I donât know if itâs better, but Orange Pi looks great. And thereâs another one based on the Pi spec. Canât comment on how they run their businesses.
I have 5 different Orange Pi devices of varying types and they all work well. I don't have the higher end one that was competing with the Pi 4 and such, but some of the smaller/low end ones. They all run Armbian and do what they need to do for me without any fuss. Given my experience with the smaller ones if I needed something faster now I wouldn't have any reservations about buying the bigger ones.
The main problem I had was finding reputable sellers, even when I did find one it only shipped from China. Took them a while to get here but otherwise it was fine. I think the more popular/faster models may have some resellers on Amazon that ship from the US now.