@sun I've been mostly happy with the Orange Pi devices I've had. I don't know whether Armbian incorporated binary blobs for them, but everything worked out of the box.

I brought a Banana Pi device with me to SWMO, but I've been so immersed in child care / teaching and my studies that I haven't had time to touch it. This is probably the 4th time I have bought one. Each time, before I can do anything with it, I have left (previous times, I left for work 9-12 months). The other thing about Banana Pi is they have (or had, I haven't checked recently) such a big array of models that it is difficult to decide which one fits your intended use. https://www.banana-pi.org/

I also had Odroid devices. They were almost all significantly more powerful than the corresponding Raspberry Pi devices, but almost all of them had overheating issues. (The exception was one that came with a big steel heatsink as its case, but to be honest, I only used that one as remote storage. https://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-hc2 )

A warning for the Orange Pi Zero series: I have had both the 1 and 2 models of the series overheat. Their square shape means you can't use other companies' zero cases, so there's no such thing as choosing a fan case.

You might want to ask @iceloops if this matches his experiences with the OPi Zero.