Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board: Recommended for Introductory Users

I have found the BASYS 3 to be a good starting point for exploring FPGA coding, as well as being featured enough to handle more complex designs. The built-in VGA and other I/O increases the value of this board.

From power up the GPIO test was working. I loaded my own design without any issue, I'm able to program the FPGA, download the bin file into config memory and exercise all peripherals. I own many Digilent low cost boards, always work for me.

I recently upgraded from a Digilent Spartan-3E board. I appreciate the extra capability of the Artix-7 series over the Spartan-3E. The smaller form factor is also nice. I do miss some of the on-board perhipherals like the dial encoder, Ethernet mags, and LCD display. I had some trouble with Vivado connecting to the board but tech support via the forums was very helpful.

If it works, it is a lot of fun. Sadly, sometimes it does not implement the program and if we exchange the board it works. I don't know whether our board is an exception, but it is quite frustrating

First time fpga user and it worked great.. Probably not for high end or sophisticated users so read other reviews accordingly. Used it in a class with all new users and everyone liked it and had no difficulty.

It's been less than a week and some of the switches are already starting to have issues. I use this board mainly in class to verify proper code function by uploading to the board and testing some binary inputs, and the 5th switch over sometimes send a signal that it's on even when it's in the off position. Someone suggested that I could saulder on a new switch, but that doesn't seem right when this is supposed to be brand new. I'd request that Digilent look at it, but I'm on the quarter system and a few weeks without the board would mean I wouldn't see it again until the class was over, and I constantly need it, so soldering may be my only option if the switch stops working all together.

Vivado is a powerful development tool. My university teaches a basic logic design course using Verilog, Vivado IDE, and BASYS3. Towards the end of the quarter, students in the labs spend an unreasonable number of lab hours waiting for simulation results to be processed and for bitstreams to be compiled. These operation are NOT multithreaded using the version of Vivado made available to the class. BASYS3 board is rugged, has tons of flip flops onboard, and VGA out is easily received as straight-wire input to DVI which far a more common port on desktop monitors (though facing phase-out). A purely digital modern graphics output port would be appreciated, dispite the great learning expierence offered by working around the unique problems of VGA (vsync, hsync, etc). One possibility which would preserve BASYS PCB simplicity is you could implement a partial-spec version of a modern digital graphics output port. At the programming-level this would abstract many of the modern interface features away user control and would retain ease of student learning.

As others pointed out this is clearly a board for play or pedagogic use. It's expensive and large for builds, it's not a high end one, and it doesn't have a tandem SoaC. If you're after specific or professional use there's better. It gets five stars because it's excellent at what it does: Lots of out of the box I/O, well laid out, simple to use, well documented and based on widely available/documented specs etc. Tends to be a no-hassle experience with the latest Vivado as well. Certainly one of the best boards in the 100-200 segment to learn/teach/play

The design suite vivado is really userfriendly and makes programming the board super easy. Within a week i managed to write a VGA driver with 4bit per color RGB. Because of the student priceing i was able to affort to get my own basys 3 board. Only downsides were that the board didnt have a travel case, and that vivado doesn't have a dark theme yet.