i’ve read that more and more boards for different purposes are “cloned” by manufacturers not beeing able to build their own.
They used a lot cheaper (and bad) parts on it, faking even the printing on it to tell customers they have an original. Where did you get the board from?
From this seller on ali express.
Looking at the pictures in the comments, it seems that they sold this “version” of the PCB for quite a while. Even if would have checked those beforehand, I probably would not have noticed it.
The only difference to other sellers is that they only offer the 1GB version and no bundles with case etc, so that might be something to look out for.
IIRC these were originally designed to be fit in to small tv boxes, maybe it is a production run for one of those that in the end never got built.
Last time my wife bought something from aliexpress were parts for her sewing machines. Look like the originals, even after she got it and saw the details.
But all were broken after a few weeks. Now she has the original parts (double the price) working since two years and she is using the machine almost every day.
Just sayin…
I bought 5,6 things from aliexpress, like a small lna from rtl-sdr.com, who have an official store there.
And sometimes they are the only source an item, like a small banana Pi m2+ case. I’d say the same is true for the Orange Pi Zero 3, if you are based in Europe.
The price of the seller linked by dirkhh is 16 Euros + pp, so I do not find the price I got was extremely cheap. Anything for half price would make me immediately suspicous.
Thanks to Choice I can return the rotten fruit for free, so maybe that is another thing to look out for on aliexpress, if you have to take the risk.
