND, Gigabit ethernet, WiFi, SATA, Bluetooth, HDMI and VGA.

Rhombus Tech
Rhombus Tech has been working on creating a proper free software supported device since the start, they started the initial community that formed around Allwinner SoCs. They are working on a modular platform called EOMA-68, with plans for a modular tablet and netbook. Sadly, hardware is not easy to get by yet, and we hope that this changes soon.

= Other devices =

If none of the above boards suit your goals, then there are plenty more devices to choose from:

As previously stated, we have the ability to easily support previously unknown hardware, so the above list should not limit your options.